HOPE'S YEARNINGS.

How sweet it is, when wearied with the jars

Of wrangling sects, each sour'd with bigot leaven,

To let the Spirit burst its prison bars

And soar into the deep repose of Heaven!

How sweet it is, when sick with strife and noise

Of the fell brood that owes to faction birth,

To turn to Nature's tranquillizing joys,

And taste the soothing harmonies of Earth!

But tho' the lovely Earth, and Sea, and Air,
Be rich in joys that form a sumless sum,
Fill'd with Nepenthes that can banish care,

And wrap the senses in Elysium,

'Tis sweeter still from these delights to turn

Back to our kind-to watch the course of Man, And for that blessed consummation yearn,

When Nature shall complete her noble plan ;

When hate, oppression, vice, and crime, shall cease, When War's ensanguined banner shall be furl'd,

And to our moral system shall extend

The perfectness of the material world.—

Sweetest of all, when 'tis our happy fate

To drop some tribute, trifling tho' it prove,

On the thrice-hallow'd altar dedicate

To Man's improvement, truth, and social love.

Faith in our race's destined elevation,

And its incessant progress to the goal,

Tends, by exciting hope and emulation,

To realise th' aspirings of the soul.

TO A LOG OF WOOD UPON THE FIRE.

WHEN Horace, as the snows descended

On Mount Soracte, recommended

That logs be doubled,

Until a blazing fire arose,

I wonder whether thoughts like those

Which in my noddle interpose,

His fancy troubled.

Poor Log! I cannot hear thee sigh,

And groan, and hiss, and see thee die,
To warm a Poet,

Without evincing thy success,

And as thou wanest less and less,

Inditing a farewell address

To let thee know it.

Peeping from earth-a bud unveil'd,

Some "bosky bourne" or dingle hail'd Thy natal hour;

While infant winds around thee blew,

And thou wert fed with silver dew,

And tender sun-beams oozing through

Thy leafy bower.

Earth-water-air-thy growth prepared;

And if perchance some robin, scared

From neighbouring manor,

Perch'd on thy crest, it rock'd in air,

Making his ruddy feathers flare

In the sun's ray, as if they were

A fairy banner.

Or if some nightingale impress'd

Against thy branching top her breast

Heaving with passion,

And in the leafy nights of June,

Outpour'd her sorrows to the moon,

Thy trembling stem thou didst attune

To each vibration.

Thou grew'st a goodly tree, with shoots

Fanning the sky, and earth-bound roots

So grappled under,

That thou whom perching birds could swing, And zephyrs rock with lightest wing,

From thy firm trunk unmoved didst fling

Tempest and thunder.

Thine offspring leaves-death's annual prey,

Which Herod Winter tore away

From thy caressing,

In heaps, like graves, around thee blown,

Each morn thy dewy tears have strown,

O'er each thy branching hands been thrown,

As if in blessing.