And falls upon the eyelids like faint sleep;
And from the moss violets and jonquils peep,
And dart their arrowy odor through the brain
Till you might faint with that delicious pain.
And every motion, odor, beam, and tone,
With that deep music is in unison :

Which is a soul within the soul

Like echoes of an antenatal dream.

they seem

It is an isle 'twixt Heaven, Air, Earth, and Sea,
Cradled, and hung in clear tranquillity;

Bright as that wandering Eden, Lucifer,
Washed by the soft blue Oceans of young air.
It is a favored place. Famine or blight,
Pestilence, War, and Earthquake, never light
Upon its mountain-peaks; blind vultures, they
Sail onward far upon their fatal way:

The winged storms, chanting their thunder-psalm
To other lands, leave azure chasms of calm
Over this isle, or weep themselves in dew,
From which its fields and woods ever renew
Their green and golden immortality.

Yet, like a buried lamp, a soul no less
Burns in the heart of this delicious isle,
An atom of the Eternal, whose own smile
Unfolds itself, and may be felt, not seen,
O'er the gray rocks, blue waves, and forests green,
Filling their bare and void interstices.

Percy B. Shelley

I SMELL THE MEADOW IN THE STREET.

OORS, where my heart was used to beat

D°

So quickly, not as one that weeps

I come once more; the city sleeps ;
I smell the meadow in the street.

I hear a chirp of birds; I see

Betwixt the black fronts long-withdrawn
A light-blue lane of early dawn,
And think of early days and thee.

Tennyson

ON WESTMINSTER BRIDGE, LONDON.

E

ARTH has not any thing to show more fair.

Dull would he be of soul who could pass by

A sight so touching in its majesty;

This city now doth like a garment wear
The beauty of the morning. Silent, bare,
Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie
Open unto the fields and to the sky,

All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.
Never did sun more beautifully steep

In his first splendor valley, rock, or hill;

Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep.
The river glideth at his own sweet will.
Dear God! the very houses seem asleep,
And all that mighty heart is lying still.

Wordsworth.

LEAVING THE CITY.

E left the city, street and square,

WE

With lamplights glimmering through and
through,

And turned us toward the suburb, where —
Full from the east- - the fresh wind blew.

One cloud stood overhead the sun,
A glorious trail of dome and spire, -
The last star flickered, and was gone;
The first lark led the matin choir.

Wet was the grass beneath our tread,
Thick-dewed the bramble by the way,

The lichen had a lovelier red,

The elder-flower a fairer gray.

And there was silence on the land,
Save when, from out the city's fold,
Stricken by Time's remorseless wand,
A bell across the morning tolled.

The beeches sighed through all their boughs;

The gusty pennons of the pine Swayed in a melancholy drowse, But with a motion sternly fine.

One gable, full against the sun,
Flooded the garden-space beneath
With spices, sweet as cinnamon,

From all its honeysuckled breath.

Then crew the cocks from echoing farms,
The chimney-tops were plumed with smoke,
The windmill shook its slanted arms,

The sun was up, the country woke !

Unknown

HOLIDAYS.

MILES of the year! that now and then
Light up its seriousness;

Butterfly hours! among the bees

That toil in sober dress;

Joy bells that ecstasy outpour

Over the crush and press;

Ring on, blithe bells, right merrily:
Yet plaintive that you soon must die!

Gold gleams! that light the sullen sea,
And quickly fleet and fly

Gray fields to emerald to transform,
Brown woods to glorify,

And heather'd hills, that slept in fern,
Touch into jewelry;

Ring on, sweet bells, ring on! Ah, why
Remember that so soon you die?

Unknown.

IN THE LANE.

HE daisies star the summer grass;

THE

And, with the dancing leaves at play,
Adown this lane the breezes pass,
In pleasant music, all the day.

I love the sweet, sequestered place,
The gracious roof of gold and green,
Where arching branches interlace,
With glimpses of the sky between.

I see the drooping roses trail

From tangled hedgerows to the ground;
I hear the chanting swell and fail,
Of fond love-lyrics, all around.

And here, adown the shady walk,

In days divine now passed away, Entranced, I listened to the talk, That ever held my heart in sway.