They, as the swallows that perplex the eye,

With rapid and erratic movements fly,
With tortuous fancies, useless to mankind,

Vex, dazzle, and distract the public mind.

Panting for fame, these spirits soar above

The sober flights of charity and love;

While lightnings flashing round their course presage Commotions on the earth, and civic rage!

Though zealous for the public good, they deem

Self-sacrifice to be an idle dream.

(The Priest refused his money to the knave
That ask'd for alms, and yet his blessing gave.)

Balm to hurt minds their eloquence affords;
Cheap virtue is humanity in words.

Brilliant as sunbeams are the sons of song
(As transient too,) the stirring crowd among,

Ere revolution darkens to deform

The moral world-they perish in the storm.

But shadow like, more solemn things appear,

Such as fatigue the Town year after year;
Their looks by fashion trimm'd have such pretence,

They almost seem to be informed with sense:

Why may they not, though seldom they unlock
Their cabinets, of wit possess a stock

For gaudy days reserved as presents, then
To be profusely lavished-Heaven knows when !
The flush of summer clouds that evening gilds,
Excels in splendour shrines that grandeur builds ;
Or famed Cleopolis, with golden spires

That glitter through mid-air like spiral fires.

Art is but art, even when to taste allied

It rears a palace for imperial pride.

If on this earth such rays of glory fall,

What splendours, where God's presence gladdens all,

Through regions of interminable day,

Unveiled as spirits onward progress, play!

There gifts of grace are as the stars untold,

And rich as fabled groves of verdant gold:
And minds reflect, as mirrors of the sky

Its lights, a brighter day-spring from on high.

June, 1842.

NOTES

ΤΟ

THE WALK ON A DAY IN SUMMER.

P. 3, 1. 5, 6.

Then the first orisons in grove and glade
Aerial voices sang-ere man was made.

"Sole and responsive each to others' note

Singing their great Creator."

MILTON, book 4th, line 683.

P. 3, 1. 7, 8, 9, 10.

On such a day as this the Poet pure

Pour'd forth his grateful verse, that will endure

As long as the revolving seasons bring

Those changes wonderful he loved to sing.

The Poets Burns and Collins have hallowed the memory of Thomson in some beautiful stanzas. The late accom

plished Sir George Beaumont was wont to say that it were

better for the young Artist to copy from the descriptions in Thomson's Seasons, in painting his landscapes, than even from the works of the greatest masters. The Castle of Indolence is, in my humble opinion, far superior to the Seasons. There is an admirable comparison of the respective merits of Cowper and Thomson in Campbell's Selection of the Poets, vol. v. page 217.

P. 6, 1. 53-58.

Thus view we through the vista of past ages
Those columns bright of fame, Athena's sages.
Temple and tower decay, the winter's blast
Rends forests-works of genius perish last :
Through generations lights transmitted down,
Till o'er the world oblivion's pall is thrown.

"When time is old and hath forgot itself,
And blind oblivion swallowed cities up,
And mighty states characterless are grated
To dusty nothing,"

The works of the great writers of antiquity consecrated by the admiration of ages: the universally acknowledged models of excellence, shall be studied and illustrated by unborn generations in distant lands that are yet untrodden by the foot of man. Thousands will read with delight the "Edipus Coloneus" when Athens shall be no more.