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THE LION'S HEAD

Is quite overwhelmed by the liberal offers of Sophronia. Her Sonnet on the Iron Bridge is too like Wordsworth's in the subject. The Moral Essays, in the manner of Pope, are too chaste in style for the readers of this age. The Nativity is not a good subject for a Tale; and an Essay on Platonic Love would not be fairly treated by her.

The Echo we fear will not answer.

H.'s Captivity is in some parts pathetic; but in others he has allowed himself to be tempted into a strain that accords but ill with its melancholy :

Ah me, it is the worst of wretched things,

When men are pinioned and have got no wings;
They watch regretfully the sparrows small,

And gaze with envy on a freestone wall.

Night brought me hither and reliev'd my pains
Awhile, because she hid me from my chains;
The morning came and she was mist, but I
Was left in bonds, &c.

Alien is foreign to his subject.

We think prose a good vehicle for Telemaque, and should be sorry to see him reduced to feet even of the Heroic measure.

Senex-is he 81 in the shade? appears to have suffered by the dry weather. Perhaps his aftercrop will be better.

H. is completely mistaken in his theory-but if he will call on Mr. Thorn➡ ton, No. 59, Great Street, (he knows where) the author of the article will give him a satisfactory answer.

"It is pleasant to be immortal," says a Correspondent signed S., "if it is only for a season." Marry, here is a fellow that discounts Eternity!

Anacreon, in his foolish Greek manner, entreated one of the Royal Academy of Antiquity (some Sir Thomas Lawrence of Teos) to paint his Mistress, and though he desired effects which were sufficient to poze the acutest brush, he still did not (to use Mr. Egan's fanciful phraseology) "render the features perfectly unintelligible." A Chelsea Anacreon submits the following directions to the R. A.'s of this age. Whether they are capable of

execution we leave to the painters to determine-but the lines have an originality about them which seems to hold out its own protection. We should like to see Mr. Shee or Mr. Phillips working to this pattern.

COME, take thy pencil-paint my love,
More tender than most tender dove;
Suffuse her cheeks with that warm glow,
Would fain on lover hope bestow;
And make it frequent go and come,
Back to and from its sighful home.
Lay on her tongue the tone of truth,
The vesper hymn of virgin truth,
She loves each eve, in pious praise,
To lisp to Sol's declining rays;
And hide that song from vulgar ken
Within its own most hallow'd pen,
By double row of pillars, chaste
As Dian in the moral waste, &c.
From those lips let odours breathe;
Kound them all my kisses wreathe.
In her fond voluptuous chin
Mould a dimple, hearts to gin;
And make thy magic art uprear

A heartsease smile behind each tear, &c. &c.
Give to her feet the airy motion

Of sunbeams trembling on the ocean;

Lay her white fingers on a harp

Of gold the pow'r of gloom to warp,

And if thou cans't, in its eburn nest

Paint, paint the heart beneath her breast;
Make visible its million springs,

Nor snap one of its thousand strings;
Depict it in a tear wove guise
Floating upon a sea of sighs,
Its hundred ears inclined to one

Sweet tale of love, &c. &c. &c.

The following are (to use a tender word) rejected :-The Exile's Lament; Fanny Faddle; Sonnet on a Cluster of Snowdrops; Lines written on a height overlooking Spithead; The First Kiss; G.- Sonnet on the Death of Buonaparte; Pensive on the Doctor's Pantaloons; Aliquis; A. S. M. Answers for others are left at our Publishers'.

THE

London Magazine.

N° XXXI.

JULY, 1822.

VOL. VI.

VOL. VI.

WANDERINGS IN JUNE.

THE season now is all delight,
Sweet smile the passing hours,
And Summer's pleasures, at their height,
Are sweet as are her flowers;
The purple morning waken'd soon,
The mid-day's gleaming din,

Grey evening with her silver moon,-
Are sweet to mingle in.

While waking doves betake to flight
From off each roosting bough,

While Nature's locks are wet with night,

How sweet to wander now!

Fast fade the vapours cool and grey;

The red sun waxes strong,

And streaks on labour's early way
His shadows lank and long.

