So comest thou, Winter, finally to doom The sinking year; and with thy ice-dropp'd sprays, Cypress and yew, engarland her pale tomb, Her vanish'd hopes and aye departed days. ANNA SEWARD.

SUMMER.

Now on hills, rocks, and streams and vales and plains Full looks the shining day.-Our gardens wear The gorgeous robes of the consummate year. With laugh and shout and song, stout maids and swains

Heap high the fragrant hay, as through rough lanes Rings the yet empty wagon.-See in air

The pendent cherries, red with tempting stains, Gleam through their boughs.Summer, thy bright

career

Must slacken soon in Autumn's milder sway;

Then thy now heap'd and jocund meads shall stand Smooth, vacant-silent, through th' exulting land As waves thy rival's golden fields, and gay

Her reapers throng. She smiles, and binds the sheaves,

Then bends her parting step o'er fallen and rustling leaves.

ANNA SEWARD.

THE DEATH OF THE FLOWERS.

How happily, how happily the flowers die away!
Oh, could we but return to earth as easily as they!
Just live a life of sunshine, of innocence and bloom,
Then drop without decrepitude, or pain, into the tomb!
The gay and glorious creatures! they neither "toil
nor spin ;"

Yet, lo! what goodly raiment they're all apparelled in;

No tears are on their beauty, but dewy gems more

bright

Than ever brow of eastern queen endiadem'd with light.

The young rejoicing creatures! their pleasures never

pall;

Nor lose in sweet contentment, because so free to

all!

The dew, the showers, the sunshine, the balmy, blessed air,

Spend nothing of their freshness, though all may freely share.

The happy careless creatures! of time they take no heed;

Nor weary of his creeping, nor tremble at his speed; Nor sigh with sick impatience, and wish the light away;

Nor when 'tis gone, cry dolefully, "would God that it were day!"

And when their lives are over, they drop away to rest, Unconscious of the penal doom, on holy Nature's

breast;

No pain have they in dying-no shrinking from de

cay

Oh! could we but return to earth as easily as they! MISS BOWLES.

THE DEATH OF THE FLOWERS.

THE melancholy days are come, the saddest of the year,

Of wailing winds, and naked woods, and meadows brown and sere.

Heap'd in the hollows of the grove, the wither'd leaves lie dead;

They rustle to the eddying gust, and to the rabbit's

tread.

The robin and the wren are flown, and from the shrub the jay,

And from the wood-top calls the crow, through all the gloomy day.

Where are the flowers, the fair young flowers, that lately sprung and stood

In brighter light and softer airs, a beauteous sisterhood?

Alas! they all are in their graves, the gentle race of flowers

Are lying in their lowly beds, with the fair and good

of ours.

The rain is falling where they lie; but cold November rain

Calls not, from out the gloomy earth, the lovely ones again.

The wind-flower and the violet, they perish'd long ago, And the wild-rose and the orchis died amid the summer glow;

But on the hill the golden-rod, and the aster in the wood,

And the yellow sun-flower by the brook in autumn beauty stood,

Till fell the frost from the clear, cold heaven, as falls the plague on men,

And the brightness of their smile was gone from upland, glade and glen.

And now, when comes the calm, mild day, as still such days will come,

To call the squirrel and the bee from out their winter home,

When the sound of dropping nuts is heard, though

all the trees are still,

And twinkle in the smoky light the waters of the rill, The south wind searches for the flowers whose fragrance late he bore,

And sighs to find them in the wood and by the stream

no more.

And then I think of one who in her youthful beauty

died,

The fair, meek blossom that grew up and faded by my side:

In the cold moist earth we laid her when the forest cast the leaf,

And we wept that one so lovely should have a life so brief;

Yet not unmeet it was, that one, like that young friend of ours,

So gentle and so beautiful, should perish with the

flowers.

BRYANT.

Note.-We have placed the two preceding specimens of foreign and native poetry, on the same subject, together, that the reader may draw a fair com. parison between them.

SONNET.

feet

As thus oppress'd with many a heavy care
(Though young yet sorrowful), I turn my
To the dark woodland,-longing much to greet
The form of Peace, if chance she sojourns there,-
Deep thought and dismal, verging to despair,

Fills my sad breast: and tired with this vain coil
I shrink dismay'd before life's upland toil,
And as amid the leaves the evening air
Whispers still melody, I think, ere long,
When I no more can hear, these woods will speak!
And then a sad smile plays upon my cheek,
And mournful phantasies upon me throng:
And I do think with a most strange delight
On the calm slumbers of the dead man's night.

H. K. WHITE.

TO CONSUMPTION.

GENTLY, most gently on thy victim's head,
Consumption, lay thine hand! Let me decay
Like the expiring lamp, unseen, away,
And softly go to slumber with the dead!
And if 'tis true what holy men have said
That strains angelic oft foretell the day
Of death to those good men who fall thy prey,
O, let th' aerial music round my bed
Dissolving slow in dying symphony

Whisper the solemn warning to my ear:
That I may bid my weeping friends good bye
Ere I depart upon my journey drear;

And, smiling faintly on the painful past,
Compose my decent head, and breathe my last.
H. K. WHITE.

EVENING MUSIC OF THE ANGELS.

Low warblings, now, and solitary harps,
Were heard among the angels, touch'd and tuned
As to an evening hymn, preluding soft

To cherub voices. Louder as they swell'd,
Deep strings struck in, and hoarser instruments,
Mix'd with clear silver sounds, till concord rose
Full as the harmony of winds to heaven;
Yet sweet as nature's springtide melodies
To some worn pilgrim, first, with glistening eyes,
Greeting his native valley, whence the sounds
Of rural gladness, herds, and bleating flocks,
The chirp of birds, blithe voices, lowing kine,
The dash of waters, reed, or rustic pipe,
Blent with the dulcet distance-mellow'd bell,
Come, like the echo of his early joys.
In every pause, from spirits in mid air,
Responsive still were golden viols heard,
And heavenly symphonies stole faintly down.

HILLHOUSE.