I bind the caverns of the sea with hair,

Glossy, and long, and rich as kings' estate;

I polish the green ice, and gleam the wall

With the white frost, and leaf the brown trees tall.

CHANNING.

THE PASS OF KIRKSTONE.

WITHIN the mind strong fancies work,

A deep delight the bosom thrills,
Oft as I pass along the fork
Of these fraternal hills,

Where, save the rugged road, we find

No appanage of human kind,
Nor hint of man; if stone or rock
Seem not his handiwork to mock
By something cognizably shaped;
Mockery, or model roughly hewn,
And left as if by earthquake strewn,
Or from the flood escaped:
Altars for Druid service fit;
(But where no fire was ever lit,
Unless the glow-worm to the skies
Thence offer nightly sacrifice,)
Wrinkled Egyptian monument;
Green moss-grown tower; or hoary
tent;

Tents of a camp that never shall be raised

On which four thousand years have gazed!

The robin and the wren are flown, and from the shrubs the jay; And from the wood-top calls the crow, through all the gloomy day.

Where are the flowers, the fair young flowers, that lately sprang and stood, In brighter light and softer airs, a beauteous sisterhood?

Alas! they all are in their graves:

the gentle race of flowers Are lying in their lowly beds, with the fair and good of ours. The rain is falling where they lie; but the cold November rain Calls not, from out the gloomy

earth, the lovely ones again.

The wind-flower and the violet, they perished long ago; And the brier-rose and the orchis

died amid the summer glow; But on the hill the golden-rod, and the aster in the wood, And the yellow sunflower by the brook, in autumn beauty stood, Till fell the frost from the clear, cold heaven, as falls the plague on men, And the brightness of their smile was gone from upland, glade, and glen.

And now when comes the calm mild day, as still such days will come, To call the squirrel and the bee from out their winter home;

When the sound of dropping nuts is heard, though all the trees are still,

Yet not unmeet it was, that one, like that young friend of ours, So gentle and so beautiful, should perish with the flowers. BRYANT.

TO THE FRINGED GENTIAN.

THOU blossom bright with autumn dew,

And colored with the heaven's own blue,

That openest, when the quiet light Succeeds the keen and frosty night.

Thou comest not when violets lean O'er wandering brooks and springs unseen,

Or columbines, in purple drest, Nod o'er the ground-bird's hidden nest.

Thou waitest late, and com'st alone, When woods are bare, and birds are flown,

And frosts and shortening days portend

The aged year is near its end.

Then doth thy sweet and quiet eye Look through its fringes to the sky,

Blue, blue, as if that sky let fall
A flower from its cerulean wall.

I would that thus, when I shall see The hour of death draw near

me,

Hope, blossoming within my heart, May look to heaven as I depart.

TREES.

to

BRYANT.

A SHADIE grove not far away they spied,

That promist ayde the tempest to withstand;

Whose loftie trees, yclad with sommers pride,

Did spred so broad, that heaven's light did hide,

Not perceable with power of any starr;

And all within were pathes ana alleies wide,

With footing worne, and leading inward far:

Faire harbour that them seems; so in they entred are.

And forth they passe, with pleasure forward led,

Joying to heare the birdes' sweete harmony,

Which therein shrouded from the tempest dred,

Seemed in their song to scorne the cruell sky.

Much can they praise the trees so straight and high,

The sayling pine; the cedar proud and tall;

The vine-propp elme; the poplar never dry;

The builder oake, sole king of forrests all;

The aspine good for staves; the cypresse funerall;

The laurel meed of mightie conquerours

And poets sage; the fir that weepeth still;

The willow, worne of forlorne paramours;

The yew, obedient to the bender's will;

The birch for shaftes; the sallow for the mill;

The mirrhe sweet-bleeding in the bitter wound;

The warlike beech; the ash for nothing ill;

The fruitful olive; and the platane round;

The carver holme; the maple, seldom inward sound.

YEW-TREES.

SPENSER.

THERE is a yew-tree, pride of Lorton Vale,

Which to this day stands single in the midst

Of its own darkness, as it stood of yore:

Not loath to furnish weapons for the bands

Of Umfraville or Percy ere they marched

To Scotland's heaths; or those that crossed the sea,

And drew their sounding bows at Azincour;

Perhaps at earlier Crecy, or Poictiers.

Of vast circumference and gloom profound

This solitary Tree! a living thing Produced too slowly ever to decay; Of form and aspect too magnifi

cent

To be destroyed. But worthier still of note

Are those fraternal Four of Borrowdale,

Joined in one solemn and capacious grove;

Huge trunks! and each particular trunk a growth

Of intertwisted fibres serpentine Up-coiling, and inveterately convolved;

Nor uninformed with fantasy, and looks

That threaten the profane; a pillared shade,

Upon whose grassless floor of redbrown hue,

By sheddings from the pining umbrage tinged

Perennially; beneath whose sable roof

Of boughs, as if for festal purpose,

decked

With unrejoicing berries, ghostly shapes

May meet at noontide; Fear, and
trembling Hope,
Silence, and Foresight; Death the
Skeleton,

And Time the Shadow; there to celebrate,

As in a natural temple scattered o'er

With altars undisturbed of mossy stone,

United worship; or in mute re

pose

To lie, and listen to the mountain flood

Murmuring from Glaramara's in

most caves.

WORDSWORTH.

Beneath the lowly alder-tree,

And we will sleep a pleasant sleep, And not a care shall dare intrude

To break the marble solitude,
So peaceful and so deep.

And hark! the wind-god, as he flies,
Moans hollow in the forest trees,
And, sailing on the gusty breeze,
Mysterious music dies.

Sweet flower! that requiem wild
is mine;

It warns me to the lonely shrine,
The cold turf altar of the dead;
My grave shall be in yon lone
spot,

Where as I lie, by all forgot, A dying fragrance thou wilt o'er my ashes shed.

H. K. WHITE.

THE PRIMROSE.

Ask me why I send you here This sweet Infanta of the yeere? Ask me why I send to you This Primrose, thus bepearl'd with dew?

I will whisper to your eares, The sweets of love are mixt with

tears.