Who to his dwelling takes that visitant, Has a perpetual solace in all pain,

A friend and comforter in every grief.

The noblest domes, the haughtiest palaces, That know not her, have ever open gates Where misery may enter at her will.

But from the threshold of the poorest hut Where she sits smiling, sorrow passes by, And owns the spell that robs her of her sting. CHARLES MACKAY, 1814—

TO THE GRASSHOPPER AND

THE CRICKET.

GREEN little vaulter in the sunny grass,
Catching your heart up at the feel of June,
Sole voice that 's heard amidst the lazy noon,
When e'en the bees lag at the summoning brass;
And you, warm little housekeeper, who class

With those who think the candles come too soon,
Loving the fire; and with your tricksome tune
Nick the glad silent moments as they pass;
O sweet and tiny cousins, that belong,

One to the fields, the other to the hearth,

Both have your sunshine; both, though small, are

strong

At your clear hearts; and both were sent on earth To sing in thoughtful ears this natural song,— In doors and out, summer and winter,―mirth. LEIGH HUNT, 1784-1859.

HYMN TO THE AIR.

THE mightiest thou among the powers of earth,
The viewless agent of the unseen God,
What immemorial era saw thy birth?

What pathless fields of new creation trod
Thy noiseless feet? Where was thy dwelling-place
In the blind realm of chaos, ere the word
Of sovereign order by the stars was heard,
Or the young planet knew her Maker's face?
No wrecks are hid in thine unfathom'd sea;

Thy crystal tablets no inscription bear; The awful Infinite is shrined in thee, Immeasurable Air!

Thou art the soul wherein the earth renews
The nobler life that heals her primal scars;
Thine is the mantle of all-glorious hues,

Which makes her beautiful among the stars;

Thine is the essence that informs her frame
With manifold existence, thine the wing
From gulfs of outer darkness sheltering,
And from the sun's uplifted sword of flame.
She sleeps in thy protection, lives in thee;

Thou makest the foreheads of her mountains

smile;

His heart to thine, the all-surrounding sea

Spreads thy blue drapery o'er his cradled isle. Thou art the breath of Nature and the tongue Unto her dumb material being granted,

And by thy voice her sorrowing psalms are chanted— Her hymns of triumph sung!

Thine azure fountains nourish all that lives:
For ever drain'd, yet ever brimming o'er,
Their billows in eternal freshness pour,
And from her choicest treasury Nature gives
A glad repayment of the debt she owes,

Replenishing thy sources :-balmy dews,

That on thy breast their summer tears diffuse;

Strength from the pine, and sweetness from the

rose;

The spice of gorgeous Ind, the scents that fill
Ambrosial forests in the isles of palm;
Leagues of perennial bloom on every hill;
Lily and lotus in the waters calm;
And where the torrent leaps to take thy wing,
But dashes out its life in diamond spray,

Or multitudinous waves of ocean fling

Their briny strength along thy rapid way—

Escapes some virtue, which from thee they hold : And even the grosser exhalations, fed

From earth's decay, Time's crowded charnel-bed, Fused in thy vast alembic, turn to gold.

Man is thy nursling, universal Air!

No kinder parent fosters him than thou: How soft thy fingers dally with his hair!

How sweet their pressure on his fever'd brow! In the dark lanes where squalid misery dwells, Where the fresh glories of existence shun The childhood nurtured in the city's hells,

And eyes that never saw the morning sun, Pale cheeks for thee are pining, heavy sighs Drawn from the depth of weary hearts arise— The flower of life is wither'd on its stem

And the black shade the loathsome walls enclose,

Day after day more drear and stifling grows, Till heaven itself seems forfeited to them! What marvel, then, as from a fever'd dream

The dying wakes, to feel his forehead fann'd By thy celestial freshness, he should deem

The death-sweat dried beneath an angel's hand? That tokens of the violet-sprinkled sod,

Breathed like a blessing o'er his closing eyes,
Should promise him the peace of Paradise-
The pardon of his God!

What is the scenery of earth to thine?

Here, all is fix'd in everlasting shapes,

But where the realms of gorgeous Cloudland shine,
There stretch afar thy sun-illumined capes,
Embaying reaches of the amber seas

Of sunset, on whose tranquil bosom lie
The happy islands of the upper sky,
The halcyon shores of thine Atlantides.
Anon the airy headlands change, and drift
Into sublimer forms, that slowly heave
Their toppling masses up the front of eve,
Crag heap'd on crag, with many a fiery rift,
And hoary summits, throned beyond the reach
Of Alp or Caucasus: again they change,
And down the vast, interminable range
Of towers and palaces, transcending each
The workmanship of Fable-Land, we see

The "crystal hyaline" of heaven's own floor-
The radiance of the far Eternity

Reflected on thy shore!

To the pure calm of thy cerulean deeps
The jar of earth-born tumult cannot climb;
There ancient Silence her dominion keeps,
Beyond the narrow boundaries of Time.
The taint of sin, the vapours of the world,

The smoke of godless altars, hang below,
Staining thy marge, but not a cloud is curl'd

Where those supernal tides of ether flow. What vistas ope from those serener plains!

What dawning splendours touch thine azure towers! When some fair soul, whose path on earth was ours, The starry freedom of its wing regains,