Then comes thy glory in the summer months,
With light and heat refulgent. Then thy sun
Shoots full perfection through the swelling year:
And oft thy voice in dreadful thunder speaks;
And oft at dawn, deep noon, or falling eve,
By brooks and groves, in hollow-whispering gales.
Thy bounty shines in autumn unconfined,
And spreads a common feast for all that lives.
In winter awful thou! with clouds and storms
Around thee thrown, tempest o'er tempest rolled,
Majestic darkness! on the whirlwind's wing,
Riding sublime, thou bidst the world adore,
And humblest nature with thy northern blast.
Mysterious round! what skill, what force divine,
Deep felt, in these appear! a simple train,
Yet so delightful mixed, with such kind art,
Such beauty and beneficence combined;
Shade, unperceived, so softening into shade;
And all so forming an harmonious whole;
That, as they still succeed, they ravish still.
But wandering oft, with brute unconscious gaze,
Man marks not thee, marks not the mighty Hand,
That, ever busy, wheels the silent spheres ;
Works in the secret deep; shoots, steaming, thence
The fair profusion that o'erspreads the spring:
Flings from the sun direct the flaming day;
Feeds every creature; hurls the tempests forth;
And, as on earth this grateful change revolves,
With transport touches all the springs of life.

JAMES THOMSON.

THE ADVENT OF EVENING.

HE fire-flies freckle every spot

With fickle light that gleams and dies; The bat, a wavering, soundless blot, The cat, a pair of prowling eyes.

Still the sweet, fragrant dark o'erflows

The deepening air and darkening ground;

By its rich scent I trace the rose,
The viewless beetle by its sound.

The cricket scrapes its rib-like bars;
The tree-toad purrs in whirring tone;
And now the heavens are set with stars,
And night and quiet reign alone.

ALFRED B. STREET.

MOONRISE.

HAT stands upon the highland?
What walks across the rise,

As though a starry island
Were sinking down the skies?

What makes the trees so golden!

What decks the mountain side,

Like a veil of silver folden
Round the white brow of a bride?
The magic moon is breaking,

Like a conqueror, from the east,
The waiting world awaking
To a golden fairy feast.

She works, with touch ethereal.
By changes strange to see,
The cypress, so funereal,
To a lightsome fairy tree;
Black rocks to marble turning,
Like palaces of kings;
On ruin windows burning,
A festal glory flings;
The desert halls uplighting,

While falling shadows glance,
Like courtly crowds uniting

For the banquet or the dance;

With ivory wand she numbers
The stars along the sky;
And breaks the billows' slumbers
With a love-glance of her eye;
Along the cornfields dances,
Brings bloom upon the sheaf;
From tree to tree she glances,

And touches leaf by leaf;

Wakes birds that sleep in shadows;

Through their half-closed eyelids gleams; With her white torch through the meadows Lights the shy deer to the streams. The magic moon is breaking,

Like a conqueror, from the east, And the joyous world partaking. Of her golden fairy feast.

DOVER CLIFF.

Ernest Jones.

OME on, sir; here's the place: stand still! How

fearful

And dizzy 't is, to cast one's eyes so low!

The crows and choughs that wing the midway
air

Show scarce so gross as beetles: half-way down
Hangs one that gathers samphire,-dreadful trade!
Methinks he seems no bigger than his head:
The fishermen, that walk upon the beach,
Appear like mice; and yon tall anchoring bark,
Diminished to her cock; her cock, a buoy
Almost too small for sight: the murmuring surge,
That on the unnumbered idle pebbles chases,
Cannot be heard so high.—I'll look no more;
Lest my brain turn, and the deficient sight
Topple down headlong.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.

Nature's great ancestor! day's elder-born!
And fated to survive the transient sun!

By mortals and immortals seen with awe!
A starry crown thy raven brow adorns,

An azure zone thy waist; clouds, in heaven's loon
Wrought through varieties of shape and shade,

In ample folds of drapery divine,

Thy flowing mantle form, and, heaven throughout,
Voluminously pour thy pompous train;

Thy gloomy grandeurs-nature's most august,
Inspiring aspect !—claim a grateful verse;
And, like a sable curtain starred with gold,

Drawn o'er my labors past, shall clothe the scene.

WARD YOUNG.

TO A STAR.

HOU brightly glittering star of even,
Thou gem upon the brow of heaven!
Oh! were this fluttering spirit free,

How quick 'twould spread its wings to thee!

How calmly, brightly, dost thou shine,
Like the pure lamp in virtue's shrine !
Sure the fair world which thou may'st boast
Was never ransomed, never lost.

There, beings pure as heaven's own air,
Their hopes, their joys, together share;
While hovering angels touch the string,
And seraphs spread the sheltering wing.
There, cloudless days and brilliant nights,
Illumed by heaven's refulgent lights;
There, seasons, years, unnoticed roll,
And unregretted by the soul.

Thou little sparkling star of even,
Thou gem upon an azure heaven!
How swiftly will I soar to thee,
When this imprisoned soul is free!

LUCRETIA MARIA DAVIDSON.

THE NIGHT-FLOWERING CEREUS.

