O winds of eve that somewhere rove
Where darkest sleeps the distant sea,
Seek out where haply dreams my love,
And whisper all her dreams to me!

Owen Meredith.

THE GREENWOOD.

'Tis merry in greenwood,-thus runs the old lay,-
In the gladsome month of lively May,
When the wild birds' song on stem and spray

Invites to forest bower:

Then rears the ash his airy crest,

Then shines the birch in silver vest,

And the beech in glistening leaves is drest,
And dark between shows the oak's proud breast,
Like a chieftain's frowning tower;

Though a thousand branches join their screen,
Yet the broken sunbeams glance between,
And tip the leaves with lighter green,

With brighter tints the flower :

Dull is the heart that loves not then

The deep recess of the wild-wood glen,
Where roe and red-deer find sheltering den,
When the sun is in his power.

Less merry, perchance, is the fading leaf
That follows so soon on the gather'd sheaf,
When the greenwood loses the name;

Silent is then the forest bound,

Save the redbreast's note, and the rustling sound

Of frost-nipt leaves that are dropping round,

Or the deep-mouth'd cry of the distant hound
That opens on his game:

Yet then, too, I love the forest wide,
Whether the sun in splendour ride,

And gild its many-colour'd side;
Or whether the soft and silvery haze,
In vapoury folds, o'er the landscape strays,
And half involves the woodland maze;

Like an early widow's veil,

Where wimpling tissue from the gaze
The form half hides, and half betrays,
Of beauty wan and pale.

Sir Walter Scott.

S

TO AUTUMN.

EASON 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-eaves

run;

To bend with apples the moss'd 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'er-brimm'd 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-reap'd furrow sound asleep,

Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers;
And sometimes 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.

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.

John Keats.