IMPROMPTU.

THE sun has long been set,

The stars are out by twos and threes, The little birds are piping yet

Among the bushes and the trees; There's a cuckoo, and one or two thrushes, And a far-off wind that rushes, And a sound of water that gushes, And the cuckoo's sovereign cry Fills all the hollow of the sky. Who would go parading' In London, and masquerading,' On such a night of June With that beautiful half-moon, And all these innocent blisses? On such a night as this is!

SONNET.

I WATCH, and long have watched, with calm regret

Yon slowly-sinking star-immortal Sire (So might he seem) of all the glittering quire!

Blue ether still surrounds him-yet-and yet;

But now the horizon's rocky parapet Is reached, where, forfeiting his bright attire,

He burns-transmuted to a dusky fireThen pays submissively the appointed debt To the flying moments, and is seen no

more.

Angels and gods! we struggle with our fate,

While health, power, glory, from their height decline,

Depressed; and then extinguished: and

our state,

In this, how different, lost Star, from thine, That no to-morrow shall our beams restore!

ELEGIAC PIECES.

TO LAMB.

To a good Man of most dear memory
This Stone is sacred. Here he lies apart
From the great city where he first drew
breath,

Was reared and taught; and humbly earned his bread,

Wherever Christian altars have been raised,
Hallowed to meekness and to innocence;
And if in him meekness at times gave way,
Provoked out of herself by troubles strange,
Many and strange, that hung about his
life;

Still, at the centre of his being, lodged
A soul by resignation sanctified:
And if too often, self-reproached, he felt
That innocence belongs not to our kind,
A power that never ceased to abide in him,
Charity, 'mid the multitude of sins
That she can cover, left not his exposed
To an unforgiving judgment from just
Heaven.

O, he was good, if e'er a good Man lived!

The imperfect record, there may stand unblamed [air As long as verse of mine shall breathe the Of memory, or see the light of love.

Thou wert a scorner of the fields, my Friend! [the fields, But more in show than truth; and from And from the mountains, to thy rural grave

Transported, my soothed spirit hovers o'er Its green untrodden turf, and blowing flowers; [still And taking up a voice shall speak (though Awed by the theme's peculiar sanctity Which words less free presumed not even to touch)

Of that fraternal love, whose heaven-lit lamp

From infancy, through manhood to the last Of threescore years, and to thy latest hour, Burnt on with ever-strengthening light, enshrined

Within thy bosom.

"Wonderful" hath been The love established between man and man,

now

Passing the love of women;" and between Man and his help-mate in fast wedlock joined [of love Through God, is raised a spirit and soul Without whose blissful influence Paradise Had been no Paradise; and earth were [form, A waste where creatures bearing human Direst of savage beasts, would roam in fear, [on; Joyless and comfortless. Our days glide And let him grieve who cannot choose but grieve [Vine, That he hath been an Eln without his And her bright dower of clustering charities, [have clung That, round his trunk and branches might Enriching and adorning. Unto thee Not so enriched, not so adorned, to thee Was given (say rather thou of later birth Wert given to her) a Sister-'tis a word Timidly uttered, for she lives, the meek, The self-restraining, and the ever-kind; In whom thy reason and intelligent heart Found-for all interests, hopes, and tender [powers, All softening, humanizing, hallowing, Whether withheld, or or her sake unsoughtMore than sufficient ompense!

cares,

Her love

(What weal:ness prompts the voice to tell
it here!)
[years,
Was as the love of mothers; and when
Lifting the boy to man's estate, had called
The long-protected to assume the part
Of a protector, the first filial tie
Was undissolved; and, in or out of sight,
Remained imperishably interwoven
With life itself. Thus, 'mid a shifting
world,

Did they together testify of time
And season's difference-a double tree
With two collateral stems sprung from one
root;
Thave been

Such were they-such thro' life they might
In union, in partition only such; [High;
Otherwise wrought the will of the Most
Yet, through all visitations and all trials,
Still they were faithful; like two vessels
launched

From the same beach one ocean to explore With mutual help, and sailing-to their league

True, as inexorable winds, or bars
Floating or fixed of polar ice, allow.

