Or only look across the lawn, Look out below your bower-eaves, Look down, and let your blue eyes dawn Upon me through the jasmine-leaves. THE BLACKBIRD. O BLACKBIRD! sing me something well: While all the neighbors shoot thee round, I keep smooth plats of fruitful ground, Where thou may'st warble, eat and dwell. The espaliers and the standards all Are thine; the range of lawn and park: The unnetted blackhearts ripen dark, All thine, against the garden wall. Yet, though I spared thee kith and kin, A golden bill! the silver tongue, That made thee famous once, when young: And in the sultry garden-squares, Now thy flute-notes are changed to coarse, I hear thee not at all, or hoarse As when a hawker hawks his wares. Take warning! he that will not sing THE DEATH OF THE OLD YEAR. J. FULL knee-deep lies the winter snow, Old year, you must not die; II. He lieth still: he doth not move : He will not see the dawn of day. He hath no other life above. He gave me a friend, and a true true-love, And the New-year will take 'em away. THE DEATH OF THE OLD YEAR. 193 Old year, you must not go ; So long as you have been with us, III. He frothed his bumpers to the brim; But though his eyes are waxing dim, Old year, you shall not die ; We did so laugh and cry with you, He was full of joke and jest, To see him die, across the waste His son and heir doth ride post-haste, But he'll be dead before. Every one for his own. The night is starry and cold, my friend, And the New-year, blithe and bold, my friend, |