And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;

Or by a cider-press, with patient look,

Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay! where are they?
Think not of them! thou hast thy music too,
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue :
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft

Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft,
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

GRASSHOPPER AND CRICKET.

The poetry of earth is never dead!

When all the birds are faint with the hot sun,
And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run
From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead :
That is the Grasshopper's, he takes the lead
In summer luxury; he has never done
With his delights, for when tired out with fun
He rests at ease beneath some pleasant weed.
The poetry of earth is ceasing never :

On a lone winter evening, when the frost

Has wrought a silence, from the stove there shrills
The Cricket's song, in warmth increasing ever;
And seems to One in drowsiness half lost
The Grasshopper's among some grassy hills,

CHARLES WOLFE.

1791-1823.

THE BURIAL OF SIR JOHN MOORE,
On the ramparts of Corunna.

Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note,

As his corse to the ramparts we hurried;
Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot
O'er the grave where our hero we buried.

We buried him darkly at dead of night,
The sods with our bayonets turning,
By the struggling moonbeam's misty light
And the lantern dimly burning.

No useless coffin enclosed his breast,

Nor in sheet or in shroud we wound him ; But he lay like a warrior taking his rest With his martial cloak around him.

Few and short were the prayers we said,

And we spoke not a word of sorrow;

But we steadfastly gazed on the face that was dead,
And we bitterly thought of the morrow.

We thought, as we hollow'd his narrow bed
And smooth'd down his lonely pillow,

That the foe and the stranger would tread o'er his head,
And we far away on the billow.

Lightly they'll talk of the spirit that's gone,
And o'er his cold ashes upbraid him;
But little he'll reck if they let him sleep on
In the grave where a Briton has laid him.

But half of our heavy task was done,

When the clock struck the hour for retiring,
And we heard the distant and random gun
Of the enemy suddenly firing.

Slowly and sadly we laid him down,

From the field of his fame fresh and gory:

We carved not a line, and we raised not a stone, But we left him alone in his glory.

FELICIA DOROTHEA HEMANS.
1793-1835.

HER GRAVE.

Where shall we make her grave?
O, where the wild flowers wave
In the free air :

When shower and singing bird
'Midst the young leaves are heard,
There-lay her there!

Harsh was the world to her :
Now may sleep minister

Balm for each ill!

Low on sweet Nature's breast
Let the meek heart find rest,
Deep, deep and still!

Murmur, glad waters! by;
Faint gales! with happy sigh
Come wandering o'er

That green and mossy bed,

Where on a gentle head

Storms beat no more.

What though for her in vain
Falls now the bright Spring rain,
Plays the soft wind,

Yet still from where she lies

Should blessed breathings rise,
Gracious and kind.

Therefore let song and dew

Thence in the heart renew

Life's vernal glow;

And o'er that holy earth

Scents of the violets' birth

Still come and go!

O then, where wild flowers wave
Make ye her mossy grave
In the free air,

Where shower and singing bird
'Midst the young leaves are heard!
There, lay her there!

WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.

1794-1878.

TO A WATER-FOWL.

Whither, midst falling dew,

While glow the heavens with the last steps of day, Far through their rosy depths dost thou pursue Thy solitary way?

Vainly the fowler's eye

Might mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong, As, darkly painted on the crimson sky,

Thy figure floats along.

Seek'st thou the plashy brink

Of weedy lake, or marge of river wide,

Or where the rocking billows rise and sink

On the chafed ocean-side?

There is a Power whose care

Teaches thy way along that pathless coast,

The desert and illimitable air

Lone wandering, but not lost.

All day thy wings have fann'd

At that far height the cold thin atmosphere,

Yet stoop not weary to the welcome land,
Though the dark night is near.

And soon that toil shall end:

Soon shalt thou find a summer home, and rest, And scream among thy fellows; reeds shall bend, Soon, o'er thy shelter'd nest.

Thou art gone, the abyss of heaven

Hath swallow'd up thy form; yet on my heart
Deeply hath sunk the lesson thou hast given,

And shall not soon depart.

He, who from zone to zone

Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight, In the long way that I must tread alone

Will lead my steps aright.

TO THE FRINGED GENTIAN.

Thou blossom! bright with autumn dew,
And colour'd with the heaven's own blue,
That openest when the quiet light
Succeeds the keen and frosty night :

Thou comèst not when violets lean
O'er wandering brooks and springs unseen,
Or columbines, in purple dress'd,
Nod o'er the ground-bird's hidden nest;

Thou waitest late, and comest alone,
When woods are bare and birds are flown,
And frosts and shortening days portend
The agèd year is near his end.

Then doth thy sweet and quiet eye
Look through its fringes to the sky:
Blue, blue as if that sky let fall
A flower from its cerulean wall.