O give me, from this heartless scene released,
To hear our old musician, blind and grey,
(Whom stretching from my nurse's arms I kissed,)
His Scottish tunes and warlike marches play,
By moonshine, on the balmy summer-night,
The while I dance amid the tedded hay
With merry maids, whose ringlets toss in light.

Or lies the purple evening on the bay
Of the calm glossy lake, O let me hide

Unheard, unseen, behind the alder-trees
For round their roots the fisher's boat is tied,

On whose trim seat doth Edmund stretch at ease, And while the lazy boat sways to and fro,

Breathes in his flute sad airs, so wild and slow, That his own cheek is wet with quiet tears.

But O, dear Anne! when midnight wind careers, And the gust pelting on the out-house shed

Makes the cock shrilly on the rain-storm crow, To hear thee sing some ballad full of woe, Ballad of ship-wrecked sailor floating dead, Whom his own true-love buried in the sands! Thee, gentle woman, for thy voice remeasures Whatever tones and melancholy pleasures

The Things of Nature utter; birds or trees

Or moan of ocean-gale in weedy caves,

Or where the stiff grass mid the heath-plant waves, Murmur and music thin of sudden breeze.

THE KEEP-SAKE.

THE tedded hay, the first fruits of the soil,
The tedded hay and corn-sheaves in one field,
Shew summer gone, ere come. The foxglove tall
Sheds its loose purple bells, or in the gust,
Or when it bends beneath the up-springing lark,
Or mountain-finch alighting. And the rose
(In vain the darling of successful love)
Stands, like some boasted beauty of past years,
The thorns remaining, and the flowers all gone.
Nor can I find, amid my lonely walk
By rivulet, or spring, or wet road-side,

That blue and bright-eyed floweret of the brook,
Hope's gentle gem, the sweet FORGET-ME-NOT!*

* One of the names and (meriting to be the only one) of the Myosotis Scorpioides Palustris, a flower from six to twelve inches

1

So will not fade the flowers which Emmeline

With delicate fingers on the snow-white silk

Has worked, (the flowers which most she knew I loved,) And, more beloved than they, her auburn hair.

In the cool morning twilight, early waked By her full bosom's joyless restlessness, Softly she rose, and lightly stole along,

Down the slope coppice to the woodbine bower, Whose rich flowers, swinging in the morning breeze, Over their dim fast-moving shadows hung,

Making a quiet image of disquiet

In the smooth, scarcely moving river-pool.

There, in that bower where first she owned her love,
And let me kiss my own warm tear of joy

From off her glowing cheek, she sate and stretched
The silk upon the frame, and worked her name
Between the Moss-ROSE and FORGET-ME-NOT-
Her own dear name, with her own auburn hair!
That forced to wander till sweet spring return,
I yet might ne'er forget her smile, her look,

high, with blue blossom and bright yellow eye. It has the same name over the whole Empire of Germany (Virgissmein nicht) and we believe, in Denmark and Sweden.

Her voice, (that even in her mirthful mood
Has made me wish to steal away and weep,)
Nor yet the entrancement of that maiden kiss
With which she promised, that when spring returned,
She would resign one half of that dear name,
And own thenceforth no other name but mine!

VOL. I.