ON STARTLING SOME PIGEONS.

HUNDRED wings are dropt as soft as one, Now ye are lighted! Pleasing to my sight The fearful circle of your wondering flight, Rapid and loud, and drawing homeward soon; And then, the sober chiding of your tone, As there ye sit, from your own roofs arraigning My trespass on your haunts, so boldly done, Sounds like a solemn and a just complaining: O happy, happy race! for though there clings A feeble fear about your timid clan,

Yet are ye blest! with not a thought that brings

Disquietude, while proud and sorrowing man,

An eagle, weary of his mighty wings,

With anxious inquest fills his mortal span !

TIME AND TWILIGHT.

N the dark twilight of an autumn morn,

I stood within a little country-town,

Wherefrom a long acquainted path went down

To the dear village haunts where I was born;

The low of oxen on the rainy wind,

Death and the Past, came up the well-known road,
And bathed my heart with tears, but stirr'd my mind
To tread once more the track so long untrod;
But I was warn'd, 'Regrets which are not thrust
Upon thee, seek not; for this sobbing breeze
Will but unman thee; thou art bold to trust
Thy woe-worn thoughts among these roaring trees,
And gleams of by-gone playgrounds-Is't no crime
To rush by night into the arms of Time?'

T was her first sweet child, her heart's delight:
And, though we all foresaw his early doom,
We kept the fearful secret out of sight;
We saw the canker, but she kiss'd the bloom.
And yet it might not be we could not brook
To vex her happy heart with vague alarms,
To blanch with fear her fond intrepid look,
Or send a thrill through those encircling arms.
She smiled upon him, waking or at rest:

She could not dream her little child would die :
She toss'd him fondly with an upward eye:
She seem'd as buoyant as a summer spray,
That dances with a blossom on its breast,
Nor knows how soon it will be borne away.

A SUMMER TWILIGHT.

T is a Summer's gloaming, balmy-sweet,
A gloaming brightened by an infant moon,

Fraught with the fairest light of middle June ;

The lonely garden echoes to my feet,

And hark! O hear I not the gentle dews,

Fretting the silent forest in his sleep?
Or does the stir of housing insects creep
Thus faintly on mine ear? Day's many hues
Waned with the paling light and are no more,
And none but drowsy pinions beat the air:
The bat is hunting softly by my door,

And, noiseless as the snow-flake, leaves his lair;
O'er the still copses flitting here and there,
Wheeling the self-same circuit o'er and o'er.

THE QUIET TIDE NEAR ARDROSSAN.

IN to the beach the quiet waters crept :

But, though I stood not far within the land,

No tidal murmur reached me from the strand.

The mirrored clouds beneath old Arran slept.

I looked again across the watery waste:

The shores were full, the tide was near its height,

Though scarcely heard: the reefs were drowning fast,

And an imperial whisper told the might

Of the outer floods, that press'd into the bay,
Though all besides was silent. I delight

In the rough billows, and the foam-ball's flight :

I love the shore upon a stormy day;

But yet more stately were the power and ease

That with a whisper deepen'd all the seas.