THE WEST WIND.

BENEATH the forest's skirt I rest,

Whose branching pines rise dark and high,

And hear the breezes of the West

Among the thread-like foliage sigh.

Sweet Zephyr! why that sound of woe?
Is not thy home among the flowers?
Do not the bright June roses blow,

To meet thy kiss at morning hours?

And lo thy glorious realm outspread-
Yon stretching valleys, green and gay,
And yon free hill-tops, o'er whose head
The loose white clouds are borne away.

And there the full broad river runs,
And many a fount wells fresh and sweet
To cool thee when the mid-day suns

Have made thee faint beneath their heat.

Thou wind of joy, and youth, and love;
Spirit of the new-wakened year!

The sun in his blue realm above

Smooths a bright path when thou art here.

In lawns the murmuring bee is heard,
The wooing ring-dove in the shade;
On thy soft breath, the new-fledged bird
Takes wing, half happy, half afraid.

Ah! thou art like our wayward race ;— When not a shade of pain or ill

Dims the bright smile of Nature's face,

Thou lov'st to sigh and murmur still.

THE BURIAL-PLACE.

A FRAGMENT.

EREWHILE, on England's pleasant shores, our sires

Left not their churchyards unadorned with

shades

Or blossoms; and indulgent to the strong

And natural dread of man's last home, the grave,
Its frost and silence-they disposed around,
To soothe the melancholy spirit that dwelt
Too sadly on life's close, the forms and hues
VOL. I.-3**

Of vegetable beauty. There the yew,
Green even amid the snows of winter, told
Of immortality, and gracefully

The willow, a perpetual mourner, drooped;
And there the gadding woodbine crept about,
And there the ancient ivy. From the spot
Where the sweet maiden, in her blossoming

years

Cut off, was laid with streaming eyes, and hands
That trembled as they placed her there, the rose
Sprung modest, on bowed stalk, and better
spoke

Her graces, than the proudest monument.
There children set about their playmate's grave
The pansy. On the infant's little bed,
Wet at its planting with maternal tears,
Emblem of early sweetness, early death,
Nestled the lowly primrose. Childless dames,
And maids that would not raise the reddened