CAMPBELL.

Field Flowers.

YE field flowers! the gardens eclipse you, 't is true,
Yet, wildings of Nature, I dote upon you,

For ye waft me to summers of old,

When the earth teemed around me with fairy delight,
And when daisies and buttercups gladdened my sight,
Like treasures of silver and gold.

love you for lulling me back into dreams

Of the blue Highland mountains and echoing streams,
And of birchen glades breathing their balm,
While the deer was seen glancing in sunshine remote,
And the deep mellow crush of the wood-pigeon's note
Made music that sweetened the calm.

Not a pastoral song has a pleasanter tune
Than ye speak to my heart, little wildings of June:
Of old ruinous castles ye tell,

Where I thought it delightful your beauties to find,
When the magic of Nature first breathed on my mind,
And your blosssoms were part of her spell.

Even now, what affections the violet awakes!
What loved little islands, twice seen in their lakes,
Can the wild water-lily restore !

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What landscapes I read in the primrose's looks,
And what pictures of pebbled and minnowy brooks,
In the vetches that tangled their shore.

Earth's cultureless buds, to my heart ye were dear,
Ere the fever of passion, or ague of fear,

Had scathed my existence's bloom;

Once I welcome you more, in life's passionless stage,
With the visions of youth to revisit my age,
And I wish you to grow on my tomb.

Life.

CAMPBELL.

THE Lark has sung his carol in the sky;
The bees have hummed their noontide harmony.
Still in the vale the village bells ring round,
Still in Llewellyn-hall the jests resound:
For now the caudle-cup is circling there,
Now, glad at heart, the gossips breathe their prayer,
And, crowding, stop the cradle to admire
The babe, the sleeping image of his sire.

A few short years, and then these sounds shall hail
The day again, and gladness fill the vale;
So soon the child a youth, the youth a man,
Eager to run the race his fathers ran.

ROGERS.

Then the huge ox shall yield the broad sirloin ;
The ale, now brewed, in floods of amber shine:
And, basking in the chimney's ample blaze,
'Mid many a tale told of his boyish days,
The nurse shall cry, of all her ills beguiled,

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"'T was on these knees he sate so oft, and smiled."

And soon again shall music swell the breeze; Soon issuing forth shall glitter through the trees Vestures of nuptial white; and hymns be sung, And violets scattered round; and old and young, In every cottage-porch with garlands green, Stand still to gaze, and, gazing, bless the scene; While, her dark eyes declining, by his side Moves in her virgin-veil the gentle bride.

And once, alas, nor in a distant hour,
Another voice shall come from yonder tower;
When in dim chambers long black weeds are seen,
And weepings heard where only joy has been;
When by his children borne, and from his door
Slowly departing to return no more,

He rests in holy earth with them that went before.

And such is Human Life; so gliding on,
It glimmers like a meteor, and is gone!
Yet is the tale, brief though it be, as strange,
As full, methinks, of wild and wondrous change,
As any that the wandering tribes require,
Stretched in the desert round their evening-fire;
As any sung of old in hall or bower

To minstrel-harps at midnight's witching hour!
ROGERS. [From "Human Life."]

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To Autumn.

SEASON of mists and mellow fruitfulness!

Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun; Conspiring with him how to load and bless

With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the mossed cottage trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;

To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o'erbrimmed their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?

Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,

Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind ; Or on a half-reaped furrow sound asleep,

Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers; And sometime like a gleaner thou dost keep Steady thy laden head across a brook, Or by a cider-press, with patient look, Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.

KEATS.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,

And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft

Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft,
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

The Cry of the Children.

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“ φεῦ, φεῦ, τι προσδερχεσθε μ' ομμασιν, τεκνα.”.

I.

Do ye hear the children weeping, O my brothers,
Ere the sorrow comes with years?

MEDEA.

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KEATS.

They are leaning their young heads against their mothers,

And that cannot stop their tears.