Here's a Fly, a disconsolate creature, perhaps
A child of the field, or the grove;

And, sorrow for him! this dull treacherous heat

Has seduced the poor fool from his winter retreat,
And he creeps to the edge of my stove.

Alas! how he fumbles about the domains
Which this comfortless oven environ !

He cannot find out in what track he must crawl,

Now back to the tiles, and now back to the wall,
And now on the brink of the iron.

Stock-still there he stands like a traveller bemazed; The best of his skill he has tried;

His feelers methinks I can see him put forth

To the East and the West, and the South and the

North;

But he finds neither Guide-post nor Guide.

See! his spindles sink under him, foot, leg and thigh;

His eyesight and hearing are lost

;

Between life and death his blood freezes and thaws;
And his two pretty pinions of blue dusky gauze
Are glued to his sides by the frost.

No Brother, no Friend has he near him—while I
Can draw warmth from the cheek of my Love;
As blest and as glad in this desolate gloom,

As if green summer grass were the floor of my room,
And woodbines were hanging above.

Yet, God is my witness, thou small helpless Thing! Thy life I would gladly sustain

Till summer comes up from the South, and with crowds Of thy brethren a march thou shouldst sound through

the clouds,

And back to the forests again.

The CHILDLESS FATHER.

"Up, Timothy, up with your Staff and away!
Not a soul in the village this morning will stay;
The Hare has just started from Hamilton's grounds,
And Skiddaw is glad with the cry of the hounds."

-Of coats and of jackets gray, scarlet and green, On the slopes of the pastures all colours were seen; With their comely blue aprons, and caps white as snow, The Girls on the hills made a holiday show.

The bason of box-wood*, just six months before,
Had stood on the table at Timothy's door;

* In several parts of the North of England, when a funeral takes place, a bason full of Sprigs of Box-wood is placed at

A Coffin through Timothy's threshold had passed; One Child did it bear, and that Child was his last.

Now fast up the dell came the noise and the fray,
The horse and the horn, and the hark! hark away!
Old Timothy took up his staff, and he shut
With a leisurely motion the door of his hut.

Perhaps to himself at that moment he said,
"The key I must take, for my Ellen is dead."
But of this in my ears not a word did he speak,
And he went to the chase with a tear on his cheek.

the door of the house from which the Coffin is taken up, and each person who attends the funeral ordinarily takes a Sprig of this Box-wood, and throws it into the grave of the deceased.

THE OLD

CUMBERLAND BEGGAR.

A DESCRIPTION.