But turn we rather, let my spirit turn With thine, O silent and invisible Friend! To those dear intervals, nor rare nor brief, When reunited, and by choice withdrawn From miscellaneous converse, ye were taught

That the remembrance of foregone distress, And the worse fear of future ill (which oft Doth hang around it, as a sickly child Upon its mother) may be both alike Disarmed of power to unsettle present good So prized, and things inward and outward held

In such an even balance, that the heart Acknowledges God's grace, his mercy feels, And in its depth of gratitude is still.

O gift divine of quiet sequestration!
The hermit, exercised in prayer and praise,
And feeding daily on the hope of heaven,
Is happy in his vow, and fondly cleaves
To life-long singleness; but happier far
Was to your souls, and, to the thoughts of
others,

A thousand times more beautiful appeared
Your dual loneliness. The sacred tie
Is broken; yet why grieve? for time but
holds

His moiety in trust, till Joy shall lead
To the blest world where parting is un-
known.

EXTEMPORE EFFUSION UPON THE DEATH
OF JAMES HOGG.

WHEN first descending from the moorlands,
I saw the Stream of Yarrow glide
Along a bare and open valley,
The Ettrick Shepherd was my guide.

When last along its banks I wandered,
Through groves that had begun to shed
Their golden leaves upon the pathways,
My steps the Border Minstrel led.

The mighty Minstrel breathes no longer,
Mid mouldering ruins low he lies;
And death upon the braes of Yarrow,
Has closed the Shepherd-poet's eyes:

Nor has the rolling year twice measured,
From sign to sign, its steadfast course,
Since every mortal power of Coleridge,
Was frozen at its marvellous source;

The 'rapt One, of the godlike forehead,
The heaven-eyed creature sleeps in earth :
And Lamb, the frolic and the gentle,
Has vanished from his lonely hearth.

Like clouds that rake the mountain-sum

mits,

Or waves that own no curbing hand, How fast has brother followed brother, From sunshine to the sunless land!

Yet I, whose lids from infant slumbers Were earlier raised, remain to hear

A timid voice, that asks in whispers,

Who next will drop and disappear?"

Our haughty life is crowned with darkness, Like London with its own black wreath, On which with thee, O Crabbe! forthlooking,

I gazed from Hampstead's breezy heath.

As if but yesterday departed,
Thou too art gone before; but why,
O'er ripe fruit, seasonably gathered,
Should frail survivors heave a sigh?

Mourn rather for that holy Spirit,
Sweet as the spring, as ocean deep;
For Her who, ere her summer faded,
Has sunk into a breathless sleep.

No more of old romantic sorrows,
For slaughtered Youth or love-lorn Maid!
With sharper grief is Yarrow smitten,

And Ettrick mourns with her their poet dead.

TRUE is it that Ambrosio Salinero
With an untoward fate was long involved
In odious litigation; and full long,
Fate harder still! had he to endure
assaults

Of racking malady. And true it is
That not the less a frank courageous heart
And buoyant spirit triumphed over pain;
And he was strong to follow in the steps
Of the fair Muses. Not a covert path
Leads to the dear Parnassian forest's shade,
That might from him be hidden; not a
track

Mounts to pellucid Hippocrene, but he Had traced its windings.-This Savona knows,

Yet no sepulchral honours to her Son
She paid, for in our age the heart is ruled
Only by gold. And now a simple stone
Inscribed with this memorial here is raised
By his bereft, his lonely, Chiabrera.
Think not, O Passenger! who read'st the
lines

That an exceeding love hath dazzled me; No-he was One whose memory ought to spread

Where'er Permessus bears an honoured

To fair Aglaia; by what envy moved, Lelius! has death cut short thy brilliant day

In its sweet opening? and what dire mishap
Has from Savona torn her best delight?
For thee she mourns, nor e'er will cease to
mourn;
[suffice not
And, should the outpourings of her eyes
For her heart's grief, she will entreat Sebeto
Not to withhold his bounteous aid, Sebeto

Who saw thee, on his margin, yield to death,

In the chaste arms of thy beloved Love!
What profit riches? what does youth avail?
Dust are our hopes ;-I, weeping bitterly,
Penned these sad lines, nor can forbear to
pray

That every gentle Spirit hither led
May read them not without some bitter

tears.