He loves the plant, because its name is dear.
But on the pale-green stalks no flowers appear,
Albeit the future disc is growing fast.

He feels each little bud, with pleasing pain,
And sighs, in sweet communion with the past;
But never to his lip, or burning brain,

The flower's cold softness shall he press again,
Murmuring his long-lost Mary's virgin name.'

He now goes on to say good-by to friends and acquaintances living in the neighbourhood, within an easy walk, and among the rest to the village Poet

"A kind, good man, who knows our father's worth,
And owns his skill in everything but rhyme."

With touches almost of liveliness. such as this-does Elliott relieve the mournful thoughts crowding heavily upon the old man's heart-and he scatters, too, gleams of earth's transitory beauty all round his parting feet. The Blind feels they are there.

"But thou deny'st not beauty, colour, light;

Full well thou know'st, that, all unseen by thee,
The Vernal Spirit, in the valleys bright,

Is scattering diamonds over blossoms white.
She, though she deign to walk, hath wings of gold,
And plumes all beauteous, while, in leafing bower,
The Chrysalis, that ne'er did wing behold,
Though born to glide in air o'er fruit and flower,
Disproves the plume, the beauty and the power,
And deems it quite impossible to fly."

Enoch, ere he shakes hands for the last time with Nature, must visit his daughter Mary-at the Mill. For her sake it was that the secret sorrow troubled him, which he feared to mention even to his own heart into which it crept. Intima tions had come to him in his darkness that all was not right in her husband's house-and he feared that Albert was a

bankrupt. Was she-Mary Gould, the daughter of Mary Gould -to become an inmate of the workhouse? Over his grave were there indeed after all, at last, to be shed by the chief mourner-a pauper's tears!

"But lo, tow'rds Albert's mill the Patriarch wends!
(His own hands rear'd the pile: the very wheels
Were made by him; and where the archway bends,

His name, in letters of hard stone, appeals
To time and memory.) With mute step, he steals
Along the vale, but does not hear the mill!
"Tis long since he was there. Alas, the wave
Runs all to waste, the mighty wheel is still!
Poor Enoch feels as if become a slave;
And o'er his heart the long grass of the grave
Already trembles! To his stealthy foot,

Around the door thick springs the chance-sown oat.
While prene their plumes the water-hen and coot;
Fearless and fierce, the rat and otter float,
Catching the trout in Albert's half-sunk boat;
And, pendent from each bucket fat weeds dip
Their slimy verdure in the listless stream.
'Albert is ruin'd, then!' his quivering lip
Mutters in anguish, while with paler beam
His sad eye glistens; ''tis, alas, no dream!
Heaven, save the blood of Enoch Wray from shame,
Shame undeserved, the treadmill of the soul !'"

Stunned by this blow, but not into stone, is the Village Patriarch. Albert was blameless; for he had been always “strong, laborious, frugal, just;" but all over the land,

"in April's fickle sky,

The wretched rich and not less wretched poor

Changed places miserably; and the bad

Throve, while the righteous begg'd from door to door!"

The shame of having an unprincipled or profligate son has not fallen on Enoch Wray, and there is on earth to comfort him still a Mary Gould. Therefore he yet walks erect before men's eyes, in spite of this blow falling on the burthen of a hundred years. But behold him on his knees! In the churchyard "reading with his fingers"

"Pages with silent admonition fraught.”

Many of the inscriptions there his own chisel had wrought! Nay, some of them had been even the effusions of his own fervid and pious heart-for the Village Patriarch had been one of Nature's elegiac poets, unknown but within the narrow neighbourhood of its tombstones. He crawls from slab to slab-and his memory touches many an affecting record. To such a visitant they must be all affecting—

"John Stot, Charles Lamb, Giles Humble, Simon Flea,

And Richard Green, here wait for Alice-me!"

Enoch thinks perhaps for a moment of the escape he mad from Alice's clutches a few weeks ago-but his fine fingernor shall poetry ever blind it-travels over a very differer: memorial-more pathetic than any that was ever writ i Greek.

"A broken mast, a bursting wave, a child
Weeping, a woman frantic on the shore;
Rude stone! Thou tell'st a story sad and wild.
'Pain, want, unkindness, all afflictions sore,
Disease, suspense, with constancy I bore;
My heart was broken-Letty lies with me ;
And now we know that Matthew died at sea."

The churchyard belongs to the church in which Enoch Wray was married-married to Mary Gould-and doubtless she was buried here—yet Enoch is busying himself with other matters, and has forgotten where she lies. For had he remembered Mary Gould, would he not have gone, first of all, up to her grave, and nowhere else have knelt? Not so thought Ebenezer Elliott, and he knew Enoch Wray far better than either you or I-he had known him all his—that is all Eben's -life, and in the poem you will find it writ.

