A LINCOLNSHIRE MARSH. ORIGINAL POETRY. EVENING. THE village clock is striking seven, As I sit here at rest; And the glorious sun his race has run, The heaven is red as a furnace there, I think that a seene so beautiful, Now all is still save the murmuring rill, And I watch the stream as it glideth by, Do fill my heart with bliss. Who made both earth and sky; Who giveth such beauty to things below, It is an evening of July, All Nature still as death; The leaves on the trees scarce are moved by AMONG the fens and marshes I walked one summer day, And marked the lovely water-plants which all around me lay; The marsh pools thick with arrow head, with pointed leaflets green, And the little rosy plantain peeping daintily between. The clusters on the burweeds were all in prickly balls, And made the little marsh stream divide in waterfalls; The darling blue forget-me-not crowned every bank with blue, And the yellow spearwort and the mallow bloomed and flourished too. I saw the reed canary grass and willow herb as well, The duckweed and the coltsfoot, and the water pimpernel; The golden rod and flowering bush, and stately Iris grew, And lilac, spiked sea lavender, and starwort met my view; While dainty little dragon flies skimmed gaily in the air, And hovered o'er the marsh stream with all its flow'rets fair. TO A PRIMROSE. WELCOME bonnie primrose Bright and fair- CLARIBEL. INSECT BLISS. If I were but a tiny fly, From morning's dawn till close of day. SONNET. To a Dear Friend BELOVED friend! in thee I recognise AREMISE. A brother-spirit, yea, within thy mind Oh, I have learned, dear friend, that nature's ties A prison-house, wherein awhile doth dwell WILLIANZ FEW things have interested me more, in my rambles about the world, and especially in the old countries, than the visits I have made to churchyards. In this country the traveller, however much his mind may be so disposed, can depend but little on such Sources of enjoyment or edification. It is a sad fault of us Americans, that for the most part, we neglect the dead. We are inclined generally, I know, to disparage external appearances. We have a contempt for ceremonies. We are a hard, practical people, absorbed in business, surrounded by circumstances which accustom us to the livelier kinds of excitement; educated and evidence and influence of which are plainly perceptible throughout every department of action and sphere of life among us, are to be accounted for easily enough; no explanation need be given of them here. Nor will the reader require to be reminded of the better qualities with which, in the usual order of things, and as a matter almost of moral necessity, they are commonly connected. Still, however, the feeling in question-the want of feeling I am tempted to call it-must be set down against us as a "fault." Undeniable at least it is, that one of the most attractive and prepossessing of all the minor virtues of a communitythe gentler graces I have spoken of as neglected by ourselves-is a thoughtful and tender care for the departed. impelled in every way to undervalue and Here, surely, we are powerfully called on lose sight of what may be called the graces to borrow a leaf from the Old World's of civilisation. These peculiarities, the journal. Who that has roamed over those H countries, in anything like a leisurely way, | These are rich indeed with an interest of or at all as a traveller should, whom aught animates beyond this restless, rankling, eternal thirst for business and lucre, but has a memory richly stored for the rest of his lifetime, even out of the churchyards alone?-a memory, ay, and a heart too, stored with loveliest images of thoughtwith feelings that are a ceaseless fountain to refresh the soul—with pictures of sweet, sequestered scenes, reposing in the mind's meditations, all beautiful as in nature itself, sunny and still as the little lakes of the hills, haunting and soothing one's spirit evermore. England, most of all, is full of these resources. Everywhere the kind of churchyards, I refer to, are to be found; old, venerable, moss-mantled, in every way picturesque, yet greenly and freshly rural the very homes of meditation. There is a hearty homeliness in the English character, with all its faults, which delights in these outward observances of affectionate respect for the dead. If the "old countrymen' are not remarkable for a quick sensibility, there is, nevertheless, a permanent and steady candour in their temperament, which wears well." 66 Among no people are instances of persevering fidelity in friendship between the living more numerous; and it is the same feeling, the same substantial, homely, hearty character, which, in equal proportion, manifests itself in a thousand most touching, though simple forms of association between the departed generation and those who survive through all the humblest hamlets of the land. I dwell, daily, with a pleasure which I cannot express, on the remembrances of these sacred scenes. Not of the "dim and mighty minsters of old time" alone I think, whose their own, but they do not deeply touch the Like dim processions of a dream, have sunk These we behold with wondering awe-it may be with a solemn admiration; yet these very feelings but stand in the way of deeper ones. We see too much-too much of man and his observances. Crowds of merely historical associations engross the mind. The imagination and the memory are excited to the prejudice of the heart. No! give me the churchyards of the common people and the poor; the expressions of a nature which deems itself unobserved; the simplicity of a genuine feeling, obscured with whatever rudeness or ignorance. Give me the lone places "where there is nothing to be seen" but stones, and sods, and trees, and checquered turf, The temple twilight of the gloom profound, The reed by every wandering whisper thrilled. Where but in such a spot, and in a country full of such, could genius itself have ever penned the "Elegy?" Who but an English had pondered from childhood in scenes like poet could have been its author?