1815.-HOUSEHOLD TREASURES.
Household treasures, household treasures,
Gems of worth, say, what are they?
Walls of jasper, doors of cedar,
Arras of superb array?
Caskets of the costliest jewels,
Cabinets of ancient store,
Shrines where Art her incense offers,
Volumes of profoundest lore ?

Household treasures, home's true jewels,
Deem I better far than those:
Prattling children, blithe and ruddy
As the dew-bespangled rose.
Tempt me not with gold of Ophir,

Wreathe not gems to deck my head;

Winsome hearthlings, home's fond angels, Are the things I crave instead.

Sweet the song the skylark trilleth,
Bright the hue the rose assumes.

Pure the quiet-wooing lily

That upon the lakelet blooms;

But more sweet, more bright, and purer
Seem the lips and heart of youth;
Blessed seraphs, sent to utter
Syllables of love and truth.

Joyous creatures, choice possessions,
May-flowers in life's winter hour;
Beams of sunshine, chasing ever

Shadows that may cross the door;
Drops of rain, when care or anguish
Parch the spirit's genial springs;
Soothing minstrels, when unkindness
Snaps the heart's melodious strings.
Household treasures, household treasures,
Gems of worth, say, what are they?
All that wealth or grandeur proffer,
Soon, alas! must know decay;
But, 'midst amaranths unfading,
With the rose-stain'd cherubim,
Happy children, gone before us,
Swell the everlasting hymn.

J. Greet.

1816.-TO THE FIRST CUCKOO OF THE YEAR.

The flowers were blooming fresh and fair,
The air was sweet and still;

A sense of joy in all things beam'd
From woodland, dale, and hill;
On every spray had fairies hung
Their sparkling lamps of dew,
When first across the meadows rung

Thy welcome voice, cuckoo :
"Cuckoo! cuckoo!" No blither sound
In all the songs of birds is found.

The early sun was mildly bright,

The woods were sleeping still,

And scarce a chirp came from the trees,
Or murmur from the rill;

It was as Nature paused to hear
Thy pleasant song again,
And in her expectation hush'd

Each heart-rejoicing strain: "Cuckoo! cuckoo!" No blither sound In all the songs of birds is found.

And as thy voice rung through the air, All Nature fairer grew:

The primrose had a brighter tint,

The violet deeper blue,
The cowslip hung a richer bloom,

More sweetly breathed the May,
And greener seem'd the very grass

In listening to thy lay: "Cuckoo! cuckoo! No blither sound In all the songs of birds is found.

And, wand'ring through the air, thy song
Was now afar, now near-
A song that in its airiness

Is witchery to hear.

And never is the spring complete
Without thy changeless voice.
And in thy coming to our woods,
O cuckoo, all rejoice.

"Cuckoo! cuckoo!" No blither sound In all the songs of birds is found.

Who thus were rire for high contemplating,
Might turn their steps towards the sober ring
Where sat Endymion and the aged priest
'Mong shepherds gone in eld, whose looks
increased

The silvery setting of their mortal star.
There they discoursed upon the fragile bar
That keeps us from our homes ethereal;
And what our duties there: to nightly call
Vesper, the beauty-crest of summer weather;
To summon all the downiest clouds together
For the sun's purple couch; to emulate
In ministering the potent rule of fate
With speed of fire-tail'd exhalations;

To tint her pallid cheek with bloom, who cons
Sweet poesy by moonlight: besides these,
A world of other unguess'd offices.
Anon they wander'd, by divine converse,
Into Elysium; vying to rehearse
Each one his own anticipated bliss.

One felt heart-certain that he could not miss His quick-gone love, among fair blossom'd boughs,

Where every zephyr-sigh pouts, and endows
Her lips with music for the welcoming.
Another wish'd, 'mid that eternal spring,
To meet his rosy child, with feathery sails,
Sweeping, eye-earnestly, through almond
vales:

Who, suddenly, should stoop through the smooth wind,

And with the balmiest leaves his temples bind;
And, ever after, through those regions be
His messenger, his little Mercury.
Some were athirst in soul to see again
Their fellow-huntsmen o'er the wide cham-

paign

In times long past; to sit with them, and talk
Of all the chances in their earthly walk;
Comparing, joyfully, their plenteous stores
Of happiness, to when upon the moors,
Benighted, close they huddled from the cold,
And shared their famish'd scrips. Thus all
out-told

Their fond imaginations,-saving him
Whose eyelids curtain'd up their jewels dim,
Endymion: yet hourly had he striven
To hide the cankering venom that had riven
His fainting recollections. Now indeed
His senses had swoon'd off: he did not heed

The sudden silence, or the whispers low,
Or the old eyes dissolving at his woe,
Or anxious calls, or close of trembling palms,
Or maiden's sigh, that grief itself embalms:
But in the self-same fixed trance he kept,
Like one who on the earth had never stept.
Ay, even as dead-still as a marble man,
Frozen in that old tale Arabian.

Who whispers him so pantingly and close?
Peona, his sweet sister: of all those,
His friends, the dearest. Hushing signs she
made,

And breathed a sister's sorrow to persuade
A yielding up, a cradling on her care.
Her eloquence did breathe away the curse :
She led him, like some midnight spirit nurse
Of happy changes in emphatic dreams,
Along a path between two little streams.-
Guarding his forehead, with her round elbow,
From low-grown branches, and his footsteps
slow

From stumbling over stumps and hillocks small;

Until they came to where these streamilets fali,

With mingled bubblings and a gentle rush,
Into a river, clear, brimful, and flush
With crystal mocking of the trees and sky.
A little shallop, floating there hard by,
Pointed its beak over the fringed bank;
And soon it lightly dipt, and rose, and sank,
And dipt again, with the young couple's
weight,-

Peona guiding, through the water straight,
Towards a bowery island opposite;

Which gaining presently, she steered light
Into a shady, fresh, and ripply cove,
Where nested was an arbour, overwove
By many a summer's silent fingering;
To whose cool bosom she was used to bring
Her playmates, with their needle broidery,
And minstrel memories of times gone by.

