We from to-day, my friend, will date Love, now an universal birth, From heart to heart is stealing, From earth to man, from man to earth: -It is the hour of feeling. One moment now may give us more Than fifty years of reason: Our minds shall drink at every pore Some silent laws our hearts may make, We for the year to come may take And from the blessed power that rolls About, below, above, We'll frame the measure of our souls: They shall be tuned to love. Then come, my Sister! come, pray, With speed put on your woodland dress; TO A YOUNG LADY, WHO HAD BEEN REPROACHED FOR TAKING LONG WALKS IN THE COUNTRY. DEAR child of Nature, let them rail! A harbour and a hold, Where thou, a wife and friend, shalt see Thy own delightful days, and be A light to young and old. There, healthy as a shepherd-boy, As if thy heritage were joy, And pleasure were thy trade, Thou, while thy babes around thee cling, Shalt show us how divine a thing A woman may be made. Thy thoughts and feelings shall not die, Nor leave thee when gray hairs are nigh A melancholy slave; But an old age serene and bright, And lovely as a Lapland night, Shall lead thee to thy grave. LINES, WRITTEN IN EARLY SPRING. I HEARD a thousand blended notes, In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts To her fair works did Nature link The human soul that through me ran; Through primrose tufts, in that sweet bower, The birds around me hopped and played The budding twigs spread out their fan, And I must think, do all I can, If I these thoughts may not prevent, SIMON LEE, THE OLD HUNTSMAN. WITH AN INCIDENT IN WHICH HE WAS CONCERNED. IN the sweet shire of Cardigan, No man like him the horn could sound, And no man was so full of glee; To say the least, four counties round Had heard of Simon Lee; His master's dead, and no one now Men, dogs, and horses, all are dead; He is the sole survivor. His hunting feats have him bereft, Of his right eye, as you may see; And then, what limbs those feats have left, When he was young he little knew Of husbandry or tillage; And now is forced to work, though weak, He all the country could outrun, Could leave both man and horse behind; He reeled and was stone-blind. And still there's something in the world For when the chiming hounds are out, But he is lean and he is sick, His dwindled body half awry, His ankles too are swoln and thick; His legs are thin and dry. He has no son, he has no child, His wife, an aged woman, Lives with him, near the waterfall, Upon the village common. Old Ruth works out of doors with him, And does what Simon cannot do; For she, not over stout of limb, Is stouter of the two. And, though you with your utmost skill Alas! 'tis very little, all Which they can do between them. Beside their moss-grown hut of clay, This scrap of land he from the heath Few months of life has he in store, As he to you will tell, For still, the more he works, the more My gentle reader, I perceive And I'm afraid that you expect 2 O reader! had you in your mind What more I have to say is short, One summer-day I chanced to see The mattock tottered in his hand; That at the root of the old tree "You're overtasked, good Simon Lee, I struck, and with a single blow At which the poor old man so long The tears into his eyes were brought, And thanks and praises seemed to run They never would have done. -I've heard of hearts unkind, kind deeds With coldness still returning, Alas! the gratitude of men In the school of is a tablet, on which are inscribed, in gilt letters, the names of the several persons who have been schoolmasters there since the foundation of the school, with the time at which they entered upon and quitted their office. Opposite one of those names the Author wrote the following lines. IF Nature, for a favourite child In thee hath tempered so her clay, Read o'er these lines; and then review In such diversity of hue Its history of two hundred years. -When through this little wreck of fame, Has travelled down to Matthew's name, And, if a sleeping tear should wake, Poor Matthew, all his frolics o'er, Is silent as a standing pool; Far from the chimney's merry roar, The sighs which Matthew heaved were sighs Yet, sometimes, when the secret cup -Thou soul of God's best earthly mould! THE TWO APRIL MORNINGS. WE walked along, while bright and red And Matthew stopped, he looked, and said, A village schoolmaster was he, With hair of glittering gray; As blithe a man as you could see On a spring holiday. And on that morning, through the grass, And by the streaming rills, We travelled merrily, to pass A day among the hills. "Our work," said I, "was well begun ; Then, from thy breast what thought, Beneath so beautiful a sun, So sad a sigh has brought?" A second time did Matthew stop; Upon the eastern mountain-top, 2 E |