And so may we, with charmèd mind
Beholding what your skill has wrought,
Another Star-of-Bethlehem find,

A new Forget-me-not.

From earth to heaven with motion fleet

From heaven to earth our thoughts will pass,

A Holy-thistle here we meet

And there a Shepherd's weather-glass;

And haply some familiar name

Shall grace the fairest, sweetest plant

Whose presence cheers the drooping frame
Of English Emigrant.

Gazing she feels its power beguile

Sad thoughts, and breathes with easier breath;

Alas! that meek, that tender smile

Is but a harbinger of death:

And pointing with a feeble hand

She says, in faint words by sighs broken,

Bear for me to my native land

This precious Flower, true love's last token.

GLAD sight wherever new with old.

Is joined through some dear homeborn tie;

The life of all that we behold

Depends upon that mystery.

Vain is the glory of the sky,
The beauty vain of field and grove,
Unless, while with admiring eye

We gaze, we also learn to love.*

⚫ Compare the stanza in the lines addressed to Mrs Wordsworth in 1824, beginning

"True beauty dwells in deep retreats."

-ED.

[It has been said that the English, though their country has produced so many great poets, is now the most unpoetical nation in Europe. It is probably true; for they have more temptation to become so than any other European people. Trade, commerce, and manufactures, physical science, and mechanic arts, out of which so much wealth has arisen, have made our countrymen infinitely less sensible to movements of imagination and fancy than were our forefathers in their simple state of society. How touching and beautiful were, in most instances, the names they gave to our indigenous flowers, or any other they were familiarly acquainted with !-Every month for many years have we been importing plants and flowers from all quarters of the globe, many of which are spread through our gardens, and some perhaps likely to be met with on the few Commons which we have left. Will their botanical names ever be displaced by plain English appellations, which will bring them home to our hearts by connexion with our joys and sorrows? It can never be, unless society treads back her steps towards those simplicities which have been banished by the undue influence of towns spreading and spreading in every direction, so that city-life with every generation takes more and more the lead of rural. Among the ancients, villages were reckoned the seats of barbarism. Refinement, for the most part false, increases the desire to accumulate wealth; and while theories of political economy are boastfully pleading for the practice, inhumanity pervades all our dealings in buying and selling. This selfishness wars against disinterested imagination in all directions, and, evils coming round in a circle, barbarism spreads in every quarter of our island. Oh, for the reign of justice, and then the humblest man among us would have more power and dignity in and about him than the highest have now!]

You call it "Love lies bleeding," so you may,*
Though the red Flower, not prostrate, only droops,
As we have seen it here from day to day,

From month to month, life passing not away:

Compare

"Yet marked I where the bolt of Cupid fell:

It fell upon a little western flower,

Before milk-white, now purple with love's wound,
And maidens call it love-in-idleness."

(Midsummer Night's Dream, Act II. Sc. I.)-ED.

A flower how rich in sadness! Even thus stoops,
(Sentient by Grecian sculpture's marvellous power)
Thus leans, with hanging brow and body bent
Earthward in uncomplaining languishment,
So, sad Flower!

The dying Gladiator.

('Tis Fancy guides me willing to be led,

Though by a slender thread,)

So drooped Adonis bathed in sanguine dew

Of his death-wound, when he from innocent air
The gentlest breath of resignation drew;
While Venus in a passion of despair

Rent, weeping over him, her golden hair
Spangled with drops of that celestial shower.
She suffered, as Immortals sometimes do;
But pangs more lasting far, that Lover knew

Who first, weighed down by scorn, in some lone bower
Did press this semblance of unpitied smart

Into the service of his constant heart,

His own dejection, downcast Flower! could share

With thine, and gave the mournful name which thou wilt ever bear.

This poem was originally composed in sonnet form, and belongs in that form probably to the year 1833. It occurs in a MS. copy of some of the sonnets which record the Tour of that year to the Isle of Man and to Scotland.-ED.

THEY call it Love lies bleeding! rather say

That in this crimson Flower Love bleeding droops,
Thus it stoops

A Flower how sick in sadness!

With languid head unpropped from day to day
From month to month, life passing not away.
Even so the dying Gladiator leans

On mother earth, and from his patience gleams

Relics of tender thoughts, regrets that stay

A moment and are gone.

O fate-bowed flower!

Fair as Adonis bathed in sanguine dew,

Of his death-wound, that Lover's heart was true
As heaven, who pierced by scorn in some lone bower
Could press thy semblance of unpitied smart

Into the service of his constant heart.

COMPANION TO THE FOREGOING.

Comp. 1845.

Pub. 1845.

NEVER enlivened with the liveliest ray

That fosters growth or checks or cheers decay,
Nor by the heaviest rain-drops more deprest,
This Flower, that first appeared as summer's guest,
Preserves her beauty mid autumnal leaves

And to her mournful habits fondly cleaves.

When files of stateliest plants have ceased to bloom,

One after one submitting to their doom,

When her coevals each and all are fled,

What keeps her thus reclined upon her lonesome bed?

The old mythologists, more impress'd than we
Of this late day by character in tree
Or herb, that claimed peculiar sympathy,
Or by the silent lapse of fountain clear,
Or with the language of the viewless air
By bird or beast made vocal, sought a cause
To solve the mystery, not in Nature's laws
But in Man's fortunes. Hence a thousand tales
Sung to the plaintive lyre in Grecian vales.

Nor doubt that something of their spirit swayed
The fancy-stricken Youth or heart-sick Maid,
Who, while each stood companionless and eyed
This undeparting Flower in crimson dyed,
Thought of a wound which death is slow to cure,
A fate that has endured and will endure,
And, patience coveting yet passion feeding,
Called the dejected Lingerer, Love lies bleeding.

[Of this clock I have nothing farther to say than what the poem expresses, except that it must be here recorded that it was a present from the dear friend for whose sake these notes were chiefly undertaken, and who has written them from my dictation.]

WOULDST thou be taught, when sleep has taken flight,

By a sure voice that can most sweetly tell,

How far-off yet a glimpse of morning light,

And if to lure the truant back be well,

Forbear to covet a Repeater's stroke,

That, answering to thy touch, will sound the hour;

Better provide thee with a Cuckoo-clock

For service hung behind thy chamber-door;

And in due time the soft spontaneous shock,

The double note, as if with living power,

Will to composure lead-or make thee blithe as bird in bower.

List, Cuckoo-Cuckoo-oft tho' tempests howl,

Or nipping frost remind thee trees are bare,
How cattle pine, and droop the shivering fowl,

Thy spirits will seem to feed on balmy air: