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TO MY BROTHERS.

SMALL, busy flames play through the fresh-laid coals,
And their faint cracklings o'er our silence creep,
Like whispers of the household gods, that keep
A gentle empire o'er fraternal souls.

And while, for rhymes, I search around the poles,
Your eyes are fixed, as in poetic sleep,
Upon the lore so voluble and deep,
That aye at fall of night our care condoles.
This is your birth-day, Tom, and I rejoice
That thus it passes smoothly, quietly.
Many such eves of gently-whispering noise
May we together pass, and calmly try

What are this world's true joys,--ere the great Voice,
From its fair face shall bid our spirits fly.

KEEN fitful gusts are whispering here and there
Among the bushes, half leafless and dry;
The stars look very cold about the sky,
And I have many miles on foot to fare,

Yet feel I little of the cool bleak air,

Or of the dead leaves rustling drearily,
Or of those silver lamps that burn on high,
Or of the distance from home's pleasant lair:
For I am brimfull of the friendliness

That in a little cottage I have found :
Of fair-haired Milton's eloquent distress,
And all his love for gentle Lycid' drowned;
Of lovely Laura in her light green dress,
And faithful Petrarch gloriously crowned.

To one who has been long in city pent, 'Tis very sweet to look into the fair

And open face of heaven,-to breathe a prayer Full in the smile of the blue firmament. Who is more happy, when, with heart's content, Fatigued he sinks into some pleasant lair Of wavy grass, and reads a debonair And gentle tale of love and languishment? Returning home at evening, with an ear Catching the notes of Philomel,-an eye Watching the sailing cloudlet's bright career, He mourns that day so soon has glided by : E'en like the passage of an angel's tear,

That falls through the clear ether silently.

ON FIRST LOOKING INTO CHAPMAN'S HOMER.

MUCH have I travelled in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round many western islands have I been,
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told

That deep-browed Homer ruled as his demesne;
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene

Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies

When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez, when with eagle eyes

He stared at the Pacific-and all his men Looked at each other with a wild surmise-Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

ON THE GRASSHOPPER AND CRICKET.

THE poetry of earth is never dead :

When all the birds are faint with the hot sun, And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead : That is the grasshopper's-he takes the lead In summer luxury, he has never done

With his delights; for, when tired out with fun, He rests at ease beneath some pleasant weed. The poetry of earth is ceasing never:

On a lone winter evening, when the frost Has wrought a silence, from the stove there shrills The Cricket's song, in warmth increasing ever, And seems to one in drowsiness half lost, The Grasshopper's among some grassy hills.

HENRY KIRKE WHITE

was born at Nottingham on the 21st of August, 1785, in which town his father was a butcher. He gave early indications of the genius for which he was afterwards distinguished. At the age of fourteen, the loom of the hosier was selected as the future occupation of the poet, but his mother succeeded in having him placed in the office of an attorney. Desirous of academic distinction, he was induced in furtherance of his project, to publish in 1803 a small volume of poetry. The harsh treatment this met with in a review was the means of introducing him to Mr. Southey, who proved a kind and generous friend. At length the object of the young poet was gained; he was entered at St. John's College, Cambridge, where he rapidly gained the highest university honours. His devotion to study had however so much weakened his frame that life itself was the sacrifice, and he died on the 19th of October, 1806, in the twenty-first year of his age.

TO MY MOTHER.

AND canst thou, Mother, for a moment think,
That we, thy children, when old age shall shed
Its blanching honours on thy weary head,
Could from our best of duties ever shrink?
Sooner the sun from his high sphere should sink,
Than we, ungrateful, leave thee in that day,
To pine in solitude thy life away,

Or shun thee, tottering on the grave's cold brink.
Banish the thought! Where'er our steps may roam,
O'er smiling plains, or wastes without a tree,
Still will fond memory point our hearts to thee,
And paint the pleasures of thy peaceful home;
While duty bids us all thy griefs assuage,
And smooth the pillow of thy sinking age.

TO APRIL.

EMBLEM of life, see changeful April sail
In varying vest along the shadowy skies,
Now bidding summer's softest zephyrs rise,
Anon recalling winter's stormy gale,

And pouring from the cloud her sudden hail;
Then, smiling through the tear that dims her eyes,
While Iris with her braid the welkin dyes,
Promise of sunshine, not so prone to fail;
So, to us, sojourners in life's low vale,
The smiles of fortune flatter to deceive,
While still the Fates the web of misery weave.
So Hope exultant spreads her airy sail,
And from the present gloom the soul conveys
To distant summers and far happier days.

TO A NOVEMBER MOON.

SUBLIME, emerging from the misty verge
Of the horizon dim, thee, Moon, I hail,
As sweeping o'er the leafless grove, the gale
Seems to repeat the year's funereal dirge.
Now autumn sickens on the languid sight,
And leaves bestrew the wanderer's lonely way;
Now unto thee, pale arbitress of night,
With double joy my homage do I pay.
When clouds disguise the glories of the day,
And stern November sheds her boisterous blight,
How doubly sweet to mark the moony ray
Shoot through the mist from the ethereal height,
And, still unchanged, back to the memory bring
The smiles Favonian of life's earliest spring.

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