THE CATERPILLAR.

No, helpless thing, I cannot harm thee now; Depart in peace, thy little life is safe,

For I have scanned thy form with curious eye,
Noted the silver line that streaks thy back,
The azure and the orange that divide

Thy velvet sides; thee, houseless wanderer,
My garment has enfolded, and my arm
Felt the light pressure of thy hairy feet;

Thou hast curled round my finger; from its tip,
Precipitous descent! with stretched out neck,
Bending thy head in airy vacancy,

This way and that, inquiring, thou hast seemed To ask protection; now, I cannot kill thee. Yet I have sworn perdition to thy race,

And recent from the slaughter am I come

Of tribes and embryo nations: I have sought
With sharpened eye and persecuting zeal,
Where, folded in their silken webs they lay
Thriving and happy; swept them from the tree
And crushed whole families beneath my foot;
Or, sudden, poured on their devoted heads
The vials of destruction.-This I've done,
Nor felt the touch of pity: but when thou,--
A single wretch, escaped the general doom,
Making me feel and clearly recognise

Thine individual existence, life,

And fellowship of sense with all that breathes,— Present'st thyself before me, I relent,

And cannot hurt thy weakness.-So the storm

Of horrid war, o'erwhelming cities, fields,

And peaceful villages, rolls dreadful on :

The victor shouts triumphant; he enjoys

The roar of cannon and the clang of arms,
And urges, by no soft relentings stopped,

The work of death and carnage.

Yet should one,

A single sufferer from the field escaped,
Panting and pale, and bleeding at his feet,
Lift his imploring eyes,-the hero weeps ;

He is grown human, and capricious Pity,
Which would not stir for thousands, melts for one
With sympathy spontaneous :-'Tis not Virtue,
Yet 'tis the weakness of a virtuous mind.

ON THE

DEATH OF THE PRINCESS CHARLOTTE.

YES, Britain mourns, as with electric touch,
For youth, for love, for happiness destroyed,
Her universal population melts

In grief spontaneous, and hard hearts are moved,
And rough unpolished natures learn to feel
For those they envied, leveled in the dust

By Fate's impartial stroke; and pulpits sound
With vanity and woe to earthly goods,

And urge and dry the tear.-Yet one there is
Who midst this general burst of grief remains
In strange tranquillity; whom not the stir
And long-drawn murmurs of the gathering crowd,
That by his very windows trail the pomp

Of hearse, and blazoned arms, and long array

282 ON THE DEATH OF THE PRINCESS CHARLOTTE.

Of sad funereal rites, nor the loud groans

And deep-felt anguish of a husband's heart,

Can move to mingle with this flood one tear:
In careless apathy, perhaps in mirth,

He wears the day. Yet is he near in blood,
very stem on which this blossom grew,

The

And at his knees she fondled in the charm

And grace spontaneous which alone belongs
To untaught infancy:-Yet O forbear!

Nor deem him hard of heart; for awful, struck

By Heaven's severest visitation, sad,

Like a scathed oak amidst the forest trees,

Lonely he stands ;-leaves bud, and shoot, and fall;

He holds no sympathy with living nature

Or time's incessant change. Then in this hour,

While pensive thought is busy with the woes

And restless change of poor humanity,

Think then, O think of him, and breathe one prayer,

From the full tide of sorrow spare one tear,

For him who does not weep!