So she was gently glad to see him laid Under her favourite bower's quiet shade, On her own couch, new made of flower leaves, Dried carefully on the cooler side of sheaves When last the sun his autumn tresses shook, And the tann'd harvesters rich armfuls took. Soon was he quieted to slumbrous rest. But. ere it crept upon him, he had prest

Peona's busy hand against his lips,
And still, a-sleeping, held her finger-tips
In tender pressure. And as a willow keeps
A patient watch over the stream that creeps
Windingly by it, so the quiet maid

Held her in peace: so that a whispering blade
Of grass, a wailful gnat, a bee bustling
Down in the blue-bells, or a wren light rustling
Among sere leaves and twigs, might all be
heard.

O magic sleep! O comfortable bird, That broodest o'er the troubled sea of the mind Till it is hush'd and smooth! O unconfined Restraint! imprison'd liberty! great key To golden palaces, strange minstrelsy, Fountains grotesque, new trees, bespangled

caves,

Echoing grottoes, full of tumbling waves
And moonlight; ay, to all the mazy world
Of silvery enchantment!-who, upfurl'd
Beneath thy drowsy wing a triple hour,
But renovates and lives?-Thus, in the bower,
Endymion was calm'd to life again.
Opening his eyelids with a healthier brain,
He said: "I feel this thine endearing love
All through my bosom: thou art as a dove
Trembling its closed eyes and sleeked wings
About me; and the pearliest dew not brings
Such morning incense from the fields of May,
As do those brighter drops that twinkling
stray

From those kind eyes,-the very home and haunt

Of sisterly affection. Can I want

Aught else, aught nearer heaven, than such

tears ?

Yet dry them up, in bidding hence all fears
That, any longer, I will pass my days
Alone and sad. No, I will once more raise
My voice upon the mountain-heights; once

more

Make my horn parley from their foreheads hoar:

Again my trooping hounds their tongues shall

loll

Around the breathéd boar: again I'll poll
The fair-grown yew-tree, for a chosen bow:
And, when the pleasant sun is getting low,
Again I'll linger in a sloping mead
To hear the speckled thrushes, and see feed
Our idle sheep. So be thou cheeréd, sweet!
And, if thy lute is here, softly entreat
My soul to keep in its resolvéd course."

Hereat Peona, in their silver source,
Shut her pure sorrow-drops with glad exclaim,
And took a lute, from which there pulsing

came

A lively prelude, fashioning the way
In which her voice should wander. 'Twas a lay
More subtle-cadenced, more forest wild
Than Dryope's lone lulling of her child;
And nothing since has floated in the air

So mournful strange. Surely some influence

rare

Went, spiritual, through the damsel's hand; For still, with Delphic emphasis, she spann'd The quick invisible strings, even though she

saw

Endymion's spirit melt away and thaw
Before the deep intoxication.

But soon she came, with sudden burst, upon
Her self-possession-swung the lute aside.
And earnestly said: "Brother, 'tis vain to hide
That thou dost know of things mysterious,
Immortal, starry; such alone could thus
Weigh down thy nature. Hast thou sinn'd
in aught
Offensive to the heavenly powers? Caught
A Paphian dove upon a message sent?
Thy deathful bow against some deer-herd bent,
Sacred to Dian? Haply, thou hast seen
Her naked limbs among the alders green;
And that, alas! is death. No, I can trace
Something more high perplexing in thy face!"

Endymion look'd at her, and press'd her hand,

And said, "Art thou so pale, who wast so bland

And merry in our meadows? How is this?
Tell me thine ailment: tell me all amiss!
Ah! thou hast been unhappy at the change
Wrought suddenly in me. What, indeed, more
strange ?

Or more complete to overwhelm surmise?
Ambition is no sluggard: 'tis no prize,
That toiling years would put within my grasp
That I have sigh'd for with so deadly gasp
No man e'er panted for a mortal love.
So all have set my heavier grief above
These things which happen.

they done:

Rightly have

I, who still saw the horizontal sun
Heave his broad shoulder o'er the edge of the
world,

Out-facing Lucifer, and then had hurl'd
My spear aloft, as signal for the chase-
I, who, for very sport of heart, would race
With my own steed from Araby; pluck down
A vulture from his towery perching; frown
A lion into growling, loth retire-
To lose, at once, all my toil-breeding fire,
And sink thus low! but I will ease my breast
Of secret grief, here in this bowery nest.

"This river does not see the naked sky,
Till it begins to progress silverly
Around the western border of the wood,
Whence, from a certain spot, its winding flood
Seems at the distance like a crescent moon:
And in that nook, the very pride of June,
Had I been used to pass my weary eves;
The rather for the sun unwilling leaves
So dear a picture of his sovereign power,
And I could witness his most kingly hour,
When he doth tighten up the golden reins,
And paces leisurely down amber plains
His snorting four. Now, when his chariot last
Its beams against the zodiac-lion cast,
There blossom'd suddenly a magic bed
Of sacred dittany, and poppies red: