CYTHNA.

SHE moved upon this earth a shape of brightness,
A power, that from its objects scarcely drew
One impulse of her being-in her lightness
Most like some radiant cloud of morning dew,

Which wanders through the waste air's pathless blue
To nourish some far desert; she did seem

Beside me, gathering beauty as she grew,

Like the bright shade of some immortal dream

Which walks, when tempest sleeps, the wave of life's dark stream.

As mine own shadow was this child to me,

A second self, far dearer and more fair,
Which clothed in undissolving radiancy

All those steep paths which languor and despair
Of human things had made so dark and bare,

But which I trod alone, nor, till bereft

Of friends, and overcome by lonely care,

Knew I what solace for that loss was left,

Though by a bitter wound my trusting heart was cleft.

Once she was dear, now she was all I had

To love in human life, this playmate sweet,
This child of twelve years old, so she was made
My sole associate, and her willing feet

Wandered with mine, where earth and ocean meet
Beyond the aërial mountains, whose vast cells

The unreposing billows ever beat.

Through forests wide and old, and lowing dells, Where boughs of incense droop over the emerald wells.

And warm and light I felt her clasping hand,
When twined in mine; she followed where I went
Through the lone paths of our immortal land,

It had no waste, but some memorial lent
Which strung me to my toil-some monument
Vital with mind--then Cythna by my side,
Until the bright and beaming hours were spent,
Would rest with looks entreating to abide.
Too earnest, and too sweet ever to be denied.

And soon I could not have refused her-thus
For ever, day and night; we two were ne'er
Parted, but when brief sleep divided us,
And when the pauses of the lulling air

Of noon beside the sea had made a lair

And I kept watch over her slumbers there,

While, as the shifting visions over her swept,

Amid her innocent rest by turns she smiled and wept.

SHELLEY.

THE COOt was swimming in the reedy pond
Beside the water-hen, so soon affrighted;
And in the weedy moat the heron, fond
Of solitude, alighted.

The moping heron, motionless and stiff,
That on a stone as silently and slyly
Stood an apparent sentinel, as if

To guard the water-lily.

HOOD.

8-2

AUTUMN.

SEASON of mists and mellow fruitfulness!

Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun; Conspiring with him how to load and bless

With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run; To bend with apples the moss'd cottage trees,

And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core ;

To swell the gourd and plump the hazel-shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,

For summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes, whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,

Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,

Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook Spares the next swath and all its twinèd flowers; And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep

Steady thy laden head across a brook;

Or by a cider-press, with patient look,

Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,
While barred clouds bloom the soft dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft

Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The redbreast whistles from a garden croft,
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

KEATS.