TO THE FRINGED GENTIAN.

THOU blossom bright with autumn dew,
And coloured with the heaven's own blue,
That openest, when the quiet light
Succeeds the keen and frosty night.

Thou comest not when violets lean
O'er wandering brooks and springs unseen,
Or columbines, in purple dressed,
Nod o'er the ground-bird's hidden nest.

Thou waitest late, and com'st alone,
When woods are bare and birds are flown,
And frosts and shortening days portend
The aged year is near his end.

Then doth thy sweet and quiet eye
Look through its fringes to the sky,
Blue-blue-as if that sky let fall
A flower from its cerulean wall.

I would that thus, when I shall see
The hour of death draw near to me,
Hope, blossoming within my heart,
May look to heaven as I depart.

"INNOCENT CHILD AND SNOW-WHITE FLOWER."

INNOCENT child and snow-white flower!
Well are ye paired in your opening hour.
Thus should the pure and the lovely meet,
Stainless with stainless, and sweet with sweet.

White as those leaves, just blown apart,
Are the folds of thy own young heart;
Guilty passion and cankering care
Never have left their traces there.

Artless one! though thou gazest now,
O'er the white blossom with earnest brow,
Soon will it tire thy childish eye,

Fair as it is, thou wilt throw it by.

Throw it aside in thy weary hour,
Throw to the ground the fair white flower,

Yet, as thy tender years depart,

Keep that white and innocent heart.

18

SONNET-MIDSUMMER.

A POWER is on the earth and in the air,

From which the vital spirit shrinks afraid,

And shelters him, in nooks of deepest shade,
From the hot steam and from the fiery glare.
Look forth upon the earth-her thousand plants

Are smitten, even the dark sun-loving maize
Faints in the field beneath the torrid blaze;

The herd beside the shaded fountain pants;
For life is driven from all the landscape brown;

The bird has sought his tree, the snake his den,
The trout floats dead in the hot stream, and men

Drop by the sun-stroke in the populous town;
As if the Day of Fire had dawned and sent
Its deadly breath into the firmament.

SONNET-OCTOBER.

Ay, thou art welcome, heaven's delicious breath!
When woods begin to wear the crimson leaf,

And suns grow meek, and the meek suns grow brief
And the year smiles as it draws near its death.
Wind of the sunny south! oh, still delay

In the gay woods and in the golden air,

Like to a good old age released from care,

Journeying, in long serenity, away.

In such a bright, late quiet, would that I

Might wear out life like thee, 'mid bowers and brooks,

And dearer yet, the sunshine of kind looks,

And music of kind voices ever nigh;

And when my last sand twinkled in the glass,

Pass silently from men, as thou dost pass.

SONNET-NOVEMBER.

YET one smile more, departing, distant sun!

One mellow smile through the soft vapoury Ere, o'er the frozen earth, the loud winds run, Or snows are sifted o'er the meadows bare. One smile on the brown hills and naked trees,

air,

And the dark rocks whose summer wreaths are cast, And the blue Gentian flower, that, in the breeze, Nods lonely, of her beauteous race the last. Yet a few sunny days, in which the bee

Shall murmur by the hedge that skirts the way,

The cricket chirp upon the russet lea,

And man delight to linger in thy ray.

Yet one rich smile, and we will try to bear

The piercing winter frost, and winds, and darkened air.