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 aëry sail,
And from the present gloom, the soul conveys,
To distant summers, and far happier days.

YE unseen spirits, whose wild melodies,
At evening rising slow, yet sweetly clear,
Steal on the musing poet's pensive ear,
As by the wood-spring stretch'd supine he lies;
When he who now invokes you, low is laid,

His tir'd frame resting on the earth's cold bed;
Hold ye your nightly vigils o'er his head,

And chaunt a dirge to his reposing shade! For he was wont to love your madrigals;

And often by the haunted stream that laves The dark sequester'd woodland's inmost caves, Would sit and listen to the dying falls,

Till the full tear would quiver in his eye,

And his big heart would heave with mournful extasy.

TO A TAPER.

TIS midnight.-On the globe dead slumber sits, And all is silence- in the hour of sleep;

Save when the hollow gust, that swells by fits, In the dark wood roars fearfully and deep. I wake alone to listen and to weep,

To watch, my taper, thy pale beacon burn; And, as still memory does her vigils keep,

To think of days that never can return. By thy pale ray I raise my languid head, My eye surveys the solitary gloom;

And the sad meaning tear, unmixt with dread,

Tells thou dost light me to the silent tomb. Like thee I wane;-like thine my life's last ray Will fade in loneliness, unwept, away.

YES, 'twill be over soon.-This sickly dream
Of life will vanish from my feverish brain;
And death
my wearied spirit will redeem

From this wild region of unvary'd pain.
Yon brook will glide as softly as before,-

Yon landscape smile,-yon golden harvest grow,— Yon sprightly lark on mounting wing will soar, When Henry's name is heard no more below. I sigh when all my youthful friends caress, They laugh in health, and future evils brave; Them shall a wife and smiling children bless, While I am mouldering in my silent grave. God of the just,-Thou gavest the bitter cup; I bow to thy behest and drink it up.

TO CONSUMPTION.

GENTLY, most gently, on thy victim's head,
Consumption, lay thine hand!-Let me decay,
Like the expiring lamp, unseen, away,
And softly go to slumber with the dead.
And if 'tis true what holy men have said,
That strains angelic oft foretell the day
Of death, to those good men who fall thy prey,
O let the aërial music round my bed,

Dissolving sad in dying symphony,

Whisper the solemn warning in mine ear;
That I may bid my weeping friends good b'ye,
Ere I depart upon my journey drear:
And smiling faintly on the painful past,
Compose my decent head, and breathe my last.