Singing hymns unbidden,

Till the world is wrought

To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not.

Like a high-born maiden

In a palace tower,
Soothing her love-laden

Soul in secret hour

With music sweet as love, which overflows her bower.

Like a glow-worm golden

In a dell of dew,
Scattering unbeholden

Its aerial hue

Among the flowers and grass, which screen it from the view.

Like a rose embowered

In its own green leaves,

By warm winds deflowered

Till the scent it gives

Makes faint with too much sweet these heavy-winged thieves.

Sound of vernal showers

On the twinkling grass,
Rain-awakened flowers,

All that ever was

Joyous, and clear, and fresh, thy music doth surpass.

Teach us, sprite or bird,

What sweet thoughts are thine:

I have never heard

Praise of love or wine

That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine.

Chorus hymeneal,

Or triumphal chant,

Matched with thine would be all

But an empty vaunt

A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want.

What objects are the fountains

Of thy happy strain?

What fields, or waves, or mountains?

What shapes of sky or plain?

What love of thine own kind? what ignorance of

pain?

With thy clear keen joyance,

Languor cannot be:

Shadow of annoyance

Never came near thee:

Thou lovest; but ne'er knew love's sad satiety.

Waking or asleep,

Thou of death must deem

Things more true and deep

Than we mortals dream,

Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream?

We look before and after,

And pine for what is not;

Our sincerest laughter

With some pain is fraught;

Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.

Yet if we could scorn

Hate, and pride, and fear;

If we were things born

Not to shed a tear,

I know not how thy joys we ever should come near.

Better than all measures

Of delightful sound,

Better than all treasures

That in books are found,

Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground!

Teach me half the gladness

That thy brain must know,

Such harmonious madness

From my lips would flow,

The world would listen then, as I am listening now.

SHELLEY.

RETURNING SPRING.

Ан, woe is me! Winter is come and gone,
But grief returns with the revolving year;
The airs and streams renew their joyous tone;

The ants, the bees, the swallows, re-appear;

Fresh leaves and flowers deck the dead seasons' bier.

The loving birds now pair in every brake,

And build their mossy homes in field and brere;
And the green lizard, and the golden snake,

Like unimprisoned flames, out of their trance awake.

Through wood and stream and field and hill and ocean,
A quickening life from the earth's heart has burst,
As it has ever done, with change and motion,

From the great morning of the world, when first God dawned on chaos; in its stream immersed, The lamps of heaven flash with a softer light; All baser things pant with life's sacred thirst; Diffuse themselves; and spend in love's delight The beauty and the joy of their renewed might.

SHELLEY.

THE BURIAL OF SIR JOHN MOORE.

NOT a drum was heard, not a funeral note,

As his corpse to the rampart we hurried;
Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot
O'er the grave where our hero we buried.

We buried him darkly at dead of night,
The sods with our bayonets turning;
By the struggling moonbeam's misty light,
And the lantern dimly burning.

No useless coffin enclosed his breast,

Nor in sheet nor in shroud we wound him;
But he lay like a warrior taking his rest,
With his martial cloak around him.

Few and short were the prayers we said,
And we spoke not a word of sorrow;

But we steadfastly gazed on the face that was dead,
And we bitterly thought of the morrow.

We thought, as we hollowed his narrow bed,
And smoothed down his lonely pillow,

That the foo and the stranger would tread o'er his head, And we far away on the billow!

Lightly they'll talk of the spirit that's gone,
And o'er his cold ashes upbraid him;

But little he'll reck, if they let him sleep on
In the grave where a Briton has laid him.

But half of our heavy task was done,

When the clock struck the hour for retiring;
And we heard the distant and random gun
That the foe was sullenly firing.

Slowly and sadly we laid him down,

From the field of his fame fresh and gory;
We carved not a line, and we raised not a stone-
But we left him alone with his glory.

WOLFE.

THE HOMES OF ENGLAND.

THE stately homes of England,

How beautiful they stand!

Amidst their tall ancestral trees,

O'er all the pleasant land!

The deer across their green sward bound

Through shade and sunny gleam,

And the swan glides past them with the sound

Of some rejoicing stream.

The merry homes of England!
Around their hearths by night,