While birds, and butterflies, and flowers Make all one band of paramours,

Thou, ranging up and down the bowers,
Art sole in thy employment;

A life, a presence like the air,
Scattering thy gladness without care,

Too blest with any one to pair,
Thyself thy own enjoyment.

Upon yon tuft of hazel-trees,
That twinkle to the gusty breeze,
Behold him perched in ecstasies,

Yet seeming still to hover;
There where the flutter of his wings
Upon his back and body flings
Shadows and sunny glimmerings,
That cover him all over.

While thus before my eyes he gleams,
A Brother of the leaves he seems;
When in a moment forth he teems

His little song in gushes:

As if it pleased him to disdain

And mock the Form which he did feign, While he was dancing with the train

Of leaves among the bushes.

A curious child, who dwelt upon a tract
Of inland ground, applying to his ear
The convolutions of a smooth-lipped shell;
To which, in silence hushed, his very soul
Listened intensely; and his countenance soon

Brightened with joy; for murmurings from within

Were heard, sonorous cadences! whereby,

To his belief, the monitor expressed
Mysterious union with its native sea.
Even such a shell the universe itself
Is to the ear of faith; and there are times,
I doubt not, when to you it doth impart
Authentic tidings of invisible things;
Of ebb and flow, and ever-during power;
And central peace subsisting at the heart
Of endless agitation. Here you stand,
Adore, and worship, when you know it not;
Pious beyond the intention of your thought,
Devout above the meaning of your will.
Yes, you have felt, and may not cease to feel.
The estate of man would be indeed forlorn,
If false conclusions of the reasoning power
Made the eye blind, and closed the passages
Through which the ear converses with the heart.
Has not the soul, the being of your life,
Received a shock of awful consciousness,
In some calm season, when these lofty rocks
At night's approach bring down the unclouded sky
To rest upon their circumambient walls;

A temple framing of dimensions vast,
And yet not too enormous for the sound
Of human anthems,-choral song, or burst
Sublime of instrumental harmony,

To glorify the Eternal! What if these
Did never break the stillness that prevails
Here if the solemn nightingale be mute,
And the soft woodlark here did never chant
Her vespers ?-Nature fails not to provide
Impulse and utterance. The whispering air
Sends inspiration from the shadowy heights
And blind recesses of the caverned rocks;
The little rills, and waters numberless,

Inaudible by daylight, blend their notes
With the loud streams; and often, at the hour
When issue forth the first pale stars, is heard,
Within the circuit of this fabric huge,
One voice-the solitary raven, flying
Athwart the concave of the dark blue dome,
Unseen, perchance above the power of sight—
An iron knell! with echoes from afar,

Faint and still fainter-as the cry, with which
The wanderer accompanies her flight

Through the calm region, fades upon the ear,
Diminishing by distance till it seemed.

To expire, yet from the abyss is caught again,
And yet again recovered!

:

THE MANUFACTORY.

WHEN Soothing darkness spreads o'er hill and dale,
Then in full many a region, once like this
The assured domain of calm simplicity
And pensive quiet, an unnatural light,
Prepared for never-resting labour's eyes,
Breaks from a many-windowed fabric huge;
And at the appointed hour a bell is heard,-

Of harsher import than the curfew-knell

That spake the Norman conqueror's stern behest,
A local summons to unceasing toil!

Disgorged are now the ministers of day;

And, as they issue from the illumined pile,

A fresh band meets them at the crowded door,

And in the courts-and where the rumbling stream,

That turns the multitude of dizzy wheels,

Glares, like a troubled spirit, in its bed
Among the rocks below.

GLEN-ALMAIN; OR, THE NARROW GLEN.

In this still place, remote from men,
Sleeps Ossian, in the Narrow Glen;
In this still place, where murmurs on
But one meek streamlet, only one :
He sang of battles, and the breath
Of stormy war, and violent death;

And should, methinks, when all was past,

Have rightfully been laid at last

Where rocks were rudely heaped, and rent

As by a spirit turbulent;

Where sights were rough, and sounds were wild,

And everything unreconcil'd;

In some complaining, dim retreat,

For fear and melancholy meet;

But this is calm; there cannot be

A more entire tranquillity.

Does then the Bard sleep here indeed?

Or is it but a groundless creed ?

What matters it ?-I blame them not

Whose fancy in this lonely Spot

Was moved; and in this way express'd

Their notion of its perfect rest.

A convent, even a hermit's cell,

Would break the silence of this Dell :