XIII.

K

EEN fitful gusts are whispering here and there
Among the bushes, half leafless and dry;

The stars look very cold about the sky,
And I have many miles on foot to fare;
Yet feel I little of the cool bleak air,

Or of the dead leaves rustling drearily,

Or of those silver lamps that burn on high, Or of the distance from home's pleasant lair : For I am brimful of the friendliness

That in a little cottage I have found; Of fair-hair'd Milton's eloquent distress,

And all his love for gentle Lycid drown'd; Of lovely Laura in her light green dress,

And faithful Petrarch gloriously crown'd.

XIV.

TO

O one who has been long in city pent,
'Tis very sweet to look into the fair
And open face of heaven,

to breathe a prayer Full in the smile of the blue firmament. Who is more happy, when, with heart's content,

Fatigued he sinks into some pleasant lair

Of wavy grass, and reads a debonair
And gentle tale of love and languishment ?
Returning home at evening, with an ear

Catching the notes of Philomel,
Watching the sailing cloudlet's bright career,

He mourns that day so soon has glided by:
E'en like the passage of an angel's tear

That falls through the clear ether silently.

an eye

XV.

ON THE GRASSHOPPER AND CRICKET.

T"

THE poetry of earth is never dead:

When all the birds are faint with the hot sun,

And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead: That is the grasshopper's — he takes the lead

In summer luxury, — he has never done

With his delights, for when tired out with fun, He rests at ease beneath some pleasant weed. The poetry of earth is ceasing never:

On a lone winter evening, when the frost Has wrought a silence, from the stove there shrills The Cricket's song, in warmth increasing ever,

And seems to one in drowsiness half lost, The Grasshopper's among some grassy hills.

XVI.

TO KOSCIUSKO.

G

OOD Kosciusko! thy great name alone
Is a full harvest whence to reap high feeling;

It comes upon us like the glorious pealing
Of the wide spheres an everlasting tone.
And now it tells me, that in worlds unknown,

The names of heroes, burst from clouds concealing,

Are changed to harmonies, for ever stealing Through cloudless blue, and round each silver

throne. It tells me too, that on a happy day,

When some good spirit walks upon the earth,
Thy name with Alfred's, and the great of yore,

Gently commingling, gives tremendous birth
To a loud hymn, that sounds far, far away
To where the great God lives for evermore.

XVII.

HI

APPY is England ! I could be content
To see no other verdure than its own ;

To feel no other breezes than are blown Through its tall woods with high romances blent; Yet do I sometimes feel a languishment

For skies Italian, and an inward groan

To sit úpon an Alp as on a throne, And half forget what world or worldling meant. Happy is England, sweet her artless daughters;

Enough their simple loveliness for me, Enough their whitest arms in silence clinging:

Yet do I often warmly burn to see Beauties of deeper glance, and hear their singing, And float with them about the summer waters.