'Midst gloomy glades, in warbles clear,
Wild nature's sweetest notes they hear:
On green untrodden banks they view
The hyacinth's neglected hue:
In their lone haunts, and woodland rounds,
They spy the squirrel's airy bounds:
And startle from her ashen spray,
Across the glen, the screaming jay:
Each native charm their steps explore
Of Solitude's sequester'd store.
For them the moon with cloudless ray
Mounts, to illume their homeward way.
Their weary spirits to relieve
The meadows, incense breathe at eve.
No riot mars the simple fare,
That o'er a glimmering hearth they share:
But when the curfeu's measur'd roar
Duly, the darkening vallies o'er,
Has echoed from the distant town,
They wish no beds of cygnet down,
No trophied canopies, to close
Their drooping eyes in quick repose.
Their little sons, who spread the bloom
Of health around the clay-built room,
Or through the primrose coppice stray,
Or gambol in the new-mown hay;
Or quaintly braid the cowslip-twine,
Or drive afield the tardy kine;
Or hasten from the sultry hill,
To loitre at the shady rill;
Or climb the tall pine's gloomy crest,
To rob the raven's ancient nest.
Their humble porch with honey'd flow'rs,
The curling woodbine's shade embow'rs:
From the small garden's thymy mound,
Their bees in busy swarms resound;
Nor fell Disease, before his time,
Hastes to consume life's golden prime;
But when their temples long have wore
The silvan crown of tresses hoar;
As studious still calm peace to keep,
Beneath a flowery turf they sleep.
VERSES WRITTEN AFTER SEEING WINDSOR CASTLE.
BY THOMAS WARTON THE ELDER.
From beaut'ous Windsor's high and storied halls,
Where Edward's chiefs start from the glowing walls,
To my low cot, from ivory beds of state,
Pleas'd I return, unenvious of the great.
So the bee ranges o'er the vary'd scenes
Of corn, of heaths, of fallows, and of greens;
Pervade the thicket, soars above the hill,
Or murmurs to the meadow's murmuring rill;
Now haunts old hollow'd oaks, deserted cells,
Now seeks the low vale-lily's silver bells;
Sips the warm fragrance of the green-house bowers,
And tastes the myrtle and the citron flowers;
At length returning to the wonted comb,
Prefers to all his little straw-built home.
FINLAND SONG.
Addressed by a mother to her child.
BY DR. LEYDEN.