"INNOCENT CHILD AND SNOW-WHITE FLOWER."

INNOCENT child and snow-white flower!
Well are ye paired in your opening hour.
Thus should the pure and the lovely meet,
Stainless with stainless, and sweet with sweet.

White as those leaves, just blown apart,
Are the folds of thy own young heart;

Guilty passion and cankering care

Never have left their traces there.

Artless one! though thou gazest now

O'er the white blossom with earnest brow,

Soon will it tire thy childish eye;

Fair as it is, thou wilt throw it by.

Throw it aside in thy weary hour,

Throw to the ground the fair white flower;

Yet, as thy tender years depart,

Keep that white and innocent heart.

TO THE RIVER ARVE.

SUPPOSED TO BE WRITTEN AT A HAMLET NEAR THE FOOT OF MONT BLANO,

NOT from the sands or cloven rocks,
Thou rapid Arve! thy waters flow;
Nor earth, within her bosom, locks
Thy dark unfathomed wells below.
Thy springs are in the cloud, thy stream
Begins to move and murmur first
Where ice-peaks feel the noonday beam,
Or rain-storms on the glacier burst.

Born where the thunder and the blast,
And morning's earliest light are born,
Thou rushest swoln, and loud, and fast,
By these low homes, as if in scorn:
Yet humbler springs yield purer waves;
And brighter, glassier streams than thine,
Sent up from earth's unlighted caves,

With heaven's own beam and image shine.

Yet stay; for here are flowers and trees; Warm rays on cottage roofs are here, And laugh of girls, and hum of bees

Here linger till thy waves are clear. Thou heedest not-thou hastest on;

From steep to steep thy torrent falls, Till, mingling with the mighty Rhone, It rests beneath Geneva's walls.

Rush on-but were there one with me That loved me, I would light my hearth Here, where with God's own majesty

Are touched the features of the earth.

By these old peaks, white, high, and vast, Still rising as the tempests beat,

Here would I dwell, and sleep, at last,

Among the blossoms at their feet.

TO COLE, THE PAINTER, DEPARTING FOR EUROPE.

A SONNET.

THINE eyes shall see the light of distant skies:
Yet, COLE! thy heart shall bear to Europe's strand
A living image of thy native land,

Such as on thine own glorious canvas lies;
Lone lakes-savannas where the bison roves-

Rocks rich with summer garlands-solemn streams— Skies, where the desert eagle wheels and screams— Spring bloom and autumn blaze of boundless groves. Fair scenes shall greet thee where thou goest-fair,

But different-everywhere the trace of men, Paths, homes, graves, ruins, from the lowest glen To where life shrinks from the fierce Alpine air,

Gaze on them, till the tears shall dim thy sight,
But keep that earlier, wilder image bright.

TO THE FRINGED GENTIAN.

THOU blossom bright with autumn dew,
And coloured with the heaven's own blue,
That openest when the quiet light
Succeeds the keen and frosty night.

Thou comest not when violets lean
O'er wandering brooks and springs unseen,
Or columbines, in purple dressed,

Nod o'er the ground-bird's hidden nest.

Thou wait st late and com'st alone,

When woods are bare and birds are flown, And frosts and shortening days portend

The aged year is near his end.

Then doth thy sweet and quiet eye
Look through its fringes to the sky,
Blue-blue-as if that sky let fall
A flower from its cerulean wall.

I would that thus, when I shall see
The hour of death draw near to me,
Hope, blossoming within my heart,
May look to heaven as I depart.