The night-flowering cereus is one of our most splendid hothouse plants, and is a native of Jamaica and some other of the West India Islands. Its stem is creeping, and thickly set with spines. The flower is white, and very large, sometimes nearly a foot in diameter. The most remarkable circumstance with regard to the flower, is the short time which it takes to expand, and the rapidity with which it decays. It begins to open late in the evening, flourishes for an hour or two, then begins to droop, and before morning is completely dead.

OW departs day's gairish light

Beauteous flower, lift thy head!
Rise upon the brow of night!

Haste, thy transient lustre shed!

Night has dropped her dusky veil

All vain thoughts be distant far,
While, with silent awe, we hail

Flora's radiant evening star.

See to life her beauties start;

Hail! thou glorious, matchless flower! Much thou sayest to the heart,

In the solemn, fleeting hour.

Ere we have our homage paid,

Thou wilt bow thine head and die; Thus our sweetest pleasures fade, Thus our brightest blessings fly. Sorrow's rugged stem, like thine,

Bears a flower thus purely bright; Thus, when sunny hours decline,

Friendship sheds her cheering light.

Religion, too, that heavenly flower,
That joy of never-fading worth,
Waits, like thee, the darkest hour,
Then puts all her glories forth.

Then thy beauties are surpassed,

Splendid flower, that bloom'st to die; For friendship and religion last, When the morning beams on high.

ON RECROSSING THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS

ONG years ago I wandered here,
In the midsummer of the year,-
Life's summer too;

A score of horsemen here we rode,
The mountain world its glories showed,
All fair to view.

These scenes in glowing colors drest,
Mirrored the life within my breast,

Its world of hopes;

The whispering woods and fragrant breeze
That stirred the grass in verdant seas
On billowy slopes.

And glistening crag in sunlit sky,
Mid snowy clouds piled mountains high,
Were joys to me;

My path was o'er the prairie wide,
Or here on grander mountain-side,
To choose, all free.

The rose that waved in morning air,
And spread its dewy fragrance there
In careless bloom,

Gave to my heart its ruddiest hue,
O'er my glad life its color threw
And sweet perfume.

The buoyant hopes and busy life
Have ended all in hateful strife,

And thwarted aim.

The world's rude contact killed the rose,
No more its radiant color shows
False roads to fame.

Backward, amidst the twilight glow
Some lingering spots yet brightly show
On hard roads won,

Where still some grand peaks mark the way
Touched by the light of parting day

And memory's sun.

But here thick clouds the mountains hide, The dim horizon bleak and wide

No pathway shows,

And rising gusts, and darkening sky,
Tell of "the night that cometh," nigh,
The brief day's close.

JOHN C. FREMONT.

THE EVENING STAR.

'OW sweet thy modest light to view, Fair star, to love and lovers dear! While trembling on the falling dew, Like beauty shining through a tear. Or, hanging o'er that mirror-stream,

To mark that image trembling there,
Thou seem'st to smile with softer gleam,
To see thy lovely face so fair.
Though, blazing o'er the arch of night,
The moon thy timid beams outshine,
As far as thine each starry light ;-
Her rays can never vie with thine.
Thine are the soft enchanting hours,
When twilight lingers on the plain,
And whispers to the closing flowers
That soon the sun will rise again.
Thine is the breeze that, murmuring bland
As music, wafts the lover's sigh,
And bids the yielding heart expand
In love's delicious ecstasy.

Fair star! though I be doomed to prove
That rapture's tears are mixed with pain,
Ah, still I feel 'tis sweet to love!
But sweeter to be loved again.

JOHN LEYDEN.

THE SCENES OF BOYHOOD.

'IS past! no more the summer blooms!
Ascending in the rear,
Behold congenial autumn comes,
The sabbath of the year!
What time thy holy whispers breathe,
The pensive evening shade beneath,

And twilight consecrates the floods ;
While nature strips her garment gay,
And wears the vesture of decay,

O let me wander through the sounding woods! Ah! well-known streams!-ah! wonted groves, Still pictured in my mind!

Oh! sacred scene of youthful loves,

Whose image lives behind!

While sad I ponder on the past,
The joys that must no longer last;

The wild-flower strown on summer's bier,
The dying music of the grove,
And the last elegies of love,

Dissolve the soul, and draw the tender tear!
Companions of the youthful scene,

Endeared from earliest days!
With whom I sported on the green,
Or roved the woodland maze !
Long-exiled from your native clime,
Or by the thunder-stroke of time

Snatched to the shadows of despair;

I hear your voices in the wind,
Your forms in every walk I find;
I stretch my arms: ye vanish into air!
My steps, when innocent and young,
These fairy paths pursued;
And wandering o'er the wild, I sung

My fancies to the wood.

I mourned the linnet-lover's fate,
Or turtle from her murdered mate,
Condemned the widowed hours to wail:
Or while the mournful vision rose,

I sought to weep for imaged woes,
And sorrowed o'er the plaintive tragic tale!
Yet not unwelcome waves the wood
That hides me in its gloom,
While lost in melancholy mood

I muse upon the tomb.

