Loathing thy polluted lot,

Hie thee, Maiden, hie thee hence !

Seek thy weeping Mother's cot,
With a wiser innocence.

Thou hast known deceit and folly,
Thou hast felt that vice is woe:

With a musing melancholy

Inly armed, go, Maiden! go.

Mother sage of Self-dominion,

Firm thy steps, O Melancholy ! The strongest plume in wisdom's pinion Is the memory of past folly.

Mute the sky-lark and forlorn,

While she moults the firstling plumes, That had skimmed the tender corn, Or the beanfield's odorous blooms.

Soon with renovated wing

Shall she dare a loftier flight, Upward to the day-star spring And embathe in heavenly light.

LINES COMPOSED IN A CONCERT-ROOM.

NOR cold, nor stern, my soul! yet I detest
These scented Rooms, where, to a gaudy throng,
Heaves the proud Harlot her distended breast,
In intricacies of laborious song.

These feel not Music's genuine power, nor deign
To melt at Nature's passion-warbled plaint;
But when the long-breathed singer's uptrilled strain
Bursts in a squall-they gape for wonderment.

Hark! the deep buzz of Vanity and Hate!
Scornful, yet envious, with self-torturing sneer

My lady eyes some maid of humbler state
While the pert Captain, or the primmer Priest,
Prattles accordant scandal in her ear.

give me, from this heartless scene released, To hear our old musician, blind and grey, (Whom stretching from my nurse's arms I kissed,) His Scottish tunes and warlike marches play, By moonshine, on the balmy summer-night, The while I dance amid the tedded hay With merry maids, whose ringlets toss in light.

Or lies the purple evening on the bay
Of the calm glossy lake, O let me hide

Unheard, unseen, behind the alder-trees
For round their roots the fisher's boat is tied,

On whose trim seat doth Edmund stretch at ease, And while the lazy boat sways to and fro,

Breathes in his flute sad airs, so wild and slow, That his own cheek is wet with quiet tears.

But O, dear Anne! when midnight wind careers, And the gust pelting on the out-house shed

Makes the cock shrilly on the rain storm crow, To hear thee sing some ballad full of woe, Ballad of ship-wrecked sailor floating dead, Whom his own true-love buried in the sands! Thee, gentle woman, for thy voice remeasures Whatever tones and melancholy pleasures

The things of Nature utter; birds or trees Or moan of ocean-gale in weedy caves,

Or where the stiff grass mid the heath-plant waves, Murmur and music thin of sudden breeze.

THE KEEPSAKE.

THE tedded hay, the first fruits of the soil,
The tedded hay and corn-sheaves in one field,
Shew summer gone, ere come. The foxglove tall
Sheds its loose purple bells, or in the gust,
Or when it bends beneath the up-springing lark,
Or mountain-finch alighting.
And the rose

(In vain the darling of successful love)

Stands, like some boasted beauty of past years,
The thorns remaining, and the flowers all gone.
Nor can I find, amid my lonely walk
By rivulet, or spring, or wet road-side,

That blue and bright-eyed floweret of the brook,
Hope's gentle gem, the sweet FORGET-ME-NOT!*

* One of the names (and meriting to be the only one) of the Myosotis Scorpioides Palustris, a flower from six to twelve inches