"But to one grave the blind man's eyes are turn'd,
Move where he may-and yet he seeks it not.
He communes with the poor, the lost, the mourn'd,
The buried long, by all, but him, forgot:
The hated? No; his bosom never burn'd
With fire so base: the dreaded? No, he spurn'd
Fear, as unworthy of the human breast.

Why does he pause on his dark pilgrimage?
Hath he forgot what love remembers best?
Oh, stoop and find, in this familiar page,
The mournful story, dearest to his age!
'Here Lucy rests, who in this vale of tears

Dwelt thirty weeks:-Here waits the judgment-day
Her brother James, who died, aged fifty years:
Here slumbers sinless Anne, who lived a day:
Children of Mary, and of Enoch Wray.'
His finger pauses, like a trembling wand,
Held o'er desponding hope by mercy. Lo!
Another line, cut by another hand,

On the cold stone, from which he riseth slow
But it is written on his heart of woe;
'Mary! thou art not lost, but gone before.'

'Oh, no!—not lost. The hour that shall restore Thy faithful husband, Mary, is at hand;

Ye soon shall meet again, to part no more;

By angels welcomed to their blissful land,

And wander there, like children, hand in hand,

To pluck the daisy of eternal May.”

Enoch leaves the churchyard in trouble, to be brought back 1 a few days in peace; for now

"It is the evening of an April day.

Lo, for the last time, in the cheerful sun
Our father sits, stooping his tresses grey,
To hear the stream, his ancient neighbour, run,
Young as if time had yesterday begun.

Heaven's gates are like an Angel's wing, with plumes
Of glorious green, and purply gold, on fire:

Through rifts of mountainous clouds, the light illumes
Hill-tops, and woods, that pilgrim-like retire;
And, like a giant's torch, burns Morthern spire.
Primrosy odours, violet-mingled, float

O'er blue-bells and ground ivy, on their wings
Bearing the music of the blackbird's note;
Beneath the dewy cloud the woodlark sings,
But on our father's heart no gladness flings.
Mary bends o'er him, mute. Her youngest lad
Grasps, with small hand, his grandsire's finger fast;
Well knows the old man that the boy is sad;
And the third Mary, as she hurries past,
Trembles, and looks towards the town aghast.
Enoch hears footsteps of unwelcome sound,
While at his feet the sightless mastiff lies;
And, lo, the blind dog, growling, spurns the ground!
'Two strangers are approaching,' Enoch cries;
But Mary's throbbing heart alone replies.

6

A stern Good-day, sir!' smites his cheek more pale;
A rude collision shakes him in his chair;

The Bible of his sires is mark'd for sale!
But degradation is to him despair;

The hour is come which Enoch cannot bear !
But he can die!-and in his humble grave,
Sweet shall his long rest be, by Mary's side;
And o'er his coffin uninscribed shall wave
The willow-tree, beneath the dark tower's pride
Set by his own sad hand, when Mary died."

Enoch Wray is dead; and we are left to think on the Village

Patriarch, his character, his life, and his death. Do not we always do so kindly or cruelly-whenever we chance to hear that any Christian man or woman of our acquaintance has died? "Ah! is he dead ?" "Can it be that she is cut off?" And a hundred characters of the deceased are drawn extempore, which, it is as well to know, find no lasting record—that obituary being all traced in letters of air. But we are not disposed to write Enoch Wray's epitaph, on the very day of his death-nor yet on the very day of his burial. Some time, shorter or longer, elapses after the disappearance of the deceased-before you see a man like a schoolmaster earnestly engaged with suitable tools in engraving an imperishable record of filial, or parental, or conjugal affection, on a new handsome burial-stone, that looks as if there were none other besides itself in the churchyard-though the uprights are absolutely jostling one another till they are in danger of being upset on the flats-slabs once horizontal, but now sunk, with one side invisible, into a soil which, if not originally rich, has been excellently well manured, yet is suffered to produce but dockens, nettles, and worse than weeds (can it be fiorin ?) the rank grass of wretchedness, that never fades, because it never flourishes, thatching the narrow house, but unable-though the inmates never utter a complaint— even in the driest weather, to keep out damp. That is rather a disagreeable image-and of the earth earthy; but here are some delightful images-of the heavens heavenly; and, in the midst of them, for a while let us part.

"He hears, in heaven, his swooning daughter shriek.
And when the woodbine's cluster'd trumpet blows;
And when the pink's melodious hues shall speak,
In unison of sweetness with the rose,
Joining the song of every bird, that knows
How sweet it is of wedded love to sing;
And when the fells, fresh bathed in azure air,
Wide as the summer day's all golden wing,
Shall blush to heaven, that Nature is so fair,
And man condemn'd to labour in despair;-
Then, the gay gnat, that sports its little hour;
The falcon, wheeling from the ancient wood;
The red-breast, fluttering o'er its fragrant bower;
The yellow-bellied lizard of the flood;
And dewy morn, and evening-in her hood
Of crimson, fringed with lucid shadows grand-