With thy clear keen joyaunce

Languor cannot be; Shadow of annoyance

Never came near thee; Thou lovest, but never knew love's sad satiety.

Waking or asleep

Thou of death must deem Things more true and deep

Than we mortals dream, Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal

stream?

We look before and after,

And pine for what is not ; Our fincerest laughter

With some pain is fraught; Our sweetest songs are those which tell of

saddest thought.

Yet if we could scorn

Hate, and pride, and fear, If we were things born

Not to shed a tear, I know not how thy joy we ever could come

near.

Better than all measures

Of delightful found; Better than all treasures

That in books are found, To poet were thy skill, thou scorner of the

ground.

Teach me half the gladness

That thy soul must know; Such harmonious madness

From my lips should flow, The world would listen then as I am listening

now.

SHELLEY.

XXVIII.

THE SKYLARK.

IRD of the Wilderness,

Blithesome and cumberless,
Sweet be thy matin o'er moorland and

lea,
Emblem of happiness,
Bleft be thy dwelling-place,
Oh to abide in the desert with thee.

Wild is thy lay and loud,

Far in the downy cloud,
Love gives it energy, love gave it birth;

Where on thy dewy wing,

Where art thou foaring,
Thy lay is in Heaven, thy love is on earth.

O'er moor and mountain green,

O'er fell and mountain sheen,
O'er the red streamer that heralds the day ;

Over the cloudlet dim,

Over the rainbow's rim, Musical cherub, foar singing away.

Then when the gloaming comes,

Far where the heather blooms, Sweet will thy welcome and bed of love be ;

Emblem of happiness,

Bleft be thy dwelling-place,
Oh! to abide in the desert with thee.

Hogg.

XXIX.

THE CORAL ISLE.

SAW the living pile ascend,
The Mausoleum of its architects ;
Still dying upwards as their labours

closed.
Slime the material, but the slime was

turned To adamant by their petrific touch. Frail were their frames, ephemeral their lives,

C

Their masonry imperishable. All
Life's needful functions, food, exertion, reft,
By nice

economy of Providence,
Were overruled to carry on the process,
Which out of water brought forth solid rock.
Atom by atom thus the mountain grew,
A coral island, stretching east and west.

- Compared with this amazing edifice,
Raised by the weakest creatures in existence,
What are the works of intellectual man,.
His temples, palaces, and fepulchres ?
Duft in the balance, atoms in the gale,
Compared with these achievements in the deep,
Were all the monuments of olden time.

The Pyramids would be mere pinnacles, The giant statues wrought from rocks of granite, But

puny ornaments for such a pile As this stupendous mound of catacombs, Filled with dry mummies of the builder, WoRMS.

James MONTGOMERY.

XXX.

THE MOLE HILL.

ELL me, thou dust beneath my feet,

Thou dust that once hadft breathTell me how many mortals meet,

In this small hill of death?

By wafting winds and flooding rains,

From ocean, earth, and sky ; Collected here, the frail remains

Of slumbering millions lie.

The mole that scoops, with curious toil,

Her subterranean bed,
Thinks not she ploughs so rich a foil,

And mines among the dead.

But oh! where'er she turns the ground,

My kindred earth I see;
Once every atom of this mound

Lived, breathed, and felt like me.

Like me, these elder-born of clay

Enjoyed the cheerful light; Bore the brief burden of a day

And went to rest at night.