Their chequered leaves the branches shed;
Whirling in eddies o'er my head,

They sadly sigh that winter's near:
The warning voice I hear behind,
That shakes the wood without a wind,

And solemn sounds the death-bell of the year.

Nor will I court Lethean streams,

The sorrowing sense to steep;
Nor drink oblivion of the themes
On which I love to weep.
Belated oft by fabled rill,
While nightly o'er the hallowed hill
Aërial music seems to mourn ;
I'll listen autumn's closing strain ;
Then woo the walks of youth again,
And pour my sorrows o'er the untimely urn!
JOHN LOGAN.

THE SHEPHERD-SWAIN.

HERE lived in Gothic days, as legends tell,
A shepherd-swain a man of low degree,
Whose sires, perchance, in fairyland might
dwell,

Sicilian groves, or vales of Arcady;

But he, I ween, was of the north countrie;
A nation famed for song, and beauty's charms;
Zealous, yet modest; innocent, though free:
Patient of toil; serene amidst alarms;
Inflexible in faith; invincible in arms.

The shepherd-swain, of whom I mention made,
On Scotia's mountains fed his little flock;
The sickle, scythe, or plough, he never swayed;
An honest heart was almost all his stock;
His drink the living water from the rock;
The milky dams supplied his board, and lent
Their kindly fleece to baffle winters shock;
And he, though oft with dust and sweat besprent,
Did guide and guard their wanderings, whereso'er

ALPINE HEIGHTS.

N Alpine heights the love of God is shed;
He paints the morning red,
The flowerets white and blue,
And feeds them with his dew,

On Alpine heights a loving Father dwells.

On Alpine heights, o'er many a fragrant heath, The loveliest breezes breathe ;

So free and pure the air,

His breath seems floating there.

On Alpine heights a loving Father dwells.

On Alpine heights, beneath his mild blue eye,
Still vales and meadows lie;

The soaring glacier's ice
Gleams like a paradise.

On Alpine heights a loving Father dwells.

Down Alpine heights the silvery streamlets flow!
There the bold chamois go;
On giddy crags they stand,
And drink from his own hand.

On Alpine heights a loving Father dwells.

On Alpine heights, in troops all white as snow, The sheep and wild goats go ;

There, in the solitude,

He fills their hearts with food.

On Alpine heights a loving Father dwells.

On Alpine heights the herdsman tends his herd;
His Shepherd is the Lord;

For he who feeds the sheep
Will sure his offspring keep.

On Alpine heights a loving Father dwells.
FREDERICK W. KRUMMACHER.

TO A COMET.

POW lovely is this wildered scene,

As twilight from her vaults so blue Steals soft o'er Yarrow's mountains green, To sleep embalmed in midnight dew! All hail, ye hills, whose towering height, Like shadows, scoops the yielding sky! And thou, mysterious guest of night, Dread traveler of immensity! Stranger of heaven! I bid thee hail!

Shred from the pall of glory riven, That flashest in celestial gale,

Broad pennon of the King of heaven! Art thou the flag of woe and death, From angel's ensign-staff unfurled? Art thou the standard of his wrath Waved o'er a sordid sinful world?

No, from that pure pellucid beam,

That erst o'er plains of Bethlehem shone,

No latent evil we can deem,

Bright herald of the eternal throne! Whate'er portends thy front of fire,

Thy streaming locks so lovely paleOr peace to man, or judgments dire, Stranger of heaven, I bid thee hail!

Where hast thou roamed these thousand years?
Why sought these polar paths again,
From wilderness of glowing spheres,
To fling thy vesture o'er the wain?
And when thou scalest the milky way,
And vanishest from human view,
A thousand worlds shall hail thy ray
Through wilds of yon empyreal blue!
Oh! on that rapid prow to glide!

To sail the boundless skies with thee,
And plow the twinkling stars aside,

Like foam-bells on a tranquil sea! To brush the embers from the sun, The icicles from off the pole ; Then far to other systems run,

Where other moons and planets roll!

Stranger of heaven! O let thine eye
Smile on a rapt enthusiast's dream;
Eccentric as thy course on high,

And airy as thine ambient beam!
And long, long may thy silver ray

Our northern arch at eve adorn; Then, wheeling to the east away, Light the gray portals of the morn! JAMES HOGG.

THE PUMPKIN.

FRUIT loved by boyhood! tho old days recalling;

When wood-grapes were purpling and brown nuts were falling!

When wild, ugly faces were carved in its skin,
Glaring out through the dark with a candle within!
When we laughed round the corn-heap, with hearts
all in tune,

Our chair a broad pumpkin, our lantern the moon,
Telling tales of the fairy who traveled like steam
In a pumpkin-shell coach, with two rats for her team!
Then thanks for thy present!—none sweeter or better
E'er smoked from an oven or circled a platter!
Fairer hands never wrought at a pastry more fine,
Brighter eyes never watched o'er its baking, than thine!
And the prayer, which my mouth is too full to express,
Swells my heart that thy shadow may never be less,
That the days of thy lot may be lengthened below,
And the fame of thy worth like a pumpkin-vine grow,
And thy life be as sweet, and its last sunset sky
Golden-tinted and fair as thy own pumpkin-pie!
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER.