Yet we mark it not;

- fruits redden,

Fresh flowers blow, as flowers have blown,

And the heart is loth to deaden

Hopes that she so long hath known.

Be thou wiser, youthful Maiden!
And when thy decline shall come,
Let not flowers, or boughs fruit-laden,
Hide the knowledge of thy doom.

Now, even now, ere wrapp'd in slumber,

Fix thine eyes upon

the sea

That absorbs time, space, and number;
Look towards Eternity!

Follow thou the flowing River
On whose breast are thither borne
All Deceived, and each Deceiver,
Through the gates of night and morn ;

Through the year's successive portals;
Through the bounds which many a star
Marks, not mindless of frail mortals,

When his light returns from far.

Thus when Thou with Time hast travell'd
Tow'rds the mighty gulf of things,

And the mazy Stream unravell'd
With thy best imaginings;

Think, if thou on beauty leanest,
Think how pitiful that stay,
Did not virtue give the meanest
• Charms superior to decay.

Duty, like a strict preceptor,
Sometimes frowns, or seems to frown;
Choose her thistle for thy sceptre,

While thy brow youth's roses crown.

Grasp it, if thou shrink and tremble,

Fairest Damsel of the green,

Thou wilt lack the only symbol

That proclaims a genuine Queen;

And ensures those palms of honour
Which selected spirits wear,
Bending low before the Donor,

Lord of Heaven's unchanging Year!

VOL. I.

JUVENILE PIECES.

Of the Poems in this class, "THE EVENING

WALK" and "DESCRIPTIVE SKETCHES" were first published in 1793. They are reprinted with some unimportant alterations that were chiefly made very soon after their publication. It would have been easy to amend them, in many passages, both as to sentiment and expression, and I have not been altogether able to resist the temptation: but attempts of this kind are made at the risk of injuring those characteristic features, which, after all, will be regarded as the principal recommendation of juvenile poems.