A hundred times, by rock or bower,
Ere thus I have lain couch'd an hour,
Have I derived from thy sweet power
Some apprehension;

Some steady love; some brief delight;
Some memory that had taken flight;
Some chime of fancy wrong or right;
Or stray invention.

If stately passions in me burn,

And one chance look to Thee should turn,

I drink out of an humbler urn

A lowlier pleasure;

The homely sympathy that heeds

The common life, our nature breeds;

A wisdom fitted to the needs

Of hearts at leisure.

When, smitten by the morning ray,
I see thee rise alert and gay,

Then, chearful Flower! my spirits play
With kindred motion :

At dusk, I've seldom mark'd thee press
The ground, as if in thankfulness

Without some feeling, more or less,
Of true devotion.

And all day long I number yet,
All seasons through another debt,
Which I wherever thou art met,

To thee am owing;

An instinct call it, a blind sense;

A happy, genial influence,

Coming one knows not how nor whence, Nor whither going.

Child of the Year! that round dost run

Thy course, bold lover of the sun,

And chearful when the day's begun
As morning Leveret,

Thou long the Poet's praise shalt gain;
Thou wilt be more belov'd by men

In times to come; thou not in vain
Art Nature's Favorite.

LOUIS A.

I met Louisa in the shade;

And, having seen that lovely Maid,
Why should I fear to say

That she is ruddy, fleet, and strong;
And down the rocks can leap along, .
Like rivulets in May?

And she hath smiles to earth unknown; Smiles, that with motion of their own Do spread, and sink, and rise;

That come and go with endless play,

And ever, as they pass away,

Are hidden in her eyes.

She loves her fire, her Cottage-home;

Yet o'er the moorland will she roam
In weather rough and bleak;

And when against the wind she 'strains,

Oh! might I kiss the mountain rains
That sparkle on her cheek.

Take all that's mine "beneath the moon,"

If I with her but half a noon

May sit beneath the walls

Of some old cave, or mossy nook,
When up she winds along the brook,
To hunt the waterfalls.