Round by the cheerful hearth we meet
All things beauteous-all things sweet-
Every solace of man's life,
Mother-daughter-sister-wife!
England, Isle of free and brave,
Circled by the Atlantic wave!
Though we seek the fairest land
That the south wind ever fanned,
Yet we cannot hope to see
Homes so holy as in thee.
As the tortoise turns its head
Towards its native ocean-bed,
Howsoever far it be
From its own beloved sea,
Thus, dear Albion, evermore
Do we turn, to seek thy shore !
SIR WALTER SCOTT.
AND Well the lonely infant knew
Recesses where the wallflower grew,
And honeysuckle loved to crawl
Up the low crag and ruined wall.
I deemed such nooks the sweetest shade
The sun in all his round surveyed,
And still I thought that shattered tower
The mightiest work of human power.
I KNOW a bank whereon the wild thyme blows,
Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows;
Quite over-canopied with lush woodbine,
With sweet musk-roses, and with eglantine:
There sleeps Titania, some time of the night,
Lulled in these flowers with dances and delight:
And there the snake throws her enamelled skin,
Weed wide enough to wrap a fairy in.
I DREAMED that, as I wandered by the way,
Bare winter suddenly was changed to spring,
And gentle odours led my steps astray,
Mixed with a sound of waters murmuring
Along a shelving bank of turf, which lay
Under a copse, and hardly dared to fling Its green arms round the bosom of the stream, But kissed it and then fled, as thou mightest in dream.
There grew pied wind-flowers and violets,
Daisies, those pearled Arcturi of the earth,
The constellated flower that never sets;
Faint oxlips; tender bluebells, at whose birth The sod scarce heaved; and that tall flower that wets Its mother's face with heaven-collected tears,
When the low wind, its playmate's voice, it hears.
And in the warm hedge grew lush eglantine,
Green cowbind and the moonlight-coloured May, And cherry blossoms, and white cups, whose wine Was the bright dew yet drained not by the day; And wild roses, and ivy serpentine,
With its dark buds and leaves, wandering astray, And flowers azure, black, and streaked with gold; Fairer than any wakened eyes behold.
And nearer to the river's trembling edge
There grew broad flag-flowers, purple prankt with white, And starry river buds among the sedge,
And floating water-lilies, broad and bright,
Which lit the oak that overhung the hedge
With moonlight beams of their own watery light;
And bulrushes and reeds of such deep green
As soothed the dazzled eye with sober sheen.
Methought that of these visionary flowers
I made a nosegay, bound in such a way
That the same hues which in their natural bowers
Were mingled or opposed, the like array
Kept these imprisoned children of the hours
Within my hand,-and then, elate and gay,
I hastened to the spot whence I had come,
That I might there present it !--oh! to whom?
FROM THE "RAPE OF PROSERPINE."
BARRY CORNWALL.
HERE this rose
(This one half-blown) shall be my Maia's portion, For that like it her blush is beautiful;
And this deep violet, almost as blue
As Pallas' eye, or thine Lycinnia,
I'll give to thee; for like thyself it wears
Its sweetness, ne'er obtruding. For this lily,
Where can it hang but at Cyane's breast?
And yet 'twill wither on so white a bed,
If flowers have sense, for envy :-It shall lie
Amongst thy raven tresses, Cytheris,
Like one star on the bosom of the night.
The cowslip, and the yellow primrose, they
- Are gone, my sad Leontia, to their graves,
And April hath wept o'er them, and the voice
Of March hath sung, even before their deaths,
The dirge of those young children of the year.
But here is heart's-ease for your woes.
And now,
The honeysuckle flower I give to thee,
And love it for my sake, my own Cyane :
It hangs upon the stem it loves, as thou
Hast clung to me, through every joy and sorrow;
It flourishes with its guardian's growth, as thou dost ;
And if the woodman's axe should drop the tree,
The woodbine too must perish.
WEAVE thee a wreath of woodbine, child,
"Twill suit thy infant brow;
It runs up free in the woodlands wild,
As tender and as frail as thou.
He bound his brow with a woodbine wreath,
And smiled his playful eye,
And he lightly skipped o'er the blossomed heath,
In his young heart's ecstacy.
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