CARES AND DAYS.

To those who prattle of despair,

Some friend, methinks, might wisely say, Each day, no question, has its care, But also every care its day.

LEAVES AND SEED.

Leaves that strew the wintry chase,
Still the seeds ye warm and nourish;
And in their succeeding race,
Ye anew will greenly flourish.

THE SPINNER.

With my babe beside me sleeping,
Quick my thrifty wheel I ply:
Would the thread I spin with weeping
Were his tearless destiny.

THE HUSBANDMAN.

Thou, who long hast dug the soil!
Time has longer delved at thee:

May the harvest of his toil
Surer than thy harvest be.

THE BEGGAR.

Beggar, he by whose commands
Alms with scorn to thee are given,
Knows not that all being stands

But to have its dole from heaven.

THE SOLITARY.

Lonely pilgrim, through a sphere,
Where thou only art alone,
Still thou hast thyself to fear,

And can'st hope for help from none.

THE WORTH OF LIFE.

A happy lot must sure be his,
The lord, not slave, of things,
Who values life by what it is,

And not by what it brings.

EYES AND STARS.

It never was my lot to see

The eyes whose beams illume the eve;
But eyes I know, well worth to me

The stars that can such feats achieve.

NIGHT AND DAWN.

Bright are the dreams of the sleeping Night,
Though she ne'er can paint their forms in air;
She dreams of the many-coloured light,
Of golden towers and phantoms fair.

Whole hours she broods with longing eyes,
And at last the sky begins to glow;
But Night, in the moment of triumph, dies,

And bequeaths to Morning the lovely show.

Pomposo never reads Magazine poetry-nor, we presume, ever looks at a field or wayside flower. He studies only the standard authors. He walks only in gardens with high brick walls-and then admires only at a hint from the head-gardener. Pomposo does not know that many of the finest poems of our day first appeared in magazinesor, worse still, in newspapers-and that in our periodicals, daily and weekly, equally with the monthlies and quarterlies, is to be found the best criticism of poetry any where extant, superior far, in that unpretending form, to nine-tenths of the learned lucubrations of Germany-though many of the rest are good, and some excellent, almost as the heart could desire. What is the circulation even of a popular volume of verses-if any such there be-to that of a number of Maga? Hundreds of thousands, at home, peruse it before it is a week old-as many abroad ere the moon has thrice renewed her horns; and the series ceases notregular as the seasons that make up the perfect year. Our periodical literature-say of it what you will-gives light to the heads and heat to the hearts of twenty-four millions of living souls. The greatest and best men of the age have not disdained to belong to the brotherhood ;and thus the hovel holds what must not be missing in the hall-the furniture of the cot is the same as that of the

palace and duke and ditcher read their lessons from the same page.

"Milk for babes, strong meat for men ;" and on the road of life, often as laborious and wearisome, and more discouraging, down as up-hill work-here is viaticum for the wallet of the wayfarer, which he may eat by the wayside well. As good men as the Pedlar, in the Excursion have carried a wallet-but we spoke figuratively, and meant nothing personal to the said Pedlar, the Solitary, or the Recluse. The truth is, we had ourselves in our eye, and many a mile have we trudged in our time on a crust; but we think we see now near about the end of our journey. Fit reading, too; for the student's bower :

SCEPTICS AND SPECTRES.

Lean sceptic, hating spectres, white, or sable,
Thou bidd'st all phantoms from thy world depart,
Perhaps in fear lest they may turn the table,
And thou be seen the spectral thing thou art.

Or, as existence all is mist and dreams

To one whom nothing real moves, or warms,
Thou dread'st perhaps lest ghostly shapes may seem
The mocking copies of thy life's vain forms.

Do I then credit ghosts?—I well believe
The spirit of the past for ever lives;

The dull, dead eye its nightmare masks deceive;
Fresh life to living eyes its vital presence gives.

A BOOK.

What is a book? It is a thought impressed
In signs that speak alike man's worst and best.
From the true heart, and kindling reason born,
It shines one beam of the Eternal Morn.
But, else, a shape not live enough to die,
A devil's mocking dream, a lie-begetting lie.

THE CLOUD EMBRACER AND THE CLOUD COMPELLER.

Thou brain-sick dreamer in a world of dream
Where nothing solid braves the windy shock,
Thy fancy needs to learn that Jove Supreme
Compels the clouds, but sits upon a rock.

THE OAK OF JUDAH.

How slowly ripen powers ordain'd to last!
The old may die, but must have lived before;
So Moses in the vale an acorn cast,

And Christ arose beneath the tree it bore.

THE RULE OF ACTION.

In silence mend what ills deform thy mind;
But all thy good impart to all thy kind.

CANT.

O! sacred cant! how canting men declaim,
As if thou wert but emptiness and shame!
In thee the image of all truth we trace,
As in a mask the copy of a face;

And earth is fixed thy proper home to be,

For Heaven's too good, and Hell too bad for thee,
The heart that cants not, for all hope unfit,
Rejects the name of aught more pure than it ;
And he who dreads his own life-withering scoff
Must realize his cant, not cast it off.

APES AND EAGLES.

The crowd to him their fondest deference pay,
Who knows not much, yet something more than they,
But watch with vague dislike and jealous awe,
The hearts that mounting spurn the vulgar law.
Thus apes obey the ape who climbs a height,
But mock and chatter at the eagle's flight.

THE DESTROYERS.

Those foes of truth, they joke, and dig, and mine,—
The mighty tree they soon will overthow!
Nay fear not, friend, though hosts their toil combine,
They move the earth, and help the tree to grow.

THE POWER OF WORDS.

O! mighty words, in wise men's mouths ye raise
The earth towards heaven on nearer stars to gaze;
From flameless lips ye conjure down the skies
To hang with deadly weight, and crush our eyes.

STEAM LAND.

There is an engine, huge and dark,

That mutters, while it heaves and strains,

"I think profoundly! Don't you mark

66

How strongly work my metal brains?

My wheels are truths, my piston duty,
I'm bedded deep on faith's foundation;
My polish is the light of beauty,

My smoke is weird imagination."

I watched and longed, my fancy puzzling,
What marvel from such power should issue,
When lo! a piece of printed muslin,

Like any vulgar engine's tissue.

This wonder broke my soul's sedateness,
When hoarse the thing exclaimed in rage,
"Fool! I am England's modern greatness,
And this thin woof's her noblest page."

ATLAS AND JOVE.

How many giants each in turn have sought
To bear the world upon their shoulders wide,
King, conqueror, priest, and he whose work is thought;
And all in turn have sunk outworn, and died.

And yet the world is never felt to move,
Because it hangs suspended from above.

SEEING AND DOING.

We stood upon the mountain's open side
And saw the plain below expanded wide,

Cut through with channelled roads, in which a throng
Of travellers journeyed on with shout and song.

My friend exclaimed,-"How narrow are the ways
By many trod, with banks that camp the gaze!
On this fair mountain free we stand, and view
The several pathways that the crowd pursue."

"True, friend," I answered, "yet we but behold,
While others move on journeys manifold.
Our eyes indeed are free, but we are chained
By pride that keeps us on this height detained.
If we would seek an end, and journey to it,
Through those deep roads below we must pursue it."

THE PART AND THE WHOLE.

If death seem hanging o'er thy separate soul,
Discern thyself as part of life's great whole;