Lines on Revisiting the Country.

I STAND upon my native hills again,

Broad, round, and green, that in the summer sky With garniture of waving grass and grain, Orchards, and beechen forests, basking lie,

While deep the sunless glens are scooped between, Where brawl o'er shallow beds the streams unseen.

A lisping voice and glancing eyes are near,
And ever restless feet of one, who now

Gathers the blossoms of her fourth bright year.
There plays a gladness o'er her fair young brow,
As breaks the varied scene upon her sight,
Upheaved and spread in verdure and in light.

For I have taught her with delighted eye,
To gaze upon the mountains, to behold,
With deep affection, the pure ample sky,

And clouds along its blue abysses rolled,—
To love the song of waters, and to hear
The melody of winds with charmed ear.

Here I have 'scaped the city's stifling heat,
Its horrid sounds, and its polluted air;

And, where the season's milder fervors beat,

And gales, that sweep the forest borders, bear The song of bird, and sound of running stream, Am come awhile to wander and to dream.

Ay, flame thy fiercest, sun! thou canst not wake,

In this pure air, the plague that walks unseen. The maize leaf and the maple bough but take,

From thy strong heats, a deeper, glossier green. The mountain wind, that faints not in thy ray, Sweeps the blue steams of pestilence away.

The mountain wind! most spiritual thing of all The wide earth knows; when, in the sultry time, He stoops him from his vast cerulean hall,

He seems the breath of a celestial clime! As if from heaven's wide-open gates did flow Health and refreshment on the world below.

BRYANT.

Beauty Immortal.

BEAUTY still walketh on the earth and air,
Our present sunsets are as rich in gold
As ere the Iliad's numbers were outrolled;
The roses of the spring are ever fair;

'Mong branches green still ring-doves coo and pair; And the deep seas still foam their music old. So, if we are at all divinely souled,

This Beauty will unloose our bonds of care.

'Tis pleasant, when blue skies are o'er us bending, Within old starry-gated Poesy,

To meet a soul set to no earthly tune,

Like thine, sweet friend! O dearer thou to me
Than are the dewy trees, the sun, the moon,
Or noble music, with a golden ending!

ALEXANDER SMITH.

Love and Death.

WHAT time the mighty moon was gathering light
Love paced the thymy plots of Paradise,
And all about him rolled his lustrous eyes;
When, turning round a cassia, full in view,
Death, walking all alone beneath a yew,
And talking to himself, first met his sight:

"You must begone," said Death, "these walks are

mine."

Love wept and spread his sheeny vans for flight;

Yet ere he parted said, "This hour is thine:
Thou art the shadow of life, and as the tree

Stands in the sun and shadows all beneath,
So in the light of great eternity

Life eminent creates the shade of death;

The shadow passeth when the tree shall fall,
But I shall reign for ever over all."

Two children in two neighbor villages
Playing mad pranks along the heathy leas;
Two strangers meeting at a festival;

Two lovers whispering by an orchard wall;
Two lives bound fast in one with golden ease;
Two graves grass-green beside a gray church-tower,
Wash'd with still rains and daisy-blossomed ;
Two children in one hamlet born and bred;
So runs the round of life from hour to hour.

ALFRED TENNYSON.

Forget-me-not.

A TRIFLE; Sweet! which true love spells

True love interprets-right alone.

His light upon the letter dwells,

For all the spirit is his own.

So, if I waste words now, in truth

You must blame Loye. His early rage Had force to make me rhyme in youth, And makes me talk too much in age.

And now those vivid hours are gone,
Like mine own life to me thou art,
Where Past and Present, wound in one,
Do make a garland for the heart:
So sing that other song I made,
Half-anger'd with my happy lot,
The day, when in the chestnut shade
I found the blue Forget-me-not.

ALFRED TENNYSON.

Lobe.

LOVE that hath us in the net,
Can he pass, and we forget?
Many suns arise and set.

Many a chance the years beget.
Love the gift is Love the debt.

Even so.

Love is hurt with jar and fret.
Love is made a vague regret.