No more your sky-larks, melting from the

sight,

Shall thrill th' attuned heart-string with delight:

No more shall deck your pensive pleasures

sweet

With wreaths of sober hue my evening seat.
Yet dear to fancy's eye your varied scene
Of wood, hill, dale, and sparkling brook be-
tween!

Yet sweet to fancy's ear the warbled song, That soars on morning's wing your vales among.

Scenes of my hope! the aching eye ye leave Like yon bright hues, that paint the clouds of eve!

Tearful and sad'ning with the sadden'd blazę, Mine eye the gleam pursues with wistful gaze; Sees shades on shades with deeper tint impend, "Till, chill and damp, the moonless night descend.

TO A YOUNG LADY,

WITH A POEM ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.

MUCH on my early youth I love to dwell,
Ere yet I bade that friendly dome farewell,
Where first, beneath the echoing cloisters pale,
I heard of guilt, and wonder'd at the tale!
Yet though the hours flew by on careless wing,
Full heavily of sorrow would I sing.

Aye as the star of evening flung its beam
In broken radiance on the wavy stream,
My soul, amid the pensive twilight gloom,
Mourn'd with the breeze, O Lee Boo*! o'er
thy tomb.

Where'er I wander'd, Pity still was near,
Breath'd from the heart, and glisten'd in the

tear:

*Lee Boo, the son of Abba Thule, Prince of the Pellew Islands, came over to England with Captain Wilson, died of the small-pox, and is buried in Greenwich church-yard.

No knell that toll'd, but fill'd my anxious eye, And suffering Nature wept that one should die * !

Thus to sad sympathies I sooth'd my breast,
Calm as the rainbow in the weeping west :
When slumb'ring Freedom, rous'd by high
Disdain,

With giant fury burst her triple chain!
Fierce on her front the blasting dog-star glow'd;
Her banners, like a midnight meteor, flow'd;
Amid the yelling of the storm-rent skies

She came,
and scatter'd battles from her eyes!
Then Exultation wak'd the patriot fire,
And swept with wilder hand th' Alcæan lyre:
Red from the tyrants' wound I shook the lance,
And strode in joy the reeking plains of France!

Fall'n is th' oppressor, friendless, ghastly, low, And my heart aches, though Mercy struck the blow.

With wearied thought once more I seek the shade,
Where peaceful Virtue weaves the myrtle braid.
And O! if eyes, whose holy glances roll,
Swift messengers, and eloquent of soul;
If smiles more winning, and a gentler mien,
Than the love-wilder'd maniac's brain hath seen
Shaping celestial forms in vacant air,

If these demand th' impassion'd poet's care

* Southey's Retrospect.

If Mirth, and soften'd Sense, and Wit refin'd,
The blameless features of a lovely mind;
Then haply shall my trembling hand assign
No fading wreath to Beauty's saintly shrine.
Nor, Sara ! thou these early flowers refuse-
Ne'er lurk'd the snake beneath their simple
hues:

No purple bloom the child of nature brings
From Flatt'ry's night-shade: as he feels he sings.

SONNET.

TO THE AUTUMNAL MOON.

MILD splendour of the various-vested night!
Mother of wildly-working visions, hail!
I watch thy gliding, while with watry light
Thy weak eye glimmers through a fleecy veil;
And when thou lovest thy pale orb to shroud
Behind the gather'd blackness lost on high;
And when thou dartest from the wind-rent
cloud,

Thy placid lightning o'er th' awaken'd sky.
Ah, such is hope! as changeful and as fair!
Now dimly peering on the wistful sight;
Now hid behind the dragon-wing'd despair:
But soon emerging, in her radiant might,
She, o'er the sorrow-clouded breast of care,
Sails, like a meteor kindling in its flight.

IMITATED

FROM OSSIAN.

THE stream with languid murmur creeps,
In Lumin's flowery vale:
Beneath the dew the lily weeps,
Slow-waving to the gale

"Cease, restless gale," it seems to say,
"Nor wake me with thy sigling;
The honours of my vernal day

On rapid wing are flying.

*The flower hangs its head, waving at times to the gale. Why dost thou awake me, O gale! it seems to say, I am covered with the drops of heaven. The time of my fading is near, the blast that shall scatter my leaves. To-morrow shall the traveller come, he that saw me in my beauty shall come. His eyes will search the field, they will not find me. So shall they

search in vain for the voice of Cona, after it has failed

in the field.BERKATHON, see Ossian's Poems, vol. ii.