WORMS AND FLOWERS.

YOU'RE Spinning for my lady, worm!
Silk garments for the fair;
You're spinning rainbows for a form
More beautiful than air,
When air is bright with sun-beams,
And morning mists arise

From woody vales and mountain streams
To blue autumnal skies.

You're spinning for my lady, flower!
You're training for my love,
The glory of her summer-bower,
While skylarks soar above:
Go, twine her locks with rose-buds,
Or breathe upon her breast,
While zephyrs curl the water-floods
And rock the halcyon's nest.

But, oh! there is another worm
Ere long will visit her,
And revel on her lovely form,

In the dark sepulchre:

Yet from that sepulchre shall spring
A flower as sweet as this,

Hard by the nightingale shall sing,
Soft winds its petals kiss.

Frail emblems of frail beauty, ye!
In beauty who would trust?
Since all that charms the eye must be
Consign'd to worms and dust:

Yet like the flower that decks her tomb,
Her spirit shall quit the sod,
To shine in amaranthine bloom,
Fast by the throne of GOD.

1834.

THE RECLUSE.

A FOUNTAIN issuing into light,
Before a marble palace, threw
To heaven its column, pure and bright,
Returning thence in showers of dew;
But soon a humbler course it took,
And glid away a nameless brook.

Flowers on its grassy margin sprang,

Flies o'er its eddying surface play'd, Birds 'midst the alder-branches sang,

Flocks through the verdant meadows stray'd; The weary there lay down to rest,

And there the halcyon built her nest.

'Twas beautiful, to stand and watch

The fountain's crystal turn to gems,

And from the sky such colours catch,
As if 'twere raining diadems;

Yet all was cold and curious art,
That charm'd the eye, but miss'd the heart.

Dearer to me the little stream,

Whose unimprison'd waters run,

Wild as the changes of a dream,

By rock and glen, through shade and sun;

Its lovely links had power to bind
In welcome chains my wandering mind.

So thought I, when I saw the face
By happy portraiture reveal'd,
Of one, adorn'd with every grace,
-Her name and date from me conceal'd,

But not her story ;—she had been
The pride of many a splendid scene.

She cast her glory round a court,
And frolick'd in the gayest ring,
Where fashion's high-born minions sport,
Like sparkling fire-flies on the wing;
But thence, when love had touch'd her soul,
To nature and to truth she stole.

From din, and pageantry, and strife,

Midst woods and mountains, vales and plains, She treads the paths of lowly life,

Yet in a bosom-circle reigns,

No fountain scattering diamond showers,
But the sweet streamlet watering flowers.

1829.

THE RETREAT.

Written on finding a copy of verses in a small edifice so named, at Raithby, in Lincolnshire, the seat of R. C. Brackenbury, to whom the author made a visit in the autumn of 1815, after a severe illness.

A STRANGER sat down in the lonely retreat ;-
Though kindness had welcomed him there,
Yet weary with travel, and fainting with heat,
His bosom was sadden'd with care:

That sinking of spirit they only can know,
Whose joys are all chasten'd with fears;
Whose waters of comfort, though deeply they flow,
Still wind through the valley of tears.

What ails thee, O stranger! but open thine eye

A paradise bursts on thy view;

The sun in full glory is marching on high

Through cloudless and infinite blue:

The woods, in their wildest luxuriance display'd,

Are stretching their coverts of green,

While bright from the depth of their innermost

shade,

Yon mirror of waters is seen.

There richly reflected, the mansion, the lawn,
The banks and the foliage appear,

By nature's own pencil enchantingly drawn,

-A landscape enshrined in a sphere;