field,

Your motions, glittering Elves !
Ye weave-no danger from without,
And peace among yourselves.
Type of a sunny human breast
Is your transparent cell;
Where Fear is but a transient guest,
No sullen humours dwell;
Where, sensitive of every ray
That smites this tiny sea,
Your scaly panoplies repay
The loan with usury.

How beautiful! Yet none knows why
This ever-graceful change,
Renewed-renewed incessantly-
Within your quiet range.

Is it that ye with conscious skill

For mutual pleasure glide;
And sometimes, not without your will,
Are dwarfed, or magnified?
Fays-Genii of gigantic size-
And now, in twilight dim,
Clustering like constellated Eyes
In wings of Cherubim,
When they abate their fiery glare:
Whate'er your forms express,
Whate'er ye seem, whate'er ye are,
All leads to gentleness.

Cold though your nature be, 'tis pure;
Your birthright is a fence
From all that haughtier kinds endure
Through tyranny of sense.
Ah! not alone by colours bright

Are Ye to Heaven allied,
When, like essential Forms of light,
Ye mingle, or divide.

For day-dreams soft as e'er beguiled
Day-thoughts while limbs repose;
For moonlight fascinations mild

Your gift, ere shutters close;
Accept, mute Captives! thanks and praise;
And may this tribute prove
That gentle admirations raise
Delight resembling love.

LIBERTY.

(SEQUEL TO THE ABOVE.)

[Addressed to a Friend; the Gold and Silver Fishes having been removed to a pool in the pleasure-ground of Rydal Mount.] "The liberty of a people consists in being governed by laws which they have made for

While musing here I sit in shadow cool, And watch these mute Companions, in the pool,

course."-COWLEY.

THOSE breathing Tokens of your kind regard,

(Suspect not, Anna, that their fate is hard; Not soon does aught to which mild fancies cling,

In lonely spots, become a slighted thing;)
Those silent Inmates now no longer share,
Nor do they need, our hospitable care,
Removed in kindness from their glassy Cell
To the fresh waters of a living Well;
That spreads into an elfin pool opaque
Of which close boughs a glimmering mirror
make,

On whose smooth breast with dimples light and small

The fly may settle, leaf or blossom fall. — There swims, of blazing sun and beating shower

Fearless (but how obscured!) the golden
Power,

That from his bauble prison used to cast
Gleams by the richest jewel unsurpast;
And near him, darkling like a sullen Gnome,
The silver Tenant of the crystal dome;
Dissevered both from all the mysteries
Of hue and altering shape that charmed all
eyes.

They pined, perhaps, they languished while they shone;

And, if not so, what matters beauty gone And admiration lost, by change of place That brings to the inward creature no disgrace?

But if the change restore his birthright, then, Whate'er the difference, boundless is the gain.

Who can divine what impulses from God
Reach the caged Lark, within a town-abode,
From his poor inch or two of daisied sod?
O yield him back his privilege! No sea
Swells like the bosom of a man set free ;
A wilderness is rich with liberty.
Roll on, ye spouting Whales, who die or keep
Your independence in the fathomless Deep!
Spread, tiny Nautilus, the living sail;
Dive, at thy choice, or brave the freshening
gale!

If unreproved the ambitious Eagle mount
Sunward to seek the daylight in its fount,
Bays, gulfs, and ocean's Indian width,
shall be,

Till the world perishes, a field for thee!

powers,

But now are silent as the dim-seen flowers: Nor does the Village Church-clock's iron

tone

The time's and season's influence disown;
Nine beats distinctly to each other bound
In drowsy sequence; how unlike the sound
That, in rough winter, oft inflicts a fear
On fireside Listeners, doubting what they
hear!

The Shepherd, bent on rising with the sun, Had closed his door before the day was done,

And now with thankful heart to bed doth creep,

And join his little Children in their sleep. The Bat, lured forth where trees the lane o'ershade,

Flits and reflits along the close arcade ; Far-heard the Dor-hawk chases the white Moth

With burring note, which Industry and Sloth Might both be pleased with, for it suits

them both.

