Shoots downward, glittering through the pure

serene

Into the depth of clouds, that veil thy breast-
Thou too again, stupendous Mountain! thou
That, as I raise my head, awhile bow'd low
In adoration, upward from thy base

Slow travelling with dim eyes suffused with tears,
Solemnly seemest like a vapory cloud,

To rise before me-rise, O, ever rise,
Rise like a cloud of incense from the Earth!
Thou kingly Spirit throned among the hills,
Thou dread ambassador from Earth to Heaven,
Great hierarch! tell thou the silent sky,
And tell the stars, and tell yon rising Sun,
Earth, with her thousand voices, praises God.
COLERIDGE.

M

TO A NIGHTINGALE.

Y heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains

My sense, as though of hemlock I had
drunk,

Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains.
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk;
'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
But being too happy in thy happiness—
That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees,
In some melodious plot

Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
Singest of Summer in full throated ease.

I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,
Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs;
But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet
Wherewith the seasonable month endows
The grass, the thicket, and the fruit tree wild;
White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;
Fast-fading violets cover'd up in leaves;

And mid-May's eldest child,
The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,
The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.
Darkling I listen; and for many a time

I have been half in love with easeful Death;
Call'd him soft names in many a mused rhyme,
To take into the air my quiet breath:
Now more than ever it seems rich to die,
To cease upon the midnight with no pain,
While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
In such an ecstasy!

Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain

To thy high requiem become a sod.

Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!
No hungry generations tread thee down;
The voice I hear this passing night was heard
In ancient days by emperor and clown:
Perhaps the self-same song that found a path
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for
home,

She stood in tears amid the alien corn;
The same that oft-times hath
Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in fairy lands forlorn.
Forlorn! the very word is like a bell
To toll me back from thee to my sole self.
Adieu! The fancy cannot cheat so well
As she is famed to do, deceiving elf.
Adieu, adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades
Past the near meadows, over the still stream,
Up the hill-side; and now 'tis buried deep
In the next valley-glades:

Was it a vision, or a waking dream?
Fled is that music:-do I wake, or sleep?
JOHN KEATS.

TO A SKYLARK.

AIL to thee, blithe spirit!
Bird thou never wert,

That from heaven, or near it,

Pourest thy full heart

In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.
Higher still and higher

From the earth thou springest

Like a cloud of fire,

The blue deep thou wingest,

And singing still dost soar, and soaring, ever singest.

In the golden lightning

Of the sunken sun,

O'er which clouds are brightening,

Thou dost float and run,

Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun. The pale, purple even

Melts around thy flight, Like a star of heaven.

In the broad daylight

Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight. Keen as are thy arrows,

Of that silver sphere,

Whose intense lamp narrows

In the white dawn clear.

Until we hardly see, we feel that it is there.

Waking or asleep

Thou of death must deem

Things more true and deep

Than we mortals dream,

Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream?

We look before and after

And pine for what is not;

Our sincerest laughter

With some pain is fraught;

Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.

Yet if we could scorn

Hate and pride and fear;

If we were things born

Not to shed a tear,

I know not how thy joy we ever should come

near.

Better than all measures

Of delightful sound,

Better than all treasures

That in books are found,

Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the

ground.

Teach me

half the gladness

That thy brain must know,

Such harmonious madness

From my lips would flow,

Few and short were the prayers we said,
And we spoke not a word of sorrow;
But we steadfastly gazed on the face of the
dead,

And we bitterly thought of the morrow.
We thought, as we hollow'd his narrow bed
And smooth'd down his lonely pillow,
That the foe and the stranger would tread
o'er his head,

And we far away on the billow!

Lightly they'll talk of the spirit that's gone,
And o'er his cold ashes upbraid him ;
But little he'll reck, if they let him sleep on
In the grave where a Briton has laid him.
But half of our heavy task was done
When the clock toll'd the hour for retiring;
And we heard the distant and random gun
That the foe was sullenly firing.
Slowly and sadly we laid him down,
From the field of his fame fresh and gory;
We carved not a line, we raised not a stone,
But we left him alone with his glory.
CHARLES WOLFE.

SLAVERY.

H! for a lodge in some vast wilderness, Some boundless contiguity of shade, Where rumor of oppression and deceit,

now.

