The nectarine, and curious peach, Into my hands themselves do reach; Stumbling on melons, as I pass, Insnared with flowers, I fall on grass.

Meanwhile the mind, from pleasure less,

Withdraws into its happiness,

The mind, that ocean where each

kind

Does straight its own resemblance

find,

Yet it creates, transcending these,
Far other worlds and other seas,
Annihilating all that's made

To a green thought in a green shade.

Here at the fountain's sliding foot, Or at some fruit-tree's mossy root, Casting the body's vest aside