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Which here enamels every thing;
And sends the fowls to us in care,
On daily visits through the air.
He hangs in shades the orange bright,
Like golden lamps in a green night;
And does in the pomegranates close
Jewels more rich than Ormus shows.
He makes the figs our mouths to meet;
And throws the melons at our feet.
But apples plants of such a price,
No tree could ever bear them twice.
With cedars, chosen by his hand,
From Lebanon, he stores the land;
And makes the hollow seas, that roar,
Proclaim the ambergris on shore.
He cast (of which we rather boast)
The gospel's pearl upon our coast;
And in these rocks for us did frame
A temple, where to sound his name.
Oh! let our voice his praise exalt,
Till it arrive at Heaven's vault:
Which, thence (perhaps) rebounding, may,
Echo beyond the Mexique bay.

Thus sung they in the English boat,

An holy and a cheerful note;

And all the way, to guide their chime,
With falling oars they kept the time.

TO SPRING.

By MILMAN.

ALAS, delicious spring! God sends thee down
To breathe upon his cold and perish'd works
Beauteous revival; earth should welcome thee,
Thee and the west wind, thy smooth paramour,
With the soft laughter of her flowery meads,
Her joys, her melodies. The prancing stag
Flutters the shivering fern, the steed shakes out
His mane, the dewy herbage silver-webb'd

With frank step trampling; the wild goat looks down
From his empurpling bed of heath, where break

The waters deep and blue with crystal gleams
Of their quick-leaping people: the fresh lark
Is in the morning sky, the nightingale
Tunes evensong to the dropping waterfall.
Creation lives with loveliness, all melts
And trembles into one mild harmony.
Man, only harsh and inharmonious man,
Strews for thy delicate feet the battle field,

Makes all thy smooth and flowing airs to jar

With his hoarse trumpetings, scares thy sweet light
With gleams of violent and angry brass.

A CHRISTMAS CAROL.

Translated from the Noei Bourguignon de Gui Barozai,
by LONGFELLOW.

I HEAR along our street
Pass the minstrel throngs;
Hark! they play so sweet,

On their hautboys, Christmas songs!

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These good people sang
Songs devout and sweet;
While the rafters rang,

There they stood with freezing feet,
Let us by the fire

Ever higher

Sing them till the night expire.

Nuns in frigid cells

At this holy tide,

For want of something else,
Christmas songs at times have tried.
Let us by the fire

Ever higher

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AN ENGLISH LANDSCAPE.

By ALEXANDER SMITH.

I REACH'D a height

Which lay from finny fens to stately tree
Asleep in sunshine. From its crown I saw
The country fade into the distant sky,

With happy hamlets drown'd in apple bloom,
And ivy-muffled churches still with graves,

VOL. VI.

2 B

94

And restless fires subdued and tamed by day
And scatter'd towns, whence came at intervals,
Upon the wind, a sweet clear sound of bells:
Through all, a river, like a stream of haze,
Drew its low length until 'twas lost in woods.
Still as a lichen'd stone I lay and watch'd
The lights and shadows on the landscape's face,
The morning clouds that quench'd the shining fields,
The gliding sunbeam, the grey trailing shower,
And all the commerce of the earth and sky.

THE WATER LILY.

By Mrs. HEMANS.

OH! beautiful thou art!

Thou sculpture-like and stately river queen
Crowning the depths, as with the light serene
Of a pure heart.

Bright lily of the wave!

Riding in fearless grace with every swell,
Thou seem'st as if a spirit meekly brave
Dwelt in thy cell:

Lifting alike thy head

Of placid beauty, feminine, yet free,
Whether with foam or pictured azure spread
The waters be.

What is like thee, fair flower,

The gentle and the firm; thus, bearing up,
To the blue sky, that alabaster cup,

As to the shower?

Oh! love is most like thee,

The love of woman: quivering to the blast Through every nerve, yet rooted deep and fast, 'Midst life's dark sea.

PROLOGUE TO THE TRAGEDY OF CATO.

By POPE.

To wake the soul by tender strokes of art,
To raise the genius, and to mend the heart;
To make mankind, in conscious virtue bold,
Live o'er each scene, and be what they behold;
For this the Tragic Muse first trod the stage,
Commanding tears to stream through every age:
Tyrants no more their savage nature kept,
And foes to virtue wonder'd how they wept.
Our author shuns by vulgar springs to move
The hero's glory or the virgin's love;

In pitying love, we but your weakness show,
And wild ambition well deserves its woe.
Here tears shall flow from a more generous cause,
Such tears as patriots shed for dying laws:
He bids your breast with ancient ardour rise,
And calls forth Roman drops from British eyes.
Virtue confess'd in human shape he draws,
What Plato thought, and Godlike Cato was :
No common object to your sight displays,
But what with pleasure Heaven itself surveys;
-A brave man struggling in the storms of fate,
And greatly falling, with a falling state!
While Cato gives his little senate laws,
What bosom beats not in his country's cause?
Who sees him act, but envies every deed?

Who hears him groan, and does not wish to bleed ?
E'en when proud Cæsar, 'midst triumphant cars,
The spoils of nations, and the pomp o wars,
Ignobly vain, and impotently great

Show'd Rome her Cato's figure drawn in state ;-
As her dead father's rev'rend image past,
The pomp was darken'd, and the day o'ercast;
The triumph ceas'd-tears gush'd from every eye,
The world's great Victor pass'd unheeded by ;
Her last good man dejected Rome ador'd,
And honour'd Cæsar's less than Cato's sword.

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