169 170 S SWEET EVENING HOUR WEET evening hour! sweet evening hour! that calms the air and shuts the flower, that brings the wild bee to its nest, the infant to its mother's breast. Sweet hour! that bids the labourer cease, that gives the weary team release, and leads them home, and crowns them there with rest and shelter, food and care. O season of soft sounds and hues, SPRING WEET daughter of a rough and stormy sire, SWEET of a rg child, delightful Spring! whose unshorn locks with leaves from the green islands of eternal youth O thou, whose powerful voice, more sweet than softest touch of Doric reed breathe thy own tender calm. Unlock thy copious stores; those tender showers the milky ear's green stem. 171 O nymph! approach, while yet the temperate sun, with bashful forehead, through the cool moist air throws his young maiden beams, and with chaste kisses wooes the earth's fair bosom; while the streaming veil of lucid clouds with kind and frequent shade protects thy modest blooms from his severer blaze. Sweet is thy reign, but short: the red dog-star Reluctant shall I bid thee then farewell; A. L. BARBAULD 172 WH FITZEUSTACE'S SONG WHERE shall the lover rest, from his true maiden's breast, parted for ever? Where, through groves deep and high, sounds the far billow, where early violets die under the willow. There through the summer-day never again to wake never, O never! 173 Where shall the traitor rest, who could win maiden's breast, In the lost battle, borne down by the flying, where mingles war's rattle with groans of the dying. F. S. II. 5 174 Her wing shall the eagle flap o'er the false-hearted; his warm blood the wolf shall lap by his grave ever; never, O never! SIR W. SCOTT OCTOBER WINDS CTOBER winds, wi' biting breath, alas! they're co'er'd wi' winter's cleeding. wild warbling where the burnie gushes. The sun is jogging down the brae, dimly through the mist he's shining, and cranreugh hoar creeps o'er the grass, as day resigns his throne to e'ening. Oft let me walk at twilight grey, to view the face of dying nature, till spring again with mantle green delights the heart o' ilka creature. J. SCADLOCK 175 TO MEMORY MEMORY, celestial maid, who glean'st the flow'rets cropt by time, and, suffering not a leaf to fade, preserv'st the blossoms of our prime: with which my favour'd crook was bound: 176 and once more to my ear convey and sketch with care the Muses' bower; of all that fling their sweetness round, as Time or Fortune could not rust; and crowned thy name with laurel verdant as thy youth, This thou hast lost; for all true lovers, when they find T. STANLEY 177 HORATIVS COCLES WHEN the oldest cask is opened, and the largest lamp is lit; when the chestnuts glow in the embers, when the girls are weaving baskets, when the goodman mends his armour, with weeping and with laughter still is the story told, how well Horatius kept the bridge in the brave days of old. 178 I 179 LUCY LORD MACAULAY TRAVELLED among unknown men in lands beyond the sea; nor, England! did I know till then 'Tis past, that melancholy dream! a second time; for still I seem Among thy mountains did I feel and she I cherished turned her wheel Thy mornings showed, thy nights concealed and thine too is the last green field W. WORDSWORTH WHAT LOVE AND MUSIC HAT woke the buried sound that lay what spirit on its viewless way along the Nile's green shore? Oh! not the night, and not the storm, but sunlight's torch, the kind, the warm this, this awoke the lyre. What wins the heart's deep chords to pour thus music forth on life like a sweet voice prevailing o'er the truant sounds of strife? |