quenters of the parterre. Whether this be imputed to the effect of light, or the breathing influence of a flowery atmosphere, and the tendency of all things to produce their similitudes, there lies beneath the natural fact a moral analogy applicable to ourselves.

From "ACHETA DOMESTICA."

THE DRAGON-FLY.

FROM THE GERMAN.

Flutter, flutter gently by,
Little motley dragon-fly,

On thy four transparent wings!

Hover, hover o'er the rill,
And when weary, sit thee still,
Where the water-lily springs.

More than half thy little life,
Free from passion, free from strife,
Underneath the wave was sweet;
Cool and calm, content to dwell,
Shrouded by thy pliant shell

In a dark and dim retreat.

Now the nymph, transformed, may roam,
A sylph in her aerial home,

Where'er the zephyrs shall invite;

Love is now thy envious care-
Love that dwells in sunny air-

But thy very love is flight.

Heedless of thy coming doom,
O'er thy birthplace and thy tomb
Flutter, little mortal, still!
Though beside thy gladdest hour,
Fate's destroying mandates lower-
Length of life but lengthens ill.

Confide thy offspring to the stream,
That when new summer suns shall gleam,

They, too, may quit their watery cell;

Then die! I see each weary limb

Declines to fly, declines to swim:

Thou lovely, short-lived sylph, farewell!

Translation of W. TAYLOR.

JOHANN GOTTFRIED V. HERDER, 1744-1803.

TO AN INSECT.

I love to hear thine earnest voice,
Wherever thou art hid,
Thou testy, little dogmatist,

Thou pretty Katydid!

Thou mindest me of gentlefolks

Old gentlefolks are they ;
Thou say'st an undisputed thing
In such a solemn way.

Thou art a female, Katydid!

I know it by the trill

That quivers through thy piercing notes,

So petulant and shrill.

I think there is a knot of you
Beneath the hollow tree-
A knot of spinster Katydids-
Do Katydids drink tea?

O tell me, where did Katy live,
And what did Katy do?
And was she very fair and young,
And yet so wicked, too?
Did Katy love a naughty man,

Or kiss more cheeks than one?

I warrant Katy did no more

Than many a Kate has done.

Dear me! I'll tell you all about

My fuss with little Jane,

And Ann, with whom I used to walk

So often down the lane,

And all that tore their locks of black.
Or wet their eyes of blue-

Pray tell me, sweetest Katydid,
What did poor Katy do?

Ah, no! the living oak shall crash,

That stood for ages still;

The rock shall rend its rocky base,

And thunder down the hill,

Before the little Katydid

Shall add one word to tell

The mystic story of the maid

Whose name she knows so well.

Peace to the ever-murmuring race!
And when the latest one

Shall fold in death her feeble wings

Beneath the autumn sun,

Then shall she raise her fainting voice,
And lift her drooping lid;

And then the child of future years

Shall hear what Katy did.

O. W. HOLMES.

THE GRASSHOPPER.

There is the grasshopper, my summer friend-
The minute sound of many a sunny hour
Passed on a thymy hill, when I could send

My soul in search thereof by bank and bower,
Till lured far from it by a foxglove flower,
Nodding too dangerously above the crag,
Not to excite the passion and the power

To climb the steep, and down the blossom drag;
Then the marsh-crocus joined, and yellow water-flag.

Shrill sings the drowsy wassailer in his dome,

Yon grassy wilderness, where curls the fern, And creeps the ivy; with the wish to roam,

He spreads his sails, and bright is his sojourn, 'Mid chalices with dews in every urn;

All flying things alike delight have foundWhere'er I gaze, to what new region turn,

Ten thousand insects in the air abound,

Flitting on glancing wings that yield a summer's sound.

JEREMIAH HOLME WIFFIN, 1792-1836.

XV.

The Streams.

A

VOLUME of general selections from English rural verse would be incomplete without some passage from Denham's poem of " Cooper's Hill"-a poem so highly lauded by past generations, and which we still read to-day with admiration. Sir John Denham is one of those poets who have met with very opposite treatment from critics of different generations; after receiving the highest commendations from Dryden, from Johnson, from Pope, from Somerville, his bays have been very severely handled in our own time. But allowing him to have been over-praised at one period, shall we for that reason refuse ourselves the pleasure he is assuredly capable of affording us? Is not " Cooper's Hill" a fine old poem of the second class, which the nineteenth century does well to read once in a while? The celebrated lines, quoted a thousand times,

"Though deep, yet clear; though gentle, yet not dull,
Strong without rage; without o'erflowing, full,"

were amusingly parodied some fifty years ago by Mr. Soame Jenyns, in his satire upon an unfledged, ignorant memberling of Parliament:

"Without experience, honesty, or sense,

Unknowing in her interests, trade, or laws,
He vainly undertakes his country's cause;
Forth from his lips, prepared at all to rail,
Torrents of nonsense flow like bottled ale;

Though shallow, muddy; brisk, though mighty dull;
Fierce without strength; o'erflowing, though not full.”

THE STREAMS.

ARIEL'S SONG.

Come unto these yellow sands,

And then take hands;

Curt'sied when you have, and kind

(The wild waves whist),

Foot it featly, here and there;

And, sweet sprites, the burden bear!

Hark! hark!

The watch-dogs bark;

Hark! hark! I hear

The strain of strutting chanticleer

Cry cock-a-doodle-doo!

SHAKSTEARS.

THE THAMES.

FROM "COOPER'S HILL."

Thames, the most lov'd of all the Ocean's sons,

By his old sire, to his embraces runs ;

Hasty to pay his tribute to the sea,

Like mortal life to meet eternity,

Though with those streams he no resemblance hold,
Whose foam is amber, and their gravel gold,
His genuine and less guilty wealth t' explore,
Search not his bottoms, but survey his shore,
O'er which he kindly spreads his spacious wing,
And hatches plenty for the ensuing spring;
Nor then destroys it with too fond a stay,
Like mothers who their infants overlay ;