SONNETS. To one who has been long in city pent, And open face of heaven,-to breathe a prayer Who is more happy, when, with heart's content, HAPPY is England! I could be content To feel no other breezes than are blown And half forget what world or worldling meant. Enough their whitest arms in silence clinging: Yet do I often warmly burn to see Beauties of deeper glance, and hear their singing, And float with them about the summer waters. STANZAS. In a drear-nighted December, Thy branches ne'er remember The north cannot undo them, With a sleety whistle through them; Nor frozen thawings glue them From budding at the prime. In a drear-nighted December, But with a sweet forgetting, Never, never petting About the frozen time. Ah! would t'were so with many A gentle girl and boy! But were there ever any To know the change and feel it, TO AUTUMN. SEASON of mists and mellow fruitfulness! With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run; To bend with apples the moss'd cottage trees, And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core; To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells And still more, later flower for the bees, Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store? Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook Spares the next swarth and all its twined flowers; And sometimes like a gleamer hou dost keep Steady thy laden head across a brook; Or, by a cider-press, with patient look, Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours. Where are thy songs of spring? Ay, where are they? Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day, And touch the stubble plains with rosy hue: Then, in a wailful choir, the small knats mourn Among the river sallows, borne aloft, Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies; And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn; Hedge-crickets sing; and now, with treble soft, The redbreast whistles from a garden croft, And gathering swallows twitter in the skies. JAMES HOGG was born on the 25th of January, 1772, in a cottage on the banks of the Ettrick, in the shire of Selkirk. He was descended from a race of shepherds who had inhabited, for centuries, the sequestered district in which was the Poet's birthplace: humble as was the calling of his father, it was not beyond the reach of misfortune. When James was scarcely more than a child, he was compelled to labour for his own living: and engaged himself to herd cows, with a neighbouring farmer. The good seed had, however, been sown;-sound and upright principles had taken root in his mind, and his fancy had been nursed, unconsciously, by his mother, whose memory was stored with old border ballads. His elder brother states, that James was, what is called in the language of his native valley, a soft, "actionless" boy; and that in early life he gave no token of the genius which afterwards astonished and delighted his countrymen. The scenery amid which he lived and rambled, the utter seclusion in which the shepherds of Ettrick dwelt, and his lonely, yet happy, occupation among his native glens and mountains, gathered the intellectual wealth which the simple shepherd was destined to scatter among mankind: the "actionless" boy soon gave proof that he was also contemplative; he spoke songs long before he could write them. For many years, until indeed he had grown to manhood, his fame was limited to his own neighbourhood; at length, chance conducted him to Edinburgh; a small printed volume was the result; it was soon followed by "the Mountain Bard:" and the world began to speak of the Shepherd of Ettrick. Still he continued to "tend his flock;" and it was not until after his reputation had very widely spread, that he commenced farming on his own account. In 1821, he took the farm of Mount Benger; it was a disastrous attempt to better his fortunes, and it exhausted the money his literary labours had collected. From the period of his first appearance before the public, he passed scarcely a year without furnishing something for the press. The Mountain Bard was followed by the Queen's Wake;-the Witch of Fife, and Queen Hynde, established his fame as a Poet; and the Border Tales, and other publications gave him a prominent station as a writer of prose. Fortunate in the friendship of such men as Scott and Wilson, happy in his home, and admired by the world, with a disposition naturally cheerful, he |