SHELLEY.

BURIAL OF SIR JOHN MOORE.

OT a drum was heard, not a funeral note,
As his corse to the rampart we hurried;
Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot
O'er the grave where our hero we buried.

We buried him darkly at dead of night,
The sods with our bayonets turning;
By the struggling moonbeam's misty light,
And the lantern dimly burning.

No useless coffin inclosed his breast,
Nor in sheet nor in shroud we wound him;
But he lay like a warrior taking his rest,
With his martial cloak around him.

Might never reach me more! My ear is pain'd,
My soul is sick with every day's report
Of wrong and outrage with which earth is fill'd.
There is no flesh in man's obdurate heart-
It does not feel for man. That natural bond
Of brotherhood is sever'd as the flax
That falls asunder at the touch of fire.
He finds his fellow guilty-of a skin
Not color'd like his own; and, having power
To enforce the wrong, for such a worthy cause,
Dooms and devotes him as his lawful prey.
Lands intersected by a narrow frith
Abhor each other. Mountains interpos'd
Make enemies of nations who had else,
Like kindred drops been mingled into one.
Thus man devotes his brother and destroys;
And, worse than all, and most to be deplor'd,
As human nature's broadest, foulest blot,
Chains him, and tasks him, and exacts his sweat
With stripes, that Mercy, with a bleeding heart,

Weeps, when she sees inflicted on a beast.
Then what is man? And what man seeing this,
And having human feelings, does not blush
And hang his head, to think himself a man?
I would not have a slave to till my ground,
To carry me, to fan me while I sleep,
And tremble when I wake, for all the wealth
That sinews bought and sold have ever earn'd.
No: dear as freedom is, and in my heart's
Just estimation, prized above all price,
I had much rather be myself the slave,

And wear the bonds than fasten them on him.
We have no slaves at home-then why abroad?
And they themselves, once ferried o'er the wave
That parts us, are emancipate and loos'd.
Slaves cannot breathe in England; if their lungs
Receive our air, that moment they are free;
They touch our country, and their shackles fall!
That's noble, and bespeaks a nation proud
And jealous of the blessing. Spread it then,
And let it circulate through every vein
Of all your empire; that, where Britain's power
Is felt, mankind may feel ner mercy too.
COWPER, (The Task.)

THE SONG OF THE SHIRT.

ITH fingers weary and worn, With eyelids heavy and red, A woman sat in unwomanly rags, Plying her needle and thread

Stitch! stitch! stitch!

In poverty, hunger, and dirt,

And still with a voice of dolorous pitch She sang the "Song of the Shirt!"

"Work! work! work!

While the cock is crowing aloof!

And work-work-work,

Till the stars shine through the roof!
It's O! to be a slave

Along with the barbarous Turk,
Where woman has never a soul to save,
If this is Christian work!
"Work-work — work
Till the brain begins to swim!

Work work - work
Till the eyes are heavy and dim!
Seam, and gusset, and band,

Band, and gusset, and seam,
Till over the buttons I fall asleep,
And sew them on in a dream!

"But why do I talk of death?
That phantom of grisly bone,
I hardly fear his terrible shape,
It seems so like my own-
It seems so like my own,

Because of the fasts I keep;
O, God! that bread should be so dear,
And flesh and blood so cheap!

"Work - work — work!

My labor never flags;

And what are its wages? A bed of straw,
A crust of bread - and rags.
That shattered roof - and this naked floor -
A table a broken chair -
And a wall so blank, my shadow I thank
For sometimes falling there!

"Work-work - work!

From weary chime to chime! Work work - work,

As prisoners work for crime! Band, and gusset, and seam,

Seam, and gusset, and band,

Till the heart is sick, and the brain benumbed As well as the weary hand.

"Work-work-work,

In the dull December light,

And work work - work,

When the weather is warm and bright-
While underneath the eaves

The brooding swallows cling,
As if to show me their sunny backs,
And twit me with the spring.

"O! but to breathe the breath

Of the cowslip and primrose sweet — With the sky above my head, And the grass beneath my feet, For only one short hour

To feel as I used to feel, Before I knew the woes of want,

And the walk that costs a meal!