WHEN LOVE came first to Earth, the SPRING
Spread rose-beds to receive him,
And back he vow'd his flight he'd wing
To heaven, if she should leave him.
But SPRING departing, saw his faith
Pledged to the next new comer—
He revell'd in the warmer breath
And richer bowers of SUMMER.
Then Sportive AUTUMN claim'd by rights
An Archer for her lover,
And even in WINTER's dark, cold nights
A charm he could discover.
Her routs and balls, and fireside joy,
For this time were his reasons→→
In short, Young Love's a gallant boy,
That likes all times and seasons.
SENT WITH A COPY OF THE AUTHOR'S POEMS.
SINCE there is magic in your look
And in your voice a witching charm,
As all our hearts consenting tell,
Enchantress, smile upon my book,
And guard its lays from hate and harm
By Beauty's most resistless spell.
The sunny dewdrop of thy praise,
Young daystar of the rising time,
Shall with its odoriferous morn
Refresh my sere and wither'd bays:
Smile, and I will believe my rhyme
Shall please the beautiful unborn.
Go forth, my pictured thoughts, and rise
In traits and tints of sweeter tone,
When Julia's glance is o'er ye flung;
Glow, gladden, linger in her eyes,
And catch a magic not your own,
Read by the music of her tongue.
ON THE DEPARTURE OF EMIGRANTS FOR NEW SOUTH WALES.
ON England's shore I saw a pensive band,
With sails unfurl'd for earth's remotest strand,
Like children parting from a mother, shed
Tears for the home that could not yield them bread;
Grief marked each face receding from the view,
'Twas grief to nature honourably true.
And long, poor wanderers o'er the ecliptic deep,
The song that names but home shall make you weep;
Oft shall ye fold your flocks by stars above
In that far world, and miss the stars ye love;
Oft when its tuneless birds scream round forlorn,
Regret the lark that gladdens England's morn,*
Mr P. Cunningham, in his interesting work on New South Wales, gives the following account of its song-birds:-"We are not moved here with the deep mellow note of the blackbird, poured out from beneath some low stunted bush, nor thrilled with the wild warblings of the thrush perched on the top of some tall sapling, nor charmed with the blithe carol of the lark as we proceed early a-field; none of our birds rivalling those divine songsters in realising the poetical idea of the music of the grove:' while parrots chattering' must supply the place of nightingales' singing in the future amorous lays of our sighing Celadons. We have our lark, certainly, but both his appearance and note are a most wretched parody upon the bird about which our English poets have made so many fine similes. He will mount from
And, giving England's names to distant scenes,
Lament that earth's extension intervenes.
But cloud not yet too long, industrious train,
Your solid good with sorrow nursed in vain:
For has the heart no interest yet as bland
As that which binds us to our native land?
The deep-drawn wish, when children crown our
hearth,
To hear the cherub-chorus of their mirth,
Undamp'd by dread that want may e'er unhouse,
Or servile misery knit those smiling brows:
The pride to rear an independent shed,
And give the lips we love unborrow'd bread;
To see a world, from shadowy forests won,
In youthful beauty wedded to the sun;
To skirt our home with harvests widely sown,
And call the blooming landscape all our own,
Our children's heritage, in prospect long.
These are the hopes, high-minded hopes and strong,
That beckon England's wanderers o'er the brine,
To realms where foreign constellations shine;
Where streams from undiscover'd fountains roll,
And winds shall fan them from the Antarctic pole.
the ground and rise, fluttering upwards in the same manner, and with a few of the starting notes of the English lark; but on reaching the height of thirty feet or so, down he drops suddenly and mutely, diving into concealment among the long grass, as if ashamed of his pitiful attempt. For the pert frisky robin, pecking and pattering against the windows in the dull days of winter, we have the lively superb warbler,' with his blue shining plumage and his long tapering tail, picking up the crumbs at our doors; while the pretty red-bills, of the size and form of the goldfinch, constitute the sparrow of our clime, flying in flocks about our houses, and building their soft downy pigmy nests in the orange, peach, and lemon trees surrounding them." -Cunningham's Two Years in New South Wales, vol. ii. p. 216.
And what though doom'd to shores so far apart
From England's home, that even the home-sick heart
Quails, thinking, ere that gulf can be recross'd,
How large a space of fleeting life is lost:
Yet there, by time, their bosoms shall be changed,
And strangers once shall cease to sigh estranged,
But jocund in the year's long sunshine roam,
That yields their sickle twice its harvest-home.
There, marking o'er his farm's expanding ring
New fleeces whiten and new fruits upspring,
The gray-hair'dswain, his grandchild sporting round,
Shall walk at eve his little empire's bound,
Emblazed with ruby vintage, ripening corn,
And verdant rampart of acacian thorn,
While, mingling with the scent his pipe exhales,
The orange-grove's and fig-tree's breath prevails;
Survey with pride beyond a monarch's spoil,
His honest arm's own subjugated soil;
And summing all the blessings God has given,
Put up his patriarchal prayer to Heaven,
That when his bones shall here repose in
The scions of his love may still increase,
And o'er a land where life has ample room,
In health and plenty innocently bloom.
Delightful land, in wildness even benign,
The glorious past is ours, the future thine!
As in a cradled Hercules, we trace
The lines of empire in thine infant face.
What nations in thy wide horizon's span
Shall teem on tracts untrodden yet by man!
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