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.

December 30, 1816.

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, And 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.

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.

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 nigh
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.

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 beauty bright,
Sinking away to his young spirit's night,
Sinking bewilder'd 'mid the dreary sea:
'T is 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!

TO AILSA ROCK.

HEARKEN, thou craggy ocean pyramid!

Give answer from thy voice, the sea-fowl's screams!
When were thy shoulders mantled in huge streams!
When, from the sun, was thy broad forehead hid ?
How long is 't since the mighty power bid
Thee heave to airy sleep from fathom dreams?
Sleep in the lap of thunder or sun-beams,
Or when grey clouds are thy cold cover-lid?
Thou answer'st not, for thou art dead asleep!
Thy life is but two dead eternities—

The last in air, the former in the deep;

First with the whales, last with the eagle-skies

Drown'd wast thou till an earthquake made thee steep, Another cannot wake thy giant size.

EPISTLES.

Among the rest a shepherd (though but young
Yet hartned to his pipe) with all the skill
His few yeeres could, began to fit his quill.
Britannia's Pastorals.-Browne.

TO GEORGE FELTON MATHEW.

SWEET are the pleasures that to verse belong,
And doubly sweet a brotherhood in song;
Nor can remembrance, Mathew! bring to view
A fate more pleasing, a delight more true
Than that in which the brother poets joy'd,
Who, with combined powers, their wit employ'd
To raise a trophy to the drama's muses.
The thought of this great partnership diffuses
Over the genius-loving heart, a feeling

Of all that's high, and great, and good, and healing.
Too partial friend! fain would I follow thee

Past each horizon of fine poesy;

Fain would I echo back each pleasant note

As o'er Sicilian seas, clear anthems float
'Mong the light skimming gondolas far parted,
Just when the sun his farewell beam has darted:
But 't is impossible; far different cares

Beckon me sternly from soft "Lydian airs,"
And hold my faculties so long in thrall,
That I am oft in doubt whether at all

I shall again see Phœbus in the morning:
Or flushed Aurora in the roseate dawning!
Or a white Naiad in a rippling stream;
Or a rapt seraph in a moonlight beam;
Or again witness what with thee I've seen,
The dew by fairy feet swept from the green,
After a night of some quaint jubilee

Which every elf and fay had come to see:
When bright processions took their airy march
Beneath the curved moon's triumphal arch.
But might I now each passing moment give
To the coy muse, with me she would not live
In this dark city, nor would condescend
'Mid contradictions her delights to lend.
Should e'er the fine-eyed maid to me be kind,
Ah! surely it must be whene'er I find
Some flowery spot, sequester'd, wild, romantic,
That often must have seen a poet frantic ;
Where oaks, that erst the Druid knew, are growing,
And flowers, the glory of one day, are blowing;
Where the dark-leaved laburnum's drooping clusters
Reflect athwart the stream their yellow lustres,
And intertwined the cassia's arms unite,
With its own drooping buds, but very white.
Where on one side are covert branches hung,
'Mong which the nightingales have always sung
In leafy quiet; where to pry, aloof

Atween the pillars of the sylvan roof,

Would be to find where violet beds were nestling, And where the bee with cowslip bells was wrestling.