A FOUR-O'CLOCK. Aш, happy day, refuse to go! Ah, happy day, refuse to go! Ah, happy day, refuse to go! thrush, Joy in the beauty of the earth, In which I live and breathe and move! call the Joy even in the shapeless thought That, some day, when all tasks are And have the wilds and waters hush A SNOWDROP. ONLY a tender little thing, So velvet soft and white it is; But March himself is not so strong, With all the great gales that are his. In vain his whistling storms he calls, In vain the cohorts of his power Ride down the sky on mighty blasts He cannot crush the little flower. Its white spear parts the sod, the snows Than that white spear less snowy are, wrought, I shall explore that vasty deep For joy attunes all beating things, Oh, glad am I that I was born! MEASURE FOR MEASURE. WHAT love do I bring you? The earth, Full of love, were far lighter; Earth full and heaven full were less Commerces with an unborn age. In fields of air he writes his name, And treads the chambers of the sky; He reads the stars, and grasps the flame That quivers round the Throne on high, In war renowned, in peace sublime, He moves in greatness and in grace; She led him through the trackless His power, subduing space and time, wild, Where noontide sunbeam never He rends the oak and bids it ride, To guard the shores its beauty graced: He smites the rock-upheaved in pride, See towers of strength, and domes of taste. Earth's teeming caves their wealth reveal, Fire bears his banner on the wave, He bids the mortal poison heal, And leaps triumphant o'er the grave. He plucks the pearls that stud the deep, Admiring Beauty's lap to fill; He breaks the stubborn marble's sleep. And mocks his own Creator's skill. Links realm to realm and race to Or, if ye stay, To note the consecrated hour, Teach me the airy way, Above the crowd, On upward wings could I but fly, I'd bathe in yon bright cloud, And seek the stars that gem the sky. 'Twere Heaven indeed Through fields of trackless light to soar, On Nature's charms to feed, And Nature's own great God adore. THE FAMILY MEETING. WE are all here! Sister, brother, All who hold each other dear. We are all here! You that I love with love so dear. Each chair is filled- we're all at May each repeat, in words of bliss, home; To-night let no cold stranger come; Our old familiar hearth we're found. -the dead-though dead, so dear. Fond Memory, to her duty true, We're all all here! - TO MY CIGAR. YES, social friend, I love thee well, By thee, they cry, with phizzes long, And oft, mild friend, to me thou art, Thou'rt like the man of worth, who gives To goodness every day, The odor of whose virtue lives When, in the lonely evening hour, Brings back their faded forms to O'er history's varied page I pore, view. Man's fate in thine I see. Oft as thy snowy column grows, Then breaks and falls away, I trace how mighty realms thus rose, Thus tumbled to decay. Awhile like thee the hero burns, And smokes and fumes around, And then, like thee, to ashes turns. And mingles with the ground. Life's but a leaf adroitly rolled, And time's the wasting breath, That late or early, we behold, Gives all to dusty death. From beggar's frieze to monarch's robe, One common doom is passed; Sweet Nature's works, the swelling globe, Must all burn out at last. And what is he who smokes thee now? A little moving heap, But though thy ashes downward go, FROM THE "ODE ON SHAKESPEARE." WHо now shall grace the glowing throne, Where, all unrivalled, all alone, Bold Shakespeare sat, and looked creation through, The minstrel monarch of the worlds he drew? That throne is cold-that lyre in death unstrung On whose proud note delighted Wonder hung. Yet old Oblivion, as in wrath he sweeps, One spot shall spare-the grave where Shakespeare sleeps. Art's chiselled boast and Glory's trophied shore Must live in numbers, or can live no more. While sculptured Jove some nameless waste may claim, [fame; Still rolls the Olympic car in Pindar's Troy's doubtful walls in ashes passed away, Yet frown on Greece in Homer's deathless lay; Rome, slowly sinking in her crumbling fanes, Stands all immortal in her Maro's strains; So, too, yon giant empress of the isles, On whose broad sway the sun forever smiles, To Time's unsparing rage one day must bend, And all her triumphs in her Shakespeare end! O thou! to whose creative power We dedicate the festal hour, While Grace and Goodness round the altar stand, Learning's anointed train, and Beauty's rose-lipped band Realms yet unborn, in accents now unknown, Thy song shall learn, and bless it for their own. [roves, Deep in the West as Independence His banners planting round the land he loves, Where Nature sleeps in Eden's infant grace, In Time's full hour shall spring a glorious race, Thy name, thy verse, thy language, shall they bear, And deck for thee the vaulted temple there. Our Roman-hearted fathers broke Thy parent empire's galling yoke; But thou, harmonious master of the mind, Around their sons a gentler chain shalt bind; Rulers and ruled in common gloom may le. But Nature's laureate bards shall never die. |