Wheels and the tread of hoofs are heard

no more;

One Boat there was, but it will touch the

shore

With the next dipping of its slackened oar; Faint sound, that, for the gayest of the gay,

Might give to serious thought a moment's

sway,

As a last token of Man's toilsome day!

II.

NOT in the lucid intervals of life
That come but as a curse to Party-strife;
Not in some hour when Pleasure with a sigh
Of languor puts his rosy garland by ;
Not in the breathing-times of that poor
Slave

Who daily piles up wealth in Mammon's

cave,

Is Nature felt, or can be; nor do words, Which practised Talent readily affords, Prove that her hand has touched responsive chords;

Nor has her gentle beauty power to move With genuine rapture and with fervent love

Life's rule from passion craved for passion's

sake;

Untaught that meekness is the cherished bent

Of all the truly Great and all the Innocent.
But who is innocent? By grace divine,
Not otherwise, O Nature! we are thine
Through good and evil thine, in just degre
Of rational and manly sympathy.
To all that Earth from pensive hearts is
stealing,

And Heaven is now to gladdened eyes revealing,

Add every charm the Universe can show Through every change its aspects undergo Care may be respited, but not repealed; No perfect cure grows on that bounded field.

Vain is the pleasure, a false calm the peace, If He, through whom alone our conflicts

THE LABOURER'S NOON-DAY

HYMN.

Up to the throne of God is borne
The voice of praise at early morn,
And he accepts the punctual hymn
Sung as the light of day grows dim.
Nor will he turn his ear aside
From holy offerings at noontide :
Then here reposing let us raise
A song of gratitude and praise.

What though our burthen be not light
We need not toil from morn to night;
The respite of the mid-day hour
Is in the thankful Creature's power.
Blest are the moments, doubly blest,
That, drawn from this one hour of rest,
Are with a ready heart bestowed
Upon the service of our God!

Why should we crave a hallowed spot?
An Altar is in each man's cot,

A Church in every grove that spreads
Its living roof above our heads.

Look up to Heaven! the industrious Sun
Already half his race hath run;
He cannot halt nor go astray,
But our immortal Spirits may.

Lord! since his rising in the East,
If we have faltered or transgressed,
Guide, from thy love's abundant source,
What yet remains of this day's course :

Help with thy grace, through life's short day
Our upward and our downward way;
And glorify for us the west,
When we shall sink to final rest.

A WREN'S NEST.

AMONG the dwellings framed by birds
In field or forest with nice care,
Is none that with the little Wren's
In snugness may compare.

No door the tenement requires,

And seldom needs a laboured roof;
is it to the fiercest sun
Impervious and storm-proof.

So warm, so beautiful withal,
In perfect fitness for its aim,
That to the Kind by special grace
Their ins.inct surely came.

And when for their abodes they seek
An opportune recess,
The Hermit has no finer eye

For shadowy quietness.

These find, 'mid ivied Abbey walls,
A canopy in some still nook ;
Others are pent-housed by a brae
That overhangs a brook.

There to the brooding Bird her Mate
Warbles by fits his low clear song;
And by the busy Streamlet both
Are sung to all day long.

Or in sequestered lanes they build,
Where, till the flitting Bird's return,
Her eggs within the nest repose,
Like relics in an urn.

But still, where general choice is good,
There is a better and a best ;
And, among fairest objects, some
Are fairer than the rest;

This, one of those small Builders proved
In a green covert, where, from out
The forehead of a pollard oak,

The leafy antlers sprout;

For She who planned the mossy Lodge,
Mistrusting her evasive skill,

Had to a Primrose looked for aid
Her wishes to fulfil.

High on the trunk's projecting brow,
The budding flowers, peeped forth the nest
And fixed an infant's span above
The prettiest of the grove !

The treasure proudly did I show

To some whose minds without disdain Can turn to little things, but once Looked up for it in vain :

'Tis gone-a ruthless Spoiler's prey,

Who heeds not beauty, love, or song, 'Tis gone! (so seemed it) and we grieved Indignant at the wrong.

Just three days after, passing by

In clearer light the moss-built cell
I saw, espied its shaded mouth,
And felt that all was well.

The Primrose for a veil had spread
The largest of her upright leaves;
And thus, for purposes benign,
A simple Flower deceives.