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Meantime, light shadowing all, a sober calm
Fleeces unbounded ether: whose least wave
Stands tremulous, uncertain where to turn
The gentle current: while illumined wide,
The dewy-skirted clouds imbibe the sun,
And through their lucid vail his softened force
Shed o'er the peaceful world. Then is the time,
For those whom virtue and whom nature charm,
To steal themselves from the degenerate crowd,
And soar above this little scene of things:
To tread low-thoughted vice beneath their feet;
To soothe the throbbing passions into peace;
And woo lone Quiet in her silent walks.
Thus solitary, and in pensive guise,

Oft let me wander o'er the russet mead,

And through the saddened grove, where scarce is heard
One dying strain, to cheer the woodman's toil.
Haply some widowed songster pours his plaint
Far, in faint warblings, though the tawny copse;
While congregated thrushes, linnets, larks,
And each wild throat, whose artless strains so late
Swelled all the music of the swarming shades,
Robbed of their tuneful souls, now shivering sit
On the dead tree, a dull despondent flock:
With not a brightness waving o'er their plumes,
And nought save chattering discord in their note.
O let not, aimed from some inhuman eye,
The gun the music of the coming year
Destroy; and harmless, unsuspecting harm,
Lay the weak tribes a miserable prey
In mingled murder, fluttering on the ground!
The pale descending year, yet pleasing still,
A gentler mood inspires; for now the leaf
Incessant rustles from the mournful grove;
Oft startling such as studious walk below,
And slowly circles through the waving air.
But should a quicker breeze amid the boughs
Sob, o'er the sky the leafy deluge streams;
Till choked, and matted with the dreary shower
The forest walks at every rising gale,
Roll wide the withered waste, and whistle bleak.
Fled is the blasted verdure of the fields;
And, shrunk into their beds, the flowery race
Their sunny robes resign. E'en what remained
Of stronger fruits falls from the naked tree;
And woods, fields, gardens, orchards, all around,
The desolated prospect thrills the soul. * *

The western sun withdraws the shortened day,
And humid evening, gliding o'er the sky,
In her chill progress, to the ground condensed
The vapour throws. Where creeping waters ooze,
Where marshes stagnate, and where rivers wind,
Cluster the rolling fogs, and swim along

The dusky-mantled lawn. Meanwhile the moon,

Full-orbed, and breaking through the scattered clouds,
Shows her broad visage in the crimsoned east.
Turned to the sun direct her spotted disk,
Where mountains rise, umbrageous dales descend,
And caverns deep as optic tube descries,
A smaller earth, gives us his blaze again,
Void of its flame, and sheds a softer day.

Now through the passing clouds she seems to stoop,
Now up the pure cerulean rides sublime.
Wide the pale deluge floats, and streaming mild
O'er the skied mountain to the shadowy vale,
While rocks and floods reflect the quivering gleam;
The whole air whitens with a boundless tide

Of silver radiance trembling round the world. * *
The lengthened night elapsed, the morning shines
Serene, in all her dewy beauty bright,
Unfolding fair the last autumnal day.
And now the mounting sun dispels the fog;
The rigid hoar-frost melts before his beam;
And hung on every spray, on every blade

Of grass, the myriad dew-drops twinkle round.

A WINTER LANDSCAPE.

Through the hushed air the whitening shower descends, At first thin-wavering, till at last the flakes

Fall broad and wide, and fast, dimming the day

With a continual flow. The cherished fields

Put on their winter robe of purest white:

'Tis brightness all, save where the new snow melts
Along the mazy current. Low the woods
Bow their hoar head; and ere the languid sun
Faint from the west, emits his evening ray;
Earth's universal face, deep hid, and chill,
Is one wide dazzling waste, that buries wide
The works of man. Drooping, the labourer-ox
Stands covered o'er with snow, and then demands
The fruit of all his toil. The fowls of heaven,
Tamed by the cruel season, crowd around
The winnowing store, and claim the little boon
Which Providence assigns them. One alone,
The red-breast, sacred to the household gods,
Wisely regardful of the embroiling sky,
In joyless fields and thorny thickets, leaves
His shivering mates, and pays to trusted man
His annual visit. Half afraid, he first
Against the window beats; then, brisk, alights
On the warm hearth; then hopping o'er the floor,
Eyes all the smiling family askance,

And pecks, and starts, and wonders where he is;
Till more familiar grown, the table crumbs
Attract his slender feet. The foodless wilds
Pour forth their brown inhabitants. The hare,
Though timorous of heart, and hard beset

By death in various forms, dark snares and dogs,

And more unpitying men, the garden seeks,
Urged on by fearless want. The bleating kine
Eye the bleak heaven, and next, the glistening earth,
With looks of dumb despair; then, sad dispersed,
Dig for the withered herb through heaps of snow.
As thus the snows arise, and foul and fierce
All winter drives along the darkened air,
In his own loose revolving fields the swain
Disastered stands; sees other hills ascend,
Of unknown joyless brow, and other scenes,
Of horrid prospect, shag the trackless plain;
Nor finds the river nor the forest, hid
Beneath the formless wild; but wanders on
From hill to dale, still more and more astray,
Impatient flouncing through the drifted heaps,
Stung with the thoughts of home; the thoughts of home
Rush on his nerves, and call their vigour forth
In many a vain attempt. How sinks his soul!
What black despair, what horror, fills his heart!
When for the dusky spot which fancy feigned,
His tufted cottage rising through the snow,
He meets the roughness of the middle waste,
Far from the track and blessed abode of man;
While round him night resistless closes fast,
And every tempest howling o'er his head,
Renders the savage wilderness more wild.
Then throng the busy shapes into his mind,
Of covered pits, unfathomably deep,

