In most distressful mood (some inward pain
Had made up that strange thing-an infant's dream),
I hurried with him to our orchard-plot,
And he beheld the moon ; and, hush'd at once,
Suspends his sobs, and laughs most silently ;
While his fair eyes, that swam with undropp'd tears,
Did glitter in the yellow moonbeam! Well!-
It is a father's tale : but if that Heaven
Should give me life, his childhood shall grow up
Familiar with these songs; that with the night
He may associate joy. Once more farewell,
Sweet nightingale ! Once more, my friends, farewell!

DISJOINTED FRIENDSHIP.
Alas, they had been friends in youth:
But whispering tongues can poison truth;
And constancy lives in realms above;
And life is thorny; and youth is vain;
And to be wroth with one we love
Doth work like madness in the brain :
And thus it chanced, as I divine,
With Roland and Sir Leoline.
Each spake words of high disdain
And insult to his heart's best brother,
And parted ne'er to meet again!
But neither ever found another
To free the hollow heart from paining;
They stood aloof—the scars remaining,
Like cliffs which had been rent asunder:
A dreary sea now flows between;
But neither heart, nor frost, nor thunder,
Shall wholly do away, I ween,
The marks of that which once hath been.

SONG.
Hear, sweet Spirit, hear the spell,
Lest a blacker charm compel!
So shall the midnight breezes swell
With thy deep, long lingering knell.
And at evening evermore,
In a chapel on the shore,
Shall the chanters, sad and saintly,
Yellow tapers burning faintly,
Doleful masses chant for thee,
Miserere Domine!

Hark! the cadence dies away .

On the quiet moonlight sea :
The boatmen rest their oars and say,

Miserere Domine !

YOUTH AND AGE.

Verse, a breeze 'mid blossoms straying, Where Hope clung feeding like a beeBoth were mine! Life went a maying With Nature, Hope, and Poesy,

When I was young ! When I was young l-Ah, woful when! Ah, for the change 'twixt Now and Then! This breathing house not built with hands, This body that does me grievous wrong, O'er airy cliffs and glittering sands, How lightly then it flashed along :Like those trim skiffs, unknown of yore, On winding lakes and rivers wide, That ask no aid of sail or oar, That fear no spite of wind or tide! Naught cared this body for wind or weather, When Youth and I lived in't together.

Flowers are lovely; love is flower-like;
Friendship is a sheltering tree;
0, the joys that come down shower-like
Of Friendship, Love, and Liberty,

Ere I was old!
Ere I was old ?-Ah, woful ere,
Which tells me youth's no longer here !
O youth ! for years so many and sweet,
'Tis known that thou and I were one;
I'll think it but a fond conceit-
It cannot be that thou art gone!
Thy vesper-bell hath not yet tollid:
And thou wert ay a masquer bold !
What strange disguise hast now put on,
To make believe that thou art gone?
I see these locks in silvery slips,
This drooping gait, this altered size :
But spring-tide blossoms on thy lips,
And tears take sunshine from thine eyes !
Life is but thought: so think I will
That Youth and I are housemates still.

Dew-drops are the gems of morning,
But the tears of mournful eve!
Where no hope is, life's a warning
That only serves to make us grieve,

When we are old :-
That only serves to make us grieve
With oft and tedious taking leave;
Like some poor nigh-related guest,
That may not rudely be dismist,
Yet hath outstay'd his welcome while,
And tells the jest without the smile.

SOUTHEY.

ROBERT SOUTHEY was born in 1774. He was educated in Bristol and Westminster, and subsequently at Balliol College, Oxford, which he entered in 1793. Devoting himself to literature as his profession, he became, with the exception perhaps of Scott, the most voluminous writer of the age. The purity, correctness, and beauty of his style, and his singular felicity in narrative, impart a high value to his numerous biographies and histories, as well as to his prose fictions, imitated from the old chivalrous romances : but it is by his poetry that he has been best known, and will be longest remembered. He began to write in early boyhood. Joan of Arc was composed the year that he entered college. Thalaba, Madoc, Kehama, Roderick, The Poets Pilgrimage, The Tale of Paraguay, The Vision of Judgment, and innumerable shorter poems, followed at intervals, during the long retirement which he passed in the bosom of his family beside the lake of Derwentwater. His life was a laborious and honour. able one; and the only drawbacks to his happiness for many years were the deaths of two of his children, both of them commemorated in his poems. For a short time before his death Southey suffered from a softening of the brain, attributed by some to the intensity of his studies; for even in his walks he carried a book in his hand. He died in 1843, and was buried in the churchyard of Keswick. In the church hard by a monument has been erected to him.