-one who those he describes in that immortal poem, and who had laid the dust of his own mother "Where heaves the turf in many a mouldering heap." From what other source than a (6 mountain churchyard" could spring the spirit of "Easter Day, so sublimely cheerful, so divinely true? It was the graves that appealed to the poetess; to them she uttered her appeal: And you, ye graves! upon whose turf I stand, The covering mantle of bright moss hath spread But not by time, and not by nature sown hath grown. Yes, and it fills us with hope, it moves us to prayer, even to think of such a spot. What quietness, what beauty of visible nature, what harmony of rural sounds, what soothing emblems, in a word, of precious what stirring yet soothing monitors to Chrisand glorious spiritual speculations, and tian philosophy and to holy emotion, were mingled with all the more customary and palpable minutiae of the scene! Would that my dust, too, might lie at last in some such "churchyard of the patriarchs!" Oh! leave me not to the noisomeness of a burial in the city; I like not the thought. Let the birds sing over me, if they will, and the green grass spring in the sunshine, and the violet and primrose flourish and glow in its midst. I would have the place no terror, at least, to those in whose kind memory I still might live; I would have it to console and cheer; to rouse, gently, to solemn but not gloomy meditation. The poorest village in the land, with all its rude obscurity, might easily be rich enough for this-richer than countless wealth can make the more than deadly dwelling-place of him whose bones are shelved away in the dull clayey churchyards of most large cities. The poorest village may be far abler than the most opulent metropolis to give what is here desired, for nature, and the love of it, are all it needs. WEEDS AND HABITS. AMONG the innumerable analogies that may be traced between the phenomena of the natural and of the moral world, there are few more imperfect, or more instructive, than that which may be shown to exist between the weeds of the field and garden, and the bad habits, the weeds of the heart. 1. Both commence on a small scale. The Scotchman's little paper of thistle-seeds was sufficient to overrun an island as large as England with the noxious weeds. So the little mischievous seed which a man sows in his heart, will bear a crop of weeds out of all proportion to the original germ. 2. Again, both weeds and bad habits mature and multiply without cultivation. Whatever is valuable, must be reared with more or less of care and labour; but these natural and moral pests ask only to be let alone. Neglect is the only care they require. Do nothing, and you do all that they ask. 3. They are both lusty and hardy. They are not apt to be nipped up by early or late frosts, or scorched by fiery suns. They are the last things to be drowned out in a flood, or to dry up in a drought. Give them a foothold in the soil, and the smallest possible chance of life, and they will take care of themselves. 4. They are both amazingly prolific. It has been said that a single plant of the weed called sow-thistle will produce over eleven thousand seeds. We will not venture to calculate how many mischievous seeds may spring from a single weed in the heart, but we know that such things are very prolific. 5. Both are costly and destructive. Though no toil is required to rear a crop of weeds, they eat up the goodness of the soil, and deprive those plants which are valuable of their proportion of nourishment. 6. Again, if suffered to remain long in the ground, they both become very difficult to extirpate. If you would eradicate a noxious plant, you must take it in hand at an early stage. If you would wait till its seeds are wafted to every corner of the field, and its roots have spread deep and wide, it will mock your efforts to exterminate it. You may cut it down, or pluck it up; you may burn it, or bury it; you may fight it manfully and patiently; but while you are subduing it in one spot, it will spring up afresh in another, to mock your labours, and vex your soul. So it is with a heart long overgrown with the weeds of bad habits. What a long, and stern, and sorrowful struggle will it require, to reclaim that dreary waste, to make it blossom again as a garden! True, terribly true, is the record which declares that it is as difficult for those to do good that are accustomed to do evil, as for the Ethiopian to make white his dusky hue, or the leopard to change his spotted skin. Southey has pictured this struggle with confirmed bad habits, with great vividness in the following lines, with which we close this sober, though not unseasonable homily: "For from his shoulders grew Two snakes of monstrous size, Which ever at his head Aimed their rapacious teeth, To satiate raving hunger with his brain. He, in the eternal conflict, oft would seize Their swelling necks, and in his giant grasp. Bruise them, and rend their flesh with bloody And howl for agony; nails, Feeling the pangs he gave; for of himself Co-sentient and inseparable parts The snaky tortures grew." KEEPING THE MOUTH.-Jest not openly at those that are simple, but remember how much thou art bound to God, who hath made thee wiser. Defame not any woman publicly, though thou know her to be evil; for those that are faulty cannot endure to be taxed, but will seek to be avenged of thee; and those that are guilty eannot endure unjust reproach. As there is nothing more shameful and dishonest than to do wrong, so truth itself cutteth his throat that carrieth her publicly in every place. Remember the divine saying, He that keepeth his mouth, keepeth his life.-Sir W. Raleigh to his Son, |