THE ELM TREE.

A dreary laugh and desolate,
Where mirth is void and null,
As hollow as its echo sounds

Within the hollow skull:
"Whoever laid this Tree along,

His hatchet was not dull!

The human arm and human tool
Have done their duty well!
But after sound of ringing axe
Must sound the ringing knell ;
When elm or oak

Have felt the stroke,
My turn it is to fell!

No passive unregarded tree,

A senseless thing of wood, Wherein the sluggish sap ascends To swell the vernal bud—

But conscious, moving, breathing trunks That throb with living blood!

Ah! little recks the Royal mind,
Within his Banquet-Hall,

While tapers shine, and music breathes,
And Beauty leads the ball,-
He little recks the oaken plank
Shall be his palace wall!

Ah! little dreams the haughty Peer,

The while his falcon flies

Or on the blood-bedabbled turf
The antler'd quarry dies-
That in his own ancestral Park
The narrow dwelling lies!

HOOD.

But haughty Peer and mighty King
One doom shall overwhelin!

The oaken cell

Shall lodge him well

Whose sceptre ruled a realmWhile he who never knew a home Shall find it in the Elm!

The tall abounding Elm that grows
In hedgerows up and down,
In field and forest, copse and park,
And in the peopled town,
With colonies of noisy rooks
That nestle on its crown.

And well th' abounding Elm may grow
In field and hedge so rife,

In forest, copse, and wooded park,
And 'mid the city's strife,-
For every hour that passes by

Shall end a human life!"

The Phantom ends: the shade is gone;
The sky is clear and bright;
On turf, and moss, and fallen Tree,
There glows a ruddy light;

And bounding through the golden fern
The rabbit comes to bite.

The thrush's mate beside her sits,
And pipes a merry lay;
The dove is in the evergreens ;

And on the larch's spray

The fly-bird flutters up and down,

To catch its tiny prey.

THE ELM TREE.

The gentle hind and dappled fawn
Are coming up the glade;

Each harmless furr'd and feather'd thing
Is glad, and not afraid—

But on my sadden'd spirit still
The Shadow leaves a shade:

A secret, vague, prophetic gloom,
As though by certain mark
I knew the fore-appointed Tree,
Within whose rugged bark

This warm and living frame shall find

Its narrow house and dark.

That mystic Tree which breathed to me

A sad and solemn sound,

That sometimes murmur'd overhead,

And sometimes underground

Within that shady Avenue,

Where lofty Elms abound.

AFAR in the Desert I love to ride,
With the silent Bush-boy alone by my side:
When the sorrows of life the soul o'ercast,
And, sick of the Present, I cling to the Past;
When the eye is suffused with regretful tears,
From the fond recollections of former years;

N N

AFAR IN THE DESERT.

And shadows of things that have long since fled
Flit over the brain like the ghosts of the dead;
And my Native Land, whose magical name

Thrills to my heart like electric flame;

The home of my childhood; the haunts of my prime; All the passions and scenes of that rapturous time, When the feelings were young, and the world was new, Like the fresh bowers of Eden unfolding to view;

All-all now forsaken, forgotten, foregone!

And I, a lone exile, remembered of none;

My high aims abandoned, my good acts undone,

Aweary of all that is under the sun,

With that sadness of heart which no stranger may scan, I fly to the Desert, afar from man!

Afar in the Desert I love to ride,

With the silent Bush-boy alone by my side:
When the wild turmoil of this wearisome life,

With its scenes of oppression, corruption, and strife,--
The proud man's frown, and the base man's fear,
The scorner's laugh, and the sufferer's tear,—
And malice, and meanness, and falsehood, and folly,
Dispose me to musing and dark melancholy;
When my bosom is full, and my thoughts are high,
And my soul is sick with the bondman's sigh;
Oh! then there is freedom, and joy, and pride,
Afar in the Desert alone to ride!

There is rapture to vault on the champing steed,
And to bound away with the eagle's speed,
With the death-fraught firelock in my hand,-
The only law of the Desert Land.

Afar in the Desert I love to ride,

With the silent Bush-boy alone by my side;
Away, away from the dwellings of men,
By the wild-deer's haunt, by the buffalo's glen;