A dire descent! beyond the power of frost;

Of faithless bogs; of precipices huge

Smoothed up with snow; and what is land unknown,
What water of the still unfrozen spring,

In the loose marsh or solitary lake,

Where the fresh fountain from the bottom boils.
These check his fearful steps, and down he sinks
Beneath the shelter of the shapeless drift,
Thinking o'er all the bitterness of death,
Mixed with the tender anguish nature shoots
Through the wrung bosom of the dying man,
His wife, his children, and his friends, unseen.
In vain for him the officious wife prepares
The fire fair blazing, and the vestment warm:
In vain his little children, peeping out
Into the mingling storm, demand their sire
With tears of artless innocence. Alas!
Nor wife nor children more shall he behold,
Nor friends, nor sacred home. On every nerve
The deadly winter seizes, shuts up sense,
And o'er his inmost vitals creeping cold,
Lays him along the snows a stiffened corse,

Stretched out, and bleaching on the northern blast.

FROM THE CASTLE OF INDOLENCE.

O mortal man, who livest here by toil,
Do not complain of this thy hard estate;
That like an emmet thou must ever moil,
In a sad sentence of an ancient date;
And, certes, there is for it reason great;

For, though sometimes it makes thee weep and wail,
And curse thy star, and early drudge and late,
Withouten that would come a heavier bale,

Loose life, unruly passions, and diseases pale.

In lowly dale, fast by a river's side,

With woody hill o'er hill encompassed round,

A most enchanting wizard did abide,

Than whom a fiend more fell is nowhere found.

It was, I ween, a lovely spot of ground:

And there a season atween June and May,

Half pranked with spring, with summer half imbrowned,

A listless climate made, where, sooth to say,

No living wight could work, ne cared even for play.

Was nought around but images of rest:

Sleep-soothing groves, and quiet lawns between;
And flowery beds that slumberous influence kest,
From poppies breathed; and beds of pleasant green,
Where never yet was creeping creature seen.
Meantime unnumbered glittering streamlets played,
And hurled everywhere their waters sheen;
That, as they bickered through the sunny glade,
Though restless still themselves, a lulling murmur made.

Joined to the prattle of the purling rills,

Were heard the lowing herds along the vale,
And flocks loud bleating from the distant hills,
And vacant shepherds piping in the dale:
And now and then sweet Philomel would wail,
Or stock-doves 'plain amid the forest deep,
That drowsy rustled to the sighing gale;
And still a coil the grasshopper did keep;
Yet all these sounds yblent inclined all to sleep.

Full in the passage of the vale above,

A sable, silent, solemn forest stood,

Where nought but shadowy forms were seen to move,

As Idlesse fancied in her dreaming mood:

And up the hills, on either side, a wood

Of blackening pines, aye waving to and fro,

Sent forth a sleepy horror through the blood;

And where this valley winded out below,

The murmuring main was heard, and scarcely heard, to flow.

A pleasing land of drowsy-head it was,

Of dreams that wave before the half-shut eye:

And of gay castles in the clouds that pass,

Forever flushing round a summer sky:

There eke the soft delights, that witchingly
Instil a wanton sweetness through the breast,
And the calm pleasures, always hovered nigh;
But whate'er smacked of noyance or unrest,
Was far, far off expelled from this delicious nest.

The landskip such, inspiring perfect ease,
Where Indolence (for so the wizard hight)
Close hid his castle mid embowering trees,
That half shut out the beams of Phoebus bright,
And made a kind of checkered day and night.
Meanwhile, unceasing at the mossy gate,
Beneath a spacious palm, the wicked wight
Was placed; and to his lute, of cruel fate,

And labour harsh, complained, lamenting man's estate.

Thither continual pilgrims crowded still,

From all the roads of earth that pass there by;

For, as they chanced to breathe on neighbouring hill,
The freshness of this valley smote their eye,

And drew them ever and anon more nigh;

Till clustering round the enchanter false they hung,

Ymolten with his syren melody;

While o'er the enfeebling lute his hand he flung,

And to the trembling chords these tempting verses sung.

A brief notice of Dodsley, the celebrated publisher, will close our present remarks.

ROBERT DODSLEY was born at Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, in 1703. Receiving little education, he commenced life as footman in the family of a lady by the name of Lowther; but in this servile situation he indulged his natural talents for poetry and satire, and wrote the Muse in Livery, and a small dramatic piece called the Toyshop, which was accidentally seen by Pope, and attracted his attention. Interesting himself in behalf of this humble poet, Pope procured the introduction of his piece at the theatre, and manifested for him through life the most cordial and honorable friendship. The Toyshop' was succeeded, in 1736, by The King and Miller of Mansfield, and from the great success of these two pieces, Dodsley was enabled to settle himself independently as a London publisher and bookseller-a situation in which he maintained the highest respectability of character with the most benevolent intentions, and the greatest propriety of deportment. Having acquired a handsome fortune, he relinquished his business to his brother, and died a few years after his retirement, on the twenty-fifth of September, 1764.

Besides the dramatic pieces already noticed, Dodsley wrote four others, the best of which was Cleone, a tragedy. He also produced an excellent little moral treatise, The Economy of Human Life; projected the Annual Register, and was the first to collect and republish the Old English Plays.' The following song is a perfect gem :—

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