Clara, Clara Vere de Vere,

If Time be heavy on your hands, Are there no beggars at your gate,

Nor any poor about your lands? O! teach the orphan-boy to read,

Or teach the orphan-girl to sew, Pray Heaven for a human heart, And let the foolish yeoman go.

THE TALKING OAK.

CE more the gate behind me falls;
Once more before my face
ee the mouldered Abbey-walls,
That stand within the chase.

yond the lodge the city lies,
Beneath its drift of smoke;
dah! with what delighted eyes
I turn to yonder oak!

when my passion first began, Ere that which in me burned, e love that makes me thrice a man.

Could hope itself returned;

To yonder oak within the field

I spoke without restraint,
And with a larger faith appealed
Than Papist unto Saint.

For oft I talked with him apart,
And told him of my choice,
Until he plagiarized a heart,

And answered with a voice.

Though what he whispered under Heaven None else could understand;

I found him garrulously given,

A babbler in the land.

But since I heard him make reply

Is many a weary hour; "Twere well to question him, and try If yet he keeps the power.

Hail, hidden to the knees in fern,

Broad oak of Sumner-chase, Whose topmost branches can discern The roofs of Sumner-place!

Say thou, whereon I carved her name,

If ever maid or spouse,

As fair as my Olivia, came

To rest beneath thy boughs?

"O Walter, I have sheltered here

Whatever maiden grace

d twist his girdle tight, and pat e girls upon the cheek,

yet, in scorn of Peter's-pence, d numbered bead, and shrift, Harry broke into the spence, d turned the cowls adrift:

I have seen some score of those esh faces, that would thrive.

n his man-minded offset rose chase the deer at five;

d all that from the town would strell
1 that wild wind made work,
hich the gloomy brewer's soul
ent by me, like a stork:

e slight she-slips of loyal blood,
id others, passing praise.
t-laced, but all-too-full in bud
r puritanic stays:

d I have shadowed many a group
beauties, that were born

acup-times of hood and hoop, while the patch was worn;

And, leg and arm with love-knots gay,
About me leaped and laughed.

The modish Cupid of the day,

And shrilled his tinsel shaft.

"I swear (and else may insects prick
Each leaf into a gall)

This girl, for whom your heart is sick,
Is three times worth them all;

"For those and theirs, by Nature's law,

Have faded long ago;

But in these later springs I saw

Your own Olivia blow,

"From when she gambolled on the greens,

A baby-germ, to when

The maiden blossoms of her teens

Could number five from ten.

"I swear, by leaf, and wind and rain,
(And hear me with thine ears,)
That, though I circle in the grain
Five hundred rings of years-

"Yet, since I first could cast a shade,
Did never creature pass
So slightly, musically made,
So light upon the grass:

"For as to fairies, that will flit

To make the greensward fresh,

I hold them exquisitely knit,

But far too spare of flesh."

O, hide thy knotted knees in fern,
And overlook the chase;

And from thy topmost branch discern
The roofs of Sumner-place.

But thou, whereon I carved her name,
That oft hast heard my vows,
Declare when last Olivia came

To sport beneath thy boughs.

"O yesterday, you know, the fair
Was holden at the town;
Her father left his good arm-chair,

And rode his hunter down.

"And with him Albert came on his.

I looked at him with joy:

As cowslip unto oxlip is,

So seems she to the boy.

"An hour had passed—and, sitting straight

Within the low-wheeled chaise,

Her mother trundled to the gate

Behind the dappled grays.

"But, as for her, she stayed at home, And on the roof she went,

And down the way you use to come

She looked with discontent.