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H

ODE TO THE CUCKOO.

AIL, beauteous stranger of the grove!
Thou messenger of Spring!

Now Heaven repairs thy rural seat,
And woods thy welcome sing.

What time the daisy decks the green,
Thy certain voice we hear :
Hast thou a star to guide thy path,
Or mark the rolling year?

Delightful visitant! with thee
I hail the time of flowers,
And hear the sound of music sweet
From birds among the bowers.

The schoolboy, wandering in the wood
To pull the primrose gay,

Starts, the new voice of Spring to hear,
And imitates thy lay.

Soon as the pea puts on the bloom,

Thou fliest thy vocal vale,
An annual guest in other lands,

Another Spring to hail.

Sweet bird! thy bower is ever green,

Thy sky is ever clear;
Thou hast no sorrow in thy song,

No Winter in thy year!

O could I fly, I'd fly with thee!
We'd make, with joyful wing,
Our annual visit o'er the globe,
Companions of the Spring.

JOHN LOGAN.

CORONACH.1

[FROM "THE LADY OF THE LAKE."]

E is gone on the mountain,

HE

He is lost to the forest;

Like a summer-dried fountain,

When our need was the sorest. The font, reappearing,

From the rain-drops shall borrow;

But to us comes no cheering,

No Duncan to-morrow.

The hand of the reaper

Takes the ears that are hoary;
But the voice of the weeper
Wails manhood in glory;
The autumn winds rushing

Waft the leaves that are serest,
But our flower was in flushing
When blighting was nearest.

Fleet foot on the correi,2

Sage counsel in cumber, Red hand in the foray,

How sound is thy slumber! Like the dew on the mountain,

Like the foam on the river,

Like the bubble on the fountain,
Thou art gone, and for ever!

1 Coronach, funeral song.

SCOTT.

2 Correi, the hollow side of the hill.

IT is not beautie I demand,

IT

A chrystall brow, the moon's despair, Nor the snow's daughter, a white hand, Nor mermaid's yellow pride of hair.

Tell me not of your starrie eyes,
Your lips, that seem on roses fed,
Your breastes, where Cupid tumbling lies,
Nor sleeps for kissing of his bed,-

A bloomie pair of vermeil cheeks,
Like Hebe's in her ruddiest hours,
A breath that softer musick speaks
Than summer winds a-wooing flow'rs.

These are but gauds: nay, what are lips? Corall beneath the ocean-stream, Whose brink when your adventurer slips, Full oft he perisheth on them.

And what are cheeks, but ensigns oft That wave hot youth to fields of blood? Did Helen's breast, though ne'er so soft, Do Greece or Ilium any good?

Eyes can with baleful ardour burn;

Poison can breath, that erst perfum'd; There's many a white hand holds an urn, With lovers' hearts to dust consumed.

For chrystall brows, there's nought within;
They are but empty cells for pride;
He who the Syren's hair would win,
Is mostly strangled in the tide.

Give me, instead of Beautie's bust,
A tender heart, a loyall mind,
Which with temptation I would trust,
Yet never link'd with error find,-

One in whose gentle bosom I

Could pour my secret heart of woes,
Like the care-burthen'd honey-flie,
That hides his murmurs in the rose,-

My earthlie comforter! whose love
So indefeasible might be,

That, when my spirit wonn'd above,
Hers could not stay, for sympathy.

THE QUESTION.

DREAM'D that, as I wander'd by the way, Bare Winter suddenly was changed to Spring, And gentle odours led my steps astray,

Mix'd with a sound of waters murmuring, Along a shelving bank of turf, which lay

Under a copse, and hardly dared to fling Its green arms round the bosom of the stream, But kiss'd it, and then fled, as thou mightest in dream.

There grew pied wind-flowers and violets;
Daisies, those pearl'd Arcturi of the earth,
The constellated flower that never sets;

Faint oxlips; tender bluebells, at whose birth The sod scarce heaved; and that tall flower that wets

Its mother's face with heaven-collected tears,

When the low wind its playmate's voice it hears.

And in the warm hedge grew lush eglantine,
Green cowbind and the moonlight-colour'd

may,

And cherry blossoms, and white cups, whose wine Was the bright dew yet drain'd not by the day; And wild roses, and ivy serpentine,

With its dark buds and leaves, wandering astray; And flowers azure, black, and streak'd with gold, Fairer than any waken'd eyes behold.

And nearer to the river's trembling edge
There grew broad flag-flowers, purple prankt
with white,

And starry river-buds among the sedge,
And floating water-lilies, broad and bright,
Which lit the oak that overhung the hedge
With moonlight beams of their own watery light;
And bulrushes, and reeds of such deep green
As soothed the dazzled eye with sober sheen.

Methought that of these visionary flowers

I made a nosegay, bound in such a way That the same hues which in their natural bowers Were mingled or opposed, the like array Kept these imprison'd children of the Hours Within my hand,-and then, elate and gay, I hasten'd to the spot whence I had come, That I might there present it! Oh! to whom? SHELLEY.

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