To save his life I vainly tried;
He flutter'd, hung his head, and died.

Ah, little think the gay, the vain,
That crowd the road in pleasure's train,
And rush through folly's giddy maze,
The lesson that my bird conveys.

From study, from restraint set free,
Youth haste's the busy world to see;
Borne forward by the glitt'ring prize,
Which pleasure raises to their eyes.

Mad with their freedom they pursue
Life's fancied joys within their view;
Nor ever to the voice attend,

That warns them where their follies end.

The friendly hand that would restrain,
Is stretch'd to save, but stretch'd in vain ;
The wiser youth sage wisdom scorns,

And laughs at ev'ry voice that warns.

D

The fears the prudent would presage
Are deem'd the dotage of old age,
Chimæras, fancies they forebode,
To rob them of their present good.

The counsel thus to folly lent,
In noise and ribaldry is spent ;
Fandango, ball, and rout contend
Against the warnings of the friend;

Till wise too late, the phantom flies, And passes from their aching eyes; Too late they see their errors past, And vainly mourn their fate at last.

Had little Birdy trusted more

The hand that foster'd him before, He still had liv'd to sing his song, And I to listen all day long.

ON THE FALL OF A LEAF.

I walk'd in my garden; its beauties were flown; All its lilies and roses were wither'd and gone: The birds there no longer were heard, or were

seen;

The shrubs wore no longer their liv'ry of green.

I walk'd in the fields; they no longer delighted; Their former soft verdure was wither'd and blighted:

The pale sickly leaves of the ash and the oak, The dullness and dankness of winter bespoke.

As I gaz'd with some awe on these emblems of

man,

And weigh'd the resemblance again and again, A large heavy leaf overcharg'd with the dew, Was torn from its bough by the wind as it blew,

As it fell through a cluster that quiver'd beneath, It involv'd all its fellows in ruin and death;

In an instant they follow'd; and strewing the ground,

Display'd a wide field of destruction around.

"A resemblance," I cried, "to mortality's kind, A resemblance again is here forc'd on my mind! The thousands that perish by faults not their

own,

And lament in affliction the follies of one.

How oft has the youth felt the faults of the sire! The parent how often the son's vicious fire! How often has beauty, by flatt'ry o'er-borne, Left the lov'd and the loving her folly to mourn!

No shadow of shame, no hue of disgrace, Which falls on the guilty and darkens his face, But extends to those innocent dear-ones at

home,

Involv'd in his fortunes and link'd to his doom."

Thus the cloud that envelopes the orbit of light, Hides his beauties, his glories, and beams from the sight:

While its lengthening shadow o'ercharging the ground,

Spreads the same sombre gloom on each object around.

Then learn from the leaf as it falls from the tree, The same simple truth it imparted to me; Learn the lesson betimes, ere thy days are all

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gone,

That vice, in its fall, never suffers alone-"

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