In wood and thicket, over the wide grove,
They answer and provoke each other's song,
With skirmish and capricious passagings,
And murmurs musical, and swift jug-jug,
And one low, piping sound more sweet than all--
Stirring the air with such a harmony,

That, should you close your eyes, you might almost
Forget it was not day! On moon-lit bushes,

Whose dewy leaflets are but half disclosed,

You may, perchance, behold them on the twigs,

Their bright, bright eyes, their eyes both bright and full,
Glistening, while many a glow-worm in the shade
Lights up her love-torch.

A most gentle maid,

Who dwelleth in her hospitable home
Hard by the castle, and at latest eve

(Even like a lady vowed and dedicate

To something more than Nature in the grove)

Glides through the pathways; she knows all their notes,
That gentle maid! and oft a moment's space,

What time the moon was lost behind a cloud,
Hath heard a pause of silence; till the moon
Emerging, hath awakened earth and sky
With one sensation, and these wakeful birds
Have all burst forth in choral minstrelsy,

As if some sudden gale had swept at once

A hundred airy harps! And she hath watched
Many a nightingale perched giddily

On blossomy twig still swinging from the breeze,
And to that motion tune his wanton song,
Like tipsy joy that reels with tossing head.

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE.

The Death of the Flowers.

THE melancholy days are come, the saddest of the year,

Of wailing winds, and naked woods, and meadows brown and sear.

Heaped in the hollows of the grove, the autumn leaves lie dead;

They rustle to the eddying gust, and to the rabbit's tread.

The robin and the wren are flown, and

from the shrubs the jay,

And from the wood-top calls the crow through all the gloomy day.

Where are the flowers, the fair young flowers, that lately sprang

and stood

In brighter light, and softer airs, a beauteous sisterhood?
Alas! they all are in their graves, the gentle race of flowers
Are lying in their lowly beds, with the fair and good of ours.
The rain is falling where they lie, but the cold November rain
Calls not from out the gloomy earth the lovely ones again.

The wind-flower and the violet, they perished long ago,
And the brier rose and the orchis died amid the summer glow;
But on the hill the golden-rod, and the aster in the wood,
And the yellow sun-flower by the brook in autumn beauty stood,
Till fell the frost from the clear, cold heaven, as falls the plague on

men,

And the brightness of their smile was gone, from upland, glade,

and glen.

And now, when comes the calm, mild day, as still such days will

come,

To call the squirrel and the bee from out their winter home;

When the sound of dropping nuts is heard, though all the trees are still,

And twinkle in the smoky light the waters of the rill,

The south wind searches for the flowers whose fragrance late he

bore,

And sighs to find them in the wood and by the stream no more.
And then I think of one who in her youthful beauty died,
The fair, meek blossom that grew up and faded by my side:
In the cold, moist earth we laid her, when the forest cast the leaf,
And we wept that one so lovely should have a life so brief:
Yet not unmeet it was that one, like that young friend of ours,
So gentle and so beautiful, should perish with the flowers.

WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.

Night.

HE night is chill; the forest bare;

Is it the wind that moaneth bleak?
There is not wind enough in the air
To move away the ringlet curl
From the lovely lady's cheek;
There is not wind enough to twirl

The one red leaf, the last of its clan,
That dances as often as dance it can,
Hanging so light, and hanging so high,
On the topmost twig that looks up at the sky.
S. T. COLERIDGE. [From "Christabel."]

"Redeem mine hours-the space is brief-
While in my glass the sand-grains shiver,
And measureless thy joy or grief,

When time and thou shalt part for ever!"

SCOTT.

[SIR WALTER SCOTT's fame is more associated with his inimitable Waverley novels than with his poetry, which, though extremely popular at the beginning of the present century, was eclipsed by the more fiery and vivid gleams of Byron's genius. Of his longer poems, the "Lady of the Lake" is the most successful, both as regards design and execution. "Marmion," "Rokeby," and the "Lord of the Isles," all exhibit the dramatic power of description which rendered the author's prose works so long the delight of thousands of readers. Sir Walter was born at Edinburgh, in 1771, and died at Abbotsford, the estate where he had spent such happy and such anxious days, in 1832.]

The Skylark.

B

IRD of the wilderness,

Blythesome and cumberless,

Sweet be thy matin o'er moorland and lea!
Emblem of happiness,

Blest is thy dwelling-place—

Oh, to abide in the desert with thee!

Wild is thy lay and loud,

Far in the downy cloud,

Love gives it energy, love gave it birth;
Where on thy dewy wing,

Where art thou journeying?

Thy lay is in heaven, thy love is on earth.

O'er fell and fountain sheen,

O'er moor and mountain green,

O'er the red streamer that heralds the day,
Over the cloudlet dim,

Over the rainbow's rim,

Musical cherub, soar, singing, away;

Then when the gloaming comes,

Low in the heather blooms,

Sweet will thy welcome and bed of love be;
Emblem of happiness,

Blest is thy dwelling-place—

Oh, to abide in the desert with thee!

HOGG.

[JAMES HOGG, the Ettrick Shepherd, was brought into notice as a poet chiefly through the kindness of Sir Walter Scott, whose interest had been excited by some of the earlier works of this uncultured child of genius. Unequal in merit though they certainly are, Hogg's works display sufficient beauty to entitle him to a high rank among our poets. "Bonny Kilmeney" is, perhaps, his best poem, though the "Queen's Wake " yielded him the greatest amount of fame.]