BEAUTIFUL are you in your lowliness ;
Bright in your hues, delicious in your scent, Lively your modest blossoms, downward bent, As shrinking from our gaze, yet prompt to bless The passer-by with fragrance, and express
How gracefully, though mutely, eloquent Are unobtrusive worth, and meek content, Rejoicing in their own obscure recess. Delightful flowerets! at the voice of spring
Your buds unfolded to its sunbeams bright, And though your blossoms soon shall fade from
Above your lonely birth-place birds shall sing, And from your clust'ring leaves the glow-worm
The emerald glory of its earth-born light.
THE Palm! the princess of the sylvan rare; When islanded amid the level green, Or charming the wild desert with her grace, The only verdure of the sultry scene: Ever with simple majesty of mien
No other growth of nature can assume,
She reigns-and most when, in the ev'ning sheen, The stable column and the waving plume
Shade the delicious lights that all around illume.
THE REPLY OF THE SHUNAMITE WOMAN.1
"I DWELL among mine own" Oh! happy
Not for the sunny clusters of the vine,
Nor for the olives on the mountain's brow; Nor the flocks wandering by the flow'ry line Of streams, that make the green land where they shine
Laugh to the light of waters. not for these,
Nor the soft shadow of ancestral trees,
Whose kindly whisper floats o'er thee and thine Oh! not for these I call thee richly blest, But for the meekness of thy woman's breast, Where that sweet depth of still contentment lies; And for thy holy household love, which clings Unto all ancient and familiar things,
Weaving from each some link for home's dear charities.
NAY, William, nay, not so! the changeful year In all its due successions to my sight
Presents but varied beauties, transient all, All in their season good. These fading leaves, That with their rich variety of hues
Make yonder forest in the slanting sun So beautiful, in you awake the thought
Of winter, cold, drear winter, when the trees, Each like a fleshless skeleton shall stretch
Its bare brown boughs; where not a flower shall spread
Its colours to the day, and not a bird Carol its joyance, but all nature wear One sullen aspect, bleak and desolate, To eye, ear, feeling, comfortless alike. To me their many-colour'd beauties speak Of times of merriment and festival, The year's best holiday: I call to mind The school-boy days, when in the falling leaves I saw with eager hope the pleasant sign Of coming Christmas; when at morn I took My wooden kalendar, and counting up Once more its often-told account, smooth'd off Each day with more delight the daily notch. To you the beauties of the autumnal year Make mournful emblems, and you think of man Doom'd to the grave's long winter, spirit-broken, Bending beneath the burthen of his years, Sense-dull'd and fretful, "full of aches and pains," Yet clinging still to life. To me they show The calm decay of nature when the mind Retains its strength, and in the languid eye Religion's holy hopes kindle a joy
That makes old age look lovely. All to you Is dark and cheerless; you in this fair world See some destroying principle abroad, Air, earth, and water full of living things, Each on the other preying; and the ways Of man, a strange perplexing labyrinth, Where crimes and miseries, each producing each, Render life loathsome, and destroy the hope
That should in death bring comfort. Oh! my
That thy faith were as mine! that could'st see Death still producing life, and evil still Working its own destruction; could'st behold The strifes and troubles of this troubled world With the strong eye that sees the promis'd day
Dawn through this night of tempest! All things
Would minister to joy; there should thine heart Be heal'd and harmonis'd, and thou would'st feel God, always, everywhere, and all in all.
Ir may be that our homeward longings made That other lands were judg'd with partial eyes; But fairer in my sight the mottled skies, With pleasant interchange of sun and shade, And more desir'd the meadow and deep glade Of sylvan England, green with frequent showers, Than all the beauty which the vaunted bow'rs Of the parch'd South have in mine eyes display'd; Fairer and more desir'd!-this well might be,
For let the South have beauty's utmost dower, And yet my heart might well have turn'd to thee, My home, my country, when a delicate flower Within thy pleasant borders was for me Tended, and growing up thro' sun and shower.
BAILLIE, JOANNA.
The Old Soldier, 106.
A Winter's Morning, 273. Life, 289.
Spring Flowers, 303.
BARBAULD, ANNA LETITIA, died 1825.
The Mouse's Petition, 45. BARTON, BERNARD.
Child's Morning Prayer, 6. The Skylark, 16. Spring, 22.
England's Oak, 35.
Child's Evening Hymn, 48. Human Life, 59.
Pity for Poor Little Sweeps, 77. Winter (Sonnet), 139. Counsels, 183.
A Winter Night (Sonnet), 192. The Falling Leaf, 203. Power and Gentleness, 232. A Thought, 260.
The Ivy, 294.
Morning, 307.
Farewell, 315.
Violets (Sonnet), 487.
BEATTIE, JAMES, LL.D., died 1803. Morning, 227.
BIDLAKE, JOHN, D.D., died 1814. Birds' Nests, 252.
BLOOMFIELD, ROBERT, died 1823. Instruction sought from the Bee, 38.
The Blind Child, 226. Love of the Country, 283. BOWLES, CAROLINE (Mrs. Southey). The Baby's Bonnet, 71. The Pauper's Deathbed, 142. BOWLES, Rev. WILLIAM LISLE. Heaven, 180.
The Rhine (Sonnet), 333. Bamborough Castle (Sonnet), 404.
BRAINARD, G. C., died 1828. (Ame- rican.)
The Fails of Niagara, 396. BRYANT, WILLIAM CULLEN. (Ame- rican.)
To a Waterfowl, 14. March, 144.
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