Read, an artist as well as a poet, first came into notice as the author of several sweet and graceful lyrics. His best poems are those which have a pastoral character, of which the following, taken From The Diversions of the Echo Club, is an imitation:—
A Sylvan Scene.
The moon, a reaper of the ripened stars,
Held out her silver sickle in the west;
I leaned against the shadowy pasture-bars,
A hermit, with a burden in my breast.
The lilies leaned beside me as I stood;
The lilied heifers gleamed beneath the shed;
And spirits from the high ancestral wood
Cast their articulate benisons on my head.