INVOCATION TO LIGHT.

HAIL, holy Light, offspring of Heaven first-born!
Or of the Eternal coeternal beam
May I express thee unblamed? since God is light,
And never but in unapproachéd light
Dwelt from eternity, dwelt then in thee,
Bright effluence of bright essence increate.
Or hear'st thou rather pure ethereal stream,
Whose fountain who shall tell? before the sun,
Before the heavens, thou wert, and at the voice
Of God, as with a mantle, didst invest
The rising world of waters dark and deep,
Won from the void and formless infinite.

Thee I revisit now with bolder wing,
Escaped the Stygian pool, though long detained
In that obscure sojourn, while in my flight
Through utter and through middle darkness borne,
With other notes than to the Orphean lyre,
I sung
of Chaos and eternal Night,
Taught by the heavenly Muse to venture down
The dark descent, and up to reascend,
Though hard and rare: thee I revisit safe,
And feel thy sovereign vital lamp; but thou
Revisitest not these eyes, that roll in vain
To find thy piercing ray, and find no dawn;
So thick a drop serene hath quenched their orbs,
Or dim suffusion veiled. Yet not the more
Cease I to wander where the Muses haunt
Clear spring, or shady grove, or sunny hill,
Smit with the love of sacred song; but chief
Thee, Sion, and the flowery brooks beneath,
That wash thy hallowed feet, and warbling flow,
Nightly I visit: nor sometimes forget
Those other two equalled with me in fate,
So were I equalled with them in renown,
Blind Thamyris and blind Mæonides,
And Tiresias and Phineus, prophets old:
Then feed on thoughts that voluntary move
Harmonious numbers; as the wakeful bird
Sings darkling, and in shadiest covert hid
Tunes her nocturnal note. Thus with the year
Seasons return, but not to me returns
Day, or the sweet approach of even or morn,
Or sight of vernal bloom, or summer's rose,

The whistling ploughman stalks afield; and, hark! Down the rough slope the ponderous wagon rings;

Through rustling corn the hare astonished springs;

Slow tolls the village-clock the drowsy hour; The partridge bursts away on whirring wings ; Deep mourns the turtle in sequestered bower, And shrill lark carols clear from her aerial tower. JAMES BEATTIE.

THE SABBATH MORNING.

WITH silent awe I hail the sacred morn,
That slowly wakes while all the fields are still!
A soothing calm on every breeze is borne ;
A graver murmur gurgles from the rill;
And echo answers softer from the hill;
And softer sings the linnet from the thorn:
The skylark warbles in a tone less shrill.
Hail, light serene! hail, sacred Sabbath morn!
The rooks float silent by in airy drove ;
The sun a placid yellow lustre throws;
The gales that lately sighed along the grove
Have hushed their downy wings in dead repose;
The hovering rack of clouds forgets to move,
So smiled the day when the first morn arose !

DR. JOHN LEYDEN.

REVE DU MIDI.

WHEN o'er the mountain steeps
The hazy noontide creeps,
And the shrill cricket sleeps
Under the grass;
When soft the shadows lie,
And clouds sail o'er the sky,
And the idle winds go by,

With the heavy scent of blossoms as they pass,

Then, when the silent stream Lapses as in a dream,

And the water-lilies gleam

Up to the sun;

When the hot and burdened day
Rests on its downward way,

When the moth forgets to pla

And the plodding ant may dream her work is

done,

Then, from the noise of war
And the din of earth afar,
Like some forgotten star
Dropt from the sky,
The sounds of love and fear,