But the sound of the church-going bell, Or smiled when a Sabbath appeared. Ye winds that have made me your sport, Some cordial, endearing report Of a land I shall visit no more. Though a friend I am never to see. How fleet is a glance of the mind! And the swift-wingéd arrows of light. Soon hurries me back to despair. But the sea-fowl is gone to her nest, And I to my cabin repair. And mercy, encouraging thought! W. Cowper. CLX. ADDRESS TO BRITAIN. (FROM SAMOR.') AND of my birth, O Britain, land beloved, The dazzling azure of the southern skies? And fragrance of thy summer fruits and flowers ; Would I assert; nor, save thy fame, invoke Her ecstasy of inspiration poured O'er Poet's soul, and flooded all his powers With liquid glory: so may thy renown Burn in my heart, and give to thought and word The aspiring and the radiant hue of fire. H. H. Milman. CLXI. ADELGITHA. HE ordeal's fatal trumpet sounded, She wept, delivered from her danger; But when he knelt to claim her glove— Seek not,' she cried, 'oh! gallant stranger, 'For he is in a foreign far land Whose arms should now have set me free; 'Nay! say not that his faith is tainted!' T. Campbell. CLXII. THE DEATH OF THE FLOWERS. HE melancholy days are come, the saddest of the year, Of wailing winds, and naked woods, and meadows brown and sear. Heaped in the hollows of the grove, the autumn leaves lie dead; They rustle to the eddying gust, and to the rabbit's tread. The robin and the wren are flown, and from the shrubs the jay, And from the wood-top calls the crow through all the gloomy day : Where are the flowers, the fair young flowers, that lately sprang and stood In brighter light, and softer airs, a beauteous sisterhood? Alas! they all are in their graves, the gentle race of flowers. Are lying in their lowly beds, with the fair and good of ours. The rain is falling where they lie, but the cold November rain Calls not from out the gloomy earth the lovely ones again. The wind-flower * and the violet, they perished long ago, And the brier-rose and the orchis died amid the summer glow; But on the hill the golden-rod, and the aster in the wood, And the yellow sun-flower by the brook in autumn beauty stood, Till fell the frost from the clear cold heaven, as falls the plague on men, And the brightness of their smile was gone, from upland, glade, and glen. And now, when comes the calm mild day, as still such days will come, To call the squirrel and the bee from out their winter home; When the sound of dropping nuts is heard, though all the trees are still, And twinkle in the smoky light the waters of the rill, *Wind-flower, the anemone. The south wind searches for the flowers whose fragrance late he bore, And sighs to find them in the wood and by the stream no more. And then I think of one who in her youthful beauty died, The fair meek blossom that grew up and faded by my side; In the cold moist earth we laid her, when the forest cast the leaf, And we wept that one so lovely should have a life so brief: Yet not unmeet it was that one, like that young friend of ours, So gentle and so beautiful, should perish with the flowers. W. C. Bryant. CLXIII. ONE BY ONE. NE by one the sands are flowing, One by one thy duties wait thee, Let no future dreams elate thee, Learn thou first what these can teach. One by one, bright gifts from Heaven, One by one thy griefs shall meet thee: One will fade as others reach thee, Shadows passing through the land, |