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SONNETS.

To one who has been long in city pent,
'Tis very sweet to look into the fair

And open face of heaven,-to breathe a prayer
Full in the smile of the blue firmament.

Who is more happy, when, with heart's content,
Fatigued he sinks into some pleasant lair
Of wavy grass, and reads a debonair
And gentle tale of love and languishment?
Returning home at evening, with an ear,
Catching the notes of Philomel,—an eye
Watching the sailing cloudlet's bright career,
He mourns that day so soon has glided by;
E'en like the passage of an angel's tear
That falls through the clear ether silently.

HAPPY is England! I could be content
To see no other verdure than its own;

To feel no other breezes than are blown
Through its tall woods with high romances blent :
Yet do I sometimes feel a languishment
For skies Italian, and an inward groan
To sit upon an Alp as on a throne,

And half forget what world or worldling meant.
Happy is England, sweet her artless daughters;
Enough their simple loveliness for me,

Enough their whitest arms in silence clinging: Yet do I often warmly burn to see

Beauties of deeper glance, and hear their singing, And float with them about the summer waters.

STANZAS.

In a drear-nighted December,
Too happy, happy tree,

Thy branches ne'er remember
Their green felicity:

The north cannot undo them,

With a sleety whistle through them;

Nor frozen thawings glue them

From budding at the prime.

In a drear-nighted December,
Too happy, happy brook,
Thy bubblings ne'er remember
Apollo's summer look;

But with a sweet forgetting,
They stay their crystal fretting,

Never, never petting

About the frozen time.

Ah! would t'were so with many

A gentle girl and boy!

But were there ever any
Writhed not at passed joy?

To know the change and feel it,
When there is none to heal it,
Nor numbed sense to steal it,
Was never said in rhyme.

TO AUTUMN.

SEASON of mists and mellow fruitfulness!
Close bosom friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless

With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run; To bend with apples the moss'd cottage trees,

And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;

To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,

And still more, later flower for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For summer has o'erbrimm'd their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting, careless, on a granary floor,—
Thy hair soft lifted by the winnowing wind:
Or, on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,

Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook Spares the next swarth and all its twined flowers; And sometimes like a gleamer hou dost keep

Steady thy laden head across a brook;

Or, by a cider-press, with patient look,

Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.

Where are thy songs of spring? Ay, where are they? Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,

And touch the stubble plains with rosy hue:

Then, in a wailful choir, the small knats mourn Among the river sallows, borne aloft,

Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies; And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn; Hedge-crickets sing; and now, with treble soft, The redbreast whistles from a garden croft, And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

JAMES HOGG was born on the 25th of January, 1772, in a cottage on the banks of the Ettrick, in the shire of Selkirk. He was descended from a race of shepherds who had inhabited, for centuries, the sequestered district in which was the Poet's birthplace: humble as was the calling of his father, it was not beyond the reach of misfortune. When James was scarcely more than a child, he was compelled to labour for his own living: and engaged himself to herd cows, with a neighbouring farmer. The good seed had, however, been sown;-sound and upright principles had taken root in his mind, and his fancy had been nursed, unconsciously, by his mother, whose memory was stored with old border ballads. His elder brother states, that James was, what is called in the language of his native valley, a soft, "actionless" boy; and that in early life he gave no token of the genius which afterwards astonished and delighted his countrymen. The scenery amid which he lived and rambled, the utter seclusion in which the shepherds of Ettrick dwelt, and his lonely, yet happy, occupation among his native glens and mountains, gathered the intellectual wealth which the simple shepherd was destined to scatter among mankind: the "actionless" boy soon gave proof that he was also contemplative; he spoke songs long before he could write them. For many years, until indeed he had grown to manhood, his fame was limited to his own neighbourhood; at length, chance conducted him to Edinburgh; a small printed volume was the result; it was soon followed by "the Mountain Bard:" and the world began to speak of the Shepherd of Ettrick. Still he continued to "tend his flock;" and it was not until after his reputation had very widely spread, that he commenced farming on his own account. In 1821, he took the farm of Mount Benger; it was a disastrous attempt to better his fortunes, and it exhausted the money his literary labours had collected. From the period of his first appearance before the public, he passed scarcely a year without furnishing something for the press. The Mountain Bard was followed by the Queen's Wake;-the Witch of Fife, and Queen Hynde, established his fame as a Poet; and the Border Tales, and other publications gave him a prominent station as a writer of prose. Fortunate in the friendship of such men as Scott and Wilson, happy in his home, and admired by the world, with a disposition naturally cheerful, he

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