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TO THE FURZE BUSH.

LET Burns and old Chaucer unite

The praise of the Daisy to sing,

Let Wordsworth of Celandine write,

And crown her the Queen of the Spring;

The Hyacinth's classical fame

Let Milton embalm in his verse;

Be mine the glad task to proclaim

The Charms of untrumpeted Furze!

Of all other bloom when bereft,

And Sol wears his wintery screen,

Thy sunshining blossoms are left

To light up the common and green.

O why should they envy the peer

His perfume of spices and myrrhs, When the poorest their senses may cheer With incense diffused from the Furze?

It is bristled with thorns, I confess;

But so is the much-flatter'd Rose:

Is the Sweetbriar lauded the less

Because amid prickles it grows?

"Twere to cut off an epigram's point,

Or disfurnish a knight of his spurs, If we foolishly wish'd to disjoint

Its arms from the lance-bearing Furze.

Ye dabblers in mines, who would clutch

The wealth which their bowels enfold;

See! Nature, with Midas-like touch,

Here turns a whole common to gold;

No niggard is she to the poor,

But distributes whatever is hers,

And the wayfaring beggar is sure

Of a tribute of gold from the Furze.

Ye worldlings! learn hence to divide

Your wealth with the children of want,

Nor scorn, in your fortune and pride,

To be taught by the commonest plant. If the wisest new wisdom may draw

From things humble, as reason avers, We too may receive Heaven's law,

And beneficence learn from the Furze!

THE FIRST OF MARCH.

THE bud is in the bough, and the leaf is in the bud, And Earth's beginning now in her veins to feel the blood, Which, warm'd by summer suns in th'alembic of the vine, From her founts will overrun in a ruddy gush of wine.

The perfume and the bloom that shall decorate the flower, Are quickening in the gloom of their subterranean bower; And the juices meant to feed trees, vegetables, fruits, Unerringly proceed to their pre-appointed roots.

How awful is the thought of the wonders underground, Of the mystic changes wrought in the silent, dark profound; How each thing upward tends by necessity decreed, And a world's support depends on the shooting of a seed!

The summer 's in her ark, and this sunny-pinion'd day Is commission'd to remark whether Winter holds her sway; Go back, thou dove of peace, with the myrtle on thy wing, Say, that floods and tempests cease and the world is ripe for spring.

Thou hast fann'd the sleeping Earth till her dreams are all

of flowers,

And the waters look in mirth for their overhanging

bowers;

The forest seems to listen for the rustle of its leaves, And the very skies to glisten in the hope of summer eves.

Thy vivifying spell has been felt beneath the wave,
By the dormouse in its cell, and the mole within its cave;
And the summer tribes that creep, or in air expand their
wing,

Have started from their sleep at the summons of the

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