The longer poems of Southey possess in a remarkable degree the rare merit of invention. They are distinguished besides by a various and ardent, if not plastic, imagination, a tender and reverential humanity, a sustained moral elevation, and a perfect purity. They are also sound in diction and happy in style, especially as regards his later works. Their chief defect is want of condensation. Southey composed with too much facility to write his best on all occasions; and the more important among his minor poems, such as the “ Ode written during the Negotiations for Peace, in 1814,” and the “Funeral Song on the Death of the Princess Charlotte (the latter written in his character of poet-laureate), suffer much in consequence of being surrounded by a multitude of inferior pieces, which the author had thrown off with a careless exuberance. In the inexperience of early youth, Southey had precipitated himself on political opinions of an ultra-democratic nature, as well as on Unitarianism in religion. At an early period of his mature life he adopted conservative views in politics, and the tenets of the Established Church. The aberrations of his youthful enthusiasm subjected him to extravagant invectives at a later period (his Wat Tyler, which was published without his knowledge, having brought them prominently forward),-invectives proceeding chiefly from those who resented his change of views, or the somewhat intolerant vehemence with which he denounced the “liberalism" of a later day. Among the many high characteristics of Southey, was the zeal with which he fostered the genius of literary aspirants contending against adverse circumstances or defects of early education.

THE HOLLY-TREE.
O reader, hast thou ever stood to see

The holly-tree?
The eye that contemplates it well perceives

Its glossy leaves,
Order'd by an Intelligence so wise,
As might confound the atheist's sophistries.

Below a circling fence its leaves are seen

Wrinkled and keen;
No grazing cattle through their prickly round

Can reach to wound;
But, as they grow where nothing is to fear,
Smooth and unarm'd the pointless leaves appear.

I love to view these things with curious eyes,

And moralise;
And in this wisdom of the holly-tree

Can emblems see,
Wherewith perchance to make a pleasant rhyme,
One which may profit in the after-time.

Thus, though abroad perchance I might appear

Harsh and austere;
To those who on my leisure would intrude,

Reserved and rude ;-
Gentle at home amid my friends I'd be,
Like the high leaves upon the holly-tree.

And should my youth, as youth is apt I know,

Some harshness show,
All vain asperities I day by day

Would wear away,
Till the smooth temper of my age should be
Like the high leaves upon the holly-tree.
And as when all the summer trees are seen

So bright and green,
The holly-leaves a sober hue display

Less bright than they ;
But, when the bare and wint'ry woods we see,
What then so cheerful as the holly-tree ?
So serious should my youth appear among

The thoughtless throng ;
So would I seem amid the young and gay

More grave than they ;
That in my age as cheerful I might be
As the green winter of the holly-tree.

NIGHT IN THE DESERT.

How beautiful is night!
A dewy freshness fills the silent air ;
No mist obscures, nor cloud, nor speck, nor stain,

Breaks the serene of heaven:
In full-orbed glory, yonder moon divine
Rolls through the dark-blue depths :

Beneath her steady ray

The desert-circle spreads,
Like the round ocean, girdled with the sky.

How beautiful is night!

Who, at this untimely hour,
Wanders o'er the desert sands?

No station is in view,
Nor palm-grove islanded amid the waste.

The mother and her child,
The widowed mother and the fatherless boy,

They, at this untimely hour,
Wander o'er the desert sands.

Alas! the setting sun
Saw Zeinab in her bliss,
Hodeirah’s wife beloved,

The fruitful mother late,
Whom, when the daughters of Arabia named,