And, first of peerless form and hue,
The stately Lily caught my view,
Fair bending from her graceful stem,
Like queen with regal diadem:
But though I viewed her with delight,
She seemed too much to woo the sight-
A fashionable belle-to shine

In some more courtly wreath than mine.
I turned and saw a tempting row
Of flaunting Tulips full in blow—
But left them with their gaudy dyes
To Nature's beaux-the butterflies.
Bewildered 'mid a thousand hues,
Still harder grew the task to choose ;
Here, delicate Carnations bent
Their heads in lovely languishment,—
Much as a pensive Miss expresses,
With neck declined, her soft distresses!
The gay Jonquils in foppish pride
Stood by the Painted Lady's side,
And Hollyhocks superbly tall
Beside the Crown-Imperial.

But still 'midst all this gorgeous glow
Seemed less of sweetness than of show;
While close beside in warning grew
The allegoric Thyme and Rue.

There, too, stood that fair-weather flower
Which, faithful still in sunshine hour,
With fervent adoration turns

Its breast where golden Phœbus burns—
Base symbol (which I scorned to lift)
Of friends that change as fortunes shift!
Tired of the search, I bent my way
Where Teviot's haunted waters stray;
And from the Wild-Flowers of the grove
I framed a garland for my love.
The slender circlet first to twine,
I plucked the rambling Eglantine,

That decked the cliff in clusters free,
As sportive and as sweet as she:
I stole the Violet from the brook,
Though hid like her in shady nook,
And wove it with the Mountain-Thyme,
The myrtle of our stormy clime:
The Hare-bell looked like Mary's eye,
The Blush Rose breathed her tender sigh,
And Daisies, bathed in dew, exprest
Her innocent and gentle breast.
And now, my Mary's brow to braid,
This chaplet in her bower is laid,
A fragrant emblem fresh and wild
Of simple Nature's sweetest child.

PRINGLE.

AUTUM N.

HOUGHT loves to hold communion with thee,
Pale Autumn, crowned with leaves so dry and

sere;

Thy voice is whispering in the gale to me;

It sounds farewell unto the waning year. Season of memory, for musing made,

Alas, how meet for thee the cypress bough! Yet the green myrtle and the laurel's shade Remain, to bring their trophies for thy brow; While, rustling ever from the trembling spray Beneath thy feet, the charms of summer's pride decay.

Fast falls thy dusky curtain, evening grey;

The last faint gleam is fading from the sky; The flowers of spring's green promise, where are they? Methinks the gathering makes sad reply:

"Gone with the flying hours, that ceaseless sweep O'er time's wide, shoreless sea, so lone and deep

Gone with the forms that now we seek in vain—
The nouned, the loved, who in remembrance well;
Whose voice, whose step, can never come again:
Affections severed bond, farewell, arevel:”

AY, William, nay, not so the changeful year
In all its due successions to my sight

Presents but varied beauties, transient all,
All in their season good. These fading leaves,
That with their rich variety of hues
Make yonder forest in the slanting sun
So beautiful, in you awake the thought

Of winter, cold, drear winter; when the trees,
Each like a fleshless skeleton, shall stretch

Its bare brown boughs; when not a flower shall spread
Its colours to the day, and not a bird
Carol its joyance; but all nature wear
One sullen aspect, bleak and desolate,
To eye, ear, feeling, comfortless alike.
To me their many-coloured beauties speak
Of times of merriment and festival,
The year's best holiday: I call to mind
The school-boy days, when, in the falling leaves,
I saw with eager hope the pleasant sign
Of coming Christmas, when at morn I took
My wooden calendar, and, counting up
Once more its often-told account, smoothed off
Each day with more delight the daily notch.
To you the beauties of the autumnal year
Make mournful emblems, and you think of man
Doomed to the grave's long winter, spirit-broken,
Bending beneath the burden of his years,

Sense-dulled and fretful, "full of aches and pains,"

Yet clinging still to life. To me they show
The calm decay of nature, when the mind
Retains its strength, and in the languid eye
Religion's holy hopes kindle a joy

That makes old age look lovely. All to you
Is dark and cheerless; you in this fair world
See some destroying principle abroad,

Air, earth, and water, full of living things,
Each on the other preying; and the ways
Of man a strange, perplexing labyrinth,

Where crimes and miseries, each producing each,
Render life loathsome, and destroy the hope
That should in death bring comfort. Oh, my friend,
That thy faith were as mine! that thou couldst see
Death still producing life, and evil still

Working its own destruction; couldst behold
The strifes and tumults of this troubled world
With the strong eye that sees the promised day
Dawn through this night of tempest ! all things then
Would minister to joy; then should thine heart
Be healed and harmonized, and thou shouldst feel
God, always, everywhere, and all in all.

SOUTHEY.

AUTUM N.

HERE is a fearful spirit busy now;

Already have the elements unfurled

Their banners: the great sea-wave is upcurled; The cloud comes: the fierce winds begin to blow About, and blindly on their errands go;

And quickly will the pale red leaves be hurled From their dry boughs, and all the forest world, Stripped of its pride, be like a desert show.

I love that moaning music which I hear

In the bleak gusts of Autumn, for the soul Seems gathering tidings from another sphere,

And in sublime, mysterious sympathy,

Man's bounding spirit ebbs, and swells more high,
Accordant to the billow's loftier roll.

PROCTER

AUTUM N.

EASON of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;
To bend with apples the mossed cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,

Until they think warm days will never cease;
For Summer has o'erbrimmed their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,

Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or in a half-reaped furrow sound asleep,
Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes, like a gleaner, thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook ;

Or by a cyder press, with patient look,

Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.

Where are the songs of spring? Ay, where are they?

Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,

While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day.
And touch the stubble plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river shallows, borne aloft,