XV.

ON THE GRASSHOPPER AND CRICKET.

The poetry of earth is never dead :

When all the birds are faint with the hot sun,

And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead : That is the grasshopper's—he takes the lead

In summer luxury,-he has never done

With his delights, for when tired out with fun, He rests at ease beneath some pleasant weed. The poetry of earth is ceasing never :

On a lone winter evening, when the frost Has wrought a silence, from the stove there shrills The Cricket's song, in warmth increasing ever,

And seems to one in drowsiness half lost, The Grasshopper's among some grassy hills.

a

December 30, 1816.

XVI.

TO KOSCIUSKO.

Good Kosciusko! thy great name alone

Is a full harvest whence to reap high feeling:

It comes upon us like the glorious pealing Of the wide spheres-an everlasting tone. And now it tells me, that in worlds unknown,

The names of heroes, burst from clouds concealing,

Are changed to harmonies, for ever stealing Through cloudless blue, and round each silver throne. It tells me too, that on a happy day,

When some good spirit walks upon the earth,
Thy name with Alfred's, and the great of yore,

Gently commingling, gives tremendous birth
To a loud hymn, that sounds far, far away
To where the great God lives for evermore.

XVII.

HAPPY is England ! I could be content

To see no other verdure than its own;

To feel no other breezes than are blown Through its tall woods with high romances blent: Yet do I sometimes feel a languishment

For skies Italian, and an inward groan

To sit upon an Alp as on a throne,
And half forget what world or worldling meant.
Happy is England, sweet her artless daughters;

Enough their simple loveliness for me,
Enough their whitest arms in silence clinging :

Yet do I often warmly burn to see
Beauties of deeper glance, and hear their singing,
And float with them about the summer waters.

XVIII.

THE HUMAN SEASONS.

Four Seasons fill the measure of the year ;

There are four seasons in the mind of man : He has his lusty Spring, when fancy clear

Takes in all beauty with an easy span : He has his Summer, when luxuriously

Spring's honey'd cud of youthful thought he loves To ruminate, and by such dreaming high

Is nearest unto heaven : quiet coves
His soul has in its Autumn, when his wings

He furleth close; contented so to look
On mists in idleness-to let fair things

Pass by unheeded as a threshold brook. He has his Winter too of pale misfeature, Or else he would forego his mortal nature.

XIX.

ON A PICTURE OF LEANDER.

COME hither, all sweet maidens soberly,

Down-looking aye, and with a chasten'd light,

Hid in the fringes of your eyelids white, And meekly let your fair hands joined be, As if so gentle that ye could not see,

Untouch'd, a victim of your beauły bright,

Sinking away to his young spirit's night, Sinking bewilder'd ʼmid the dreary sea : 'Tis young Leander toiling to his death ;

Nigh swooning, he doth purse his weary lips For Hero's cheek, and smiles against her smile.

O horrid dream! see how his body dips Dead-heavy; arms and shoulders gleam awhile : He's gone ; up bubbles all his amorous breath!