On he goes!-resistless Fate
Hastes to fill his mortal date:
Cease, ye warnings, vain tho' true.
Murder'd King, adieu! adieu !

SUSANNA'S VIGIL.

Twelve times the slow-voiced village clock
From moss-grown turret sounded deep;
The guardian dogs, the folded flock,
And toil-spent hinds, were sunk in sleep.

Alone Susanna wak'd: her arm,
Tear-moisten'd, propt her languid head;
Full on her heart she felt th' alarm,
And sudden started from her bed.

On this sad night a year had roll'd,
A year of sorrow's darkest shade,
Since low beneath the hallow'd mould
Her William's clay-cold corse was laid.

Too well her memory kept the date
Of woes that knew but one relief;
And forth she went, with tottering gait,
To taste the luxury of grief.

Across the green, the church-yard way
She scarce discern'd amid the gloom,
Till from the moon a friendly ray

Burst thro' and gleam'd on William's tomb.

With throbbing breast she sought the place,
And knelt beside the sacred stone;

To heav'n she turn'd her pallid face,
And clasp'd her hands in speechless moan.

At length she cried (her hollow voice
Broke awful thro' the shades of night),
"Dear object of my earliest choice,
Once my heart's joy, my eyes' delight;

If yet, a spirit clad in air,

Thou hoverest round these cold remains; If earthly things be yet thy care,

Thy once-lov'd friends, and native plains;

Oh turn thy pitying looks of love

On her, thy own bethrothed maid; Brood o'er her like the tender dove, And fly to thy Susanna's aid!

Twelve dismal months this tortur'd breast
Nor joy nor soft repose has felt;

Oh enter thou, a sainted guest,
And grief in holy fervours melt!

So shall these poor remains of breath
No more in sighs accuse my fate;
But for the welcome stroke of death
In peace my patient soul shall wait.”

This said, she rose: and now she hears (With Fancy's fond illusions warm) Sweet music trilling in her ears,

And sees her William's glitt'ring form.

The vision ceas'd. She slow returns, With backward look and falt'ring pace; With rapture's fire her bosom burns,

While feverish lustre lights her face.

Now faint, exhausted, on her bed
Her limbs the lovely mourner throws;
Kind sleep around his poppies shed,
And Nature sinks in calm repose.

But deep within her aching breast
Lurks the keen foe that saps her life;
And soon in one eternal rest

Must close the sorrowing ling'ring strife,

THE HAMLET.

Written in Whichwood Forest.

The hinds how blest, who ne'er beguil'd
To quit their hamlet's hawthorn-wild;
Nor haunt the crow'd, nor tempt the main,
For splendid care and guilty gain!

When morning's twilight-tinctur'd beam Strikes their low thatch with slanting gleam, They rove abroad in æther blue, To dip the scythe in fragrant dew: The sheaf to bind, the beech to fell, That nodding shades a craggy dell.

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 cxplore
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 canopy 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 primros'd coppice stray,
Or gambol in the new-mown hayt
Or quaintly braid the cowslip twine,
Or drive afield the tardy kine;
Or hasten from the sultry hill
To loiter at the shady rill;

Or climb the tall pine's gloomy crest
To rob the raven's ancient nest.

Their humble porch with honied flowers The curling woodbine's shade embowers: From the trim garden's thymy mound Their bees in busy swarms resound: Nor fell Disease, before his time,

Hastes to consume life's golden prime:

F