'Tis said he had a tuneful tongue, Such happy intonation, Wherever he sat down and sung

He left a small plantation;

Wherever in a lonely grove

He set up his forlorn pipes,

The gouty oak began to move,
And flounder into hornpipes. 24

The mountain stirred its busy crown,
And, as tradition teaches,
Young ashes pirouetted down,
Coquetting with young beeches ;
And briony-vine and ivy-wreath
Ran forward to his rhyming,
And from the valleys underneath
Came little copses climbing.

The birch-tree swang her fragrant hair, The bramble cast her berry,

The gin within the juniper

Began to make him merry,

The poplars, in long order due,
With cypress promenaded,

The shock-head willows two and two

By rivers gallopaded. 40

Came wet-shod alder from the wave,
Came yews, a dismal coterie;

Each plucked his one foot from the grave,
Poussetting with a sloe-tree:

Old elms came breaking from the vine,
The vine streamed out to follow,
And, sweating rosin, plumped the pine

From many a cloudy hollow.

And was n 't it a sight to see,

48

When, ere his song was ended,
Like some great landslip, tree by tree,
The country-side descended;
And shepherds from the mountain-eaves

Looked down, half-pleased, half-frightened,

As dashed about the drunken leaves
The random sunshine lightened!

O, nature first was fresh to men,
And wanton without measure;
So youthful and so flexile then,

You moved her at your pleasure.
Twang out, my fiddle! shake the twigs!

And make her dance attendance: Blow, flute, and stir the stiff-set sprigs,

And scirrhous roots and tendons.

64

'Tis vain! in such a brassy age

I could not move a thistle;
The very sparrows in the hedge
Scarce answer to my whistle;

Or at the most, when three-parts-sick
With strumming and with scraping,
A jackass heehaws from the rick,

The passive oxen gaping.

But what is that I hear? a sound

Like sleepy counsel pleading:

72

O Lord! 't is in my neighbor's ground,

The modern Muses reading.

They read Botanic Treatises,

And Works on Gardening through there, And Methods of transplanting trees,

To look as if they grew there.

The withered Misses! how they prose

O'er books of travelled seamen,

And show you slips of all that grows
From England to Van Diemen.
They read in arbors clipt and cut,

And alleys, faded places,

By squares of tropic summer shut,

And warmed in crystal cases.

60

88

But these, though fed with careful dirt,
Are neither green nor sappy;
Half-conscious of the garden-squirt,

The poor things look unhappy.
Better to me the meanest weed

That blows upon its mountain,

The vilest herb that runs to seed

Beside its native fountain.

96

And I must work through months of toil,

And years of cultivation, Upon my proper patch of soil,

To grow my own plantation. I'll take the showers as they fall,

I will not vex my bosom : Enough, if at the end of all

A little garden blossom.

104

ST. AGNES.

I.

DEEP on the convent-roof the snows
Are sparkling to the moon :

My breath to heaven like vapor goes:
soul follow soon!

May my

The shadows of the convent-towers

Slant down the snowy swɛrd,

Still creeping with the creep ing hours
That lead me to my Lord:

Make Thou my spirit pure and clear

As are the frosty skies,

Or this first snowdrop of the year

That in my bosom lies.

II.

As these white robes are soiled and dark,

To yonder shining ground;

A: this pale taper's earthly spark,

To yonder argent round;