Serenely sweet the Morning comes
O'er the horizon's sweep,

And calmly breaks the wakening hums
Of Nature's nightly sleep.

What rapture swells with every sound
Of Morning's maiden hours!

What healthful feelings breathe around!
What freshness opes the flowers!

Each tree and flower, in every hue
And varied green, are spread,
As fair and frail as drops the dew
From off each blooming head;
Like to that beauty which beguiles
The eyes of wondering men,
Led blushing to perfection's smiles,
And left to wither then.

B

How strange a scene has come to pass
Since Summer 'gan its reign,
Spring flowers are buried in the grass,
To sleep till Spring again :
Her dew-drops Evening still receives
To gild the morning hours;
But dew-drops fall on open'd leaves
And moisten stranger flowers.

The artless daisies' smiling face
My wanderings find no more;
The king-cups that supplied their place,
Their golden race is o'er;

And clover heads, with ruddy bloom,
That blossom where they fell,

Ere Autumn's fading mornings come
Shall meet their grave as well.

Life's every beauty fades away,
And short its worldly race;
Change leads us round its varied day,
And strangers take our place:
On Summers past, how many eyes
Have waken'd into bliss,

That Death's eclipsing hand denies
To view the charms of this!

The open flower, the loaded bough,
The fields of spindling grain,
Were blooming then the same as now,
And so will bloom again:
When with the past my being dies,
Still summer suns shall shine,
And other eyes shall see them rise
When death has darken'd mine.

Reflection, with thy mortal shrouds
When thou dost interfere,
Though all is gay, what gloomy clouds
Thy musings shadow here!

To think of summers yet to come,

That I am not to see!

To think a weed is yet to bloom
From dust that I shall be!

The misty clouds of purple hue
Are fading from the eye;

And ruddy streaks, which morning drew,
Have left a dappled sky;

The sun has call'd the bees abroad,

Wet with the early hour,

By toiling for the honey'd load

Ere dews forsake the flower.

O'er yonder hill, a dusty rout
Wakes solitude from sleep;
Shepherds have wattled pens about,.
To shear their bleating sheep:

Less pleasing is the public way,
Traced with awaken'd toil;

And sweet are woods shut out from day,
Where sunbeams never smile.

The woodbines, fresh with morning hours,
Are what I love to see;

The ivy spreading darksome bowers,
Is where I love to be;

Left there, as when a boy, to lie
And talk to flower and tree,
And fancy, in my extacy,

Their silence answers me.

While pride desires tumultuous joys, '
And shuns what nature wears;
Give me the choice which they despise,
And I'll not sigh for theirs ;-

The shady wilds, the summer dreams,
Enjoying there at will,

The whispering voice of woods and streams
That breathe of Eden still.

How sweet the fanning breeze is felt,
Breathed through the dancing boughs!
How sweet the rural noises melt

From distant sheep and cows!
The lovely green of wood and hill,
The hummings in the air,
Serenely in my breast instil

The rapture reigning there.

To me how sweet the whispering winds,
The woods again how sweet,-
To find the peace which freedom finds,
And from the world retreat;
To stretch beneath a spreading tree,
That far its shadow shoots,
While by its side the water free
Curls through the twisted roots.

Such silence oft be mine to meet
In leisure's musing hours;
Oft be a fountain's brink my seat-
My partners-birds and flowers:
No tumult here creates alarm,
No pains our follies find;

Peace visits us in every calm,

Health breathes in every wind.

Now cool, the wood my wanderings shrouds, 'Neath arbours Nature weaves,

Shut up from viewing fields and clouds,

And buried deep in leaves;

The sounds without amuse me still,

Mixt with the sounds within,—

The scythe with sharpening tinkles shrill,

The cuckoo's soothing din.

The eye, no longer left to range,

Is pent in narrowest bound,

Yet Nature's works, unnamed and strange,

My every step surround;

Things small as dust, of every dye,

That scarce the sight perceives,

Some clad with wings fly droning by,
Some climb the grass and leaves.

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