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MUTABILITY.

And he sat him down in a lonely place,
And chanted a melody loud and sweet,
That made the wild-swan pause in her cloud,
And the lark drop down at his feet.

The swallow stopt as he hunted the bee,
The snake slipped under a spray,

The wild hawk stood with the down on his

And stared, with his foot on the prey,

beak,

And the nightingale thought, " I have sung many

songs,

But never a one so gay,

For he sings of what the world will be

When the years have died away."

MUTABILITY.

Tennyson.

WE are as clouds that veil the midnight

moon;

How restlessly they speed, and gleam,

quiver,

and

Streaking the darkness radiantly!-yet soon Night closes round, and they are lost for ever;

LARA.

Or like forgotten lyres, whose dissonant strings
Give various response to each varying blast,
To whose frail frame no second motion brings
One mood or modulation like the last.

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We rest-A dream has power to poison sleep;
We rise-One wandering thought pollutes the
day;

We feel, conceive or reason, laugh or weep;
Embrace fond woe or cast our cares away;

It is the same !-For, be it joy or sorrow,
The path of its departure still is free;
Man's yesterday may ne'er be like his morrow;
Nought may endure but Mutability.

Shelley.

LARA.

(NIGHT.)

THE crowd are gone, the revellers at rest;
The courteous host, and all-approving guest,
Again to that accustom'd couch must creep
Where joy subsides, and sorrow sighs to sleep,

And man, o'erlabour'd with his being's strife,
Shrinks to that sweet forgetfulness of life :
There lie love's feverish hope, and cunning's guile,
Hate's working brain, and lull'd ambition's wile;
O'er each vain eye oblivion's pinions wave,
And quenched existence crouches in a grave.
What better name may slumber's bed become?
Night's sepulchre, the universal home,

Where weakness, strength, vice, virtue, sunk supine,

Alike in naked helplessness recline;

Glad for awhile to heave unconscious breath,
Yet wake to wrestle with the dread of death,
And shun, though day but dawn on ills increased,
That sleep, the loveliest, since it dreams the least.

(MORNING.)

Night wanes the vapours round the mountains curl'd,

Melt into morn, and Light awakes the world.
Man has another day to swell the past,

And lead him near to little, but his last;

But mighty Nature bounds as from her birth, The sun is in the heavens, and life on earth; Flowers in the valley, splendour in the beam, Health on the gale, and freshness in the stream.

LYRICAL AND MISCELLANEOUS PIECES.

Immortal man! behold her glories shine,
And cry, exulting inly, "They are thine!"
Gaze on, while yet thy gladden'd eye may see;
A morrow comes when they are not for thee:
And grieve what may above thy senseless bier,
Nor earth nor sky will yield a single tear;

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Nor cloud shall gather more, nor leaf shall fall, Nor gale breathe forth one sigh for thee, for all; But creeping things shall revel in their spoil, And fit thy clay to fertilize the soil.

Lord Byron.

LYRICAL AND MISCELLANEOUS PIECES.

LIFE ebbs from such old age unmarked and silent,
As the slow neap-tide leaves yon stranded galley.-
Late she rock'd merrily at the least impulse
That wind or wave could give; but now her keel
Is settling on the sand, her mast has ta'en
An angle with the sky, from which it shifts not.
Each wave receding shakes her less and less,
Till, bedded on the strand, she shall remain
Useless as motionless.

Old Play.-Sir Walter Scott.

WHEN the moon is on the wave,
And the glow-worm in the grass,
And the meteor on the grave,
And the wisp on the morass;
When the falling stars are shooting,
And the answer'd owls are hooting,
And the silent leaves are still
In the shadow of the hill,

Shall my soul be upon thine,
With a power and with a sign.

Though thy slumber may be deep, Yet thy spirit shall not sleep: