The well-taught philosophic mind

To all compassion gives;

Casts round the world an equal eye,

And feels for all that lives.

If mind, as ancient sages taught,-.

A never dying flame,

Still shifts through matter's varying forms,

In

every

form the same;

Beware, lest in the worm you crush,

A brother's soul you find;

And tremble lest thy luckless hand

Dislodge a kindred mind.

Or, if this transient gleam of day

Be all of life we share,

Let pity plead within thy breast

That little all to spare.

So may thy hospitable board

With health and peace be crowned; And every charm of heartfelt ease

Beneath thy roof be found.

So when destruction lurks unseen, Which men, like mice, may share, May some kind angel clear thy path, And break the hidden snare.

TO MRS. P********,

WITH SOME DRAWINGS OF BIRDS AND INSECTS.

The kindred arts to please thee shall conspire,
One dip the pencil, and one string the lyre.

AMANDA bids;—at her command again

I seize the pencil, or resume the pen ;

No other call my willing hand requires,

And Friendship, better than a Muse inspires.

Painting and Poetry are near allied;

The kindred arts two sister Muses guide:

This charms the eye, that steals upon the ear;

There sounds are tuned, and colours blended here:

This with a silent touch enchants our eyes,

And bids a gayer, brighter world arise :

That, less allied to sense, with deeper art

Can pierce the close recesses of the heart ;

By well-set syllables, and potent sound,

Can rouse, can chill the breast, can soothe, can wound;

To life adds motion, and to beauty soul,

And breathes a spirit through the finished whole :

Each perfects each, in friendly union joined ;

This gives Amanda's form, and that her mind.

But humbler themes my artless hand requires,
Nor higher than the feathered tribe aspires.
Yet who the various nations can declare
That plough with busy wing the peopled air?
These cleave the crumbling bark for insect food;
Those dip their crooked beak in kindred blood:

Some haunt the rushy moor, the lonely woods

s;

Some bathe their silver plumage in the floods;

Some fly to man, his household gods implore,
And gather round his hospitable door,

Wait the known call, and find protection there

From all the lesser tyrants of the air.

The tawny Eagle seats his callow brood

High on the cliff, and feasts his young with blood. On Snowdon's rocks, or Orkney's wide domain, Whose beetling cliffs o'erhang the Western main, The royal bird his lonely kingdom forms

Amidst the gathering clouds and sullen storms;
Through the wide waste of air he darts his sight,
And holds his sounding pinions poised for flight;
With cruel eye premeditates the war,

And marks his destined victim from afar :
Descending in a whirlwind to the ground,
His pinions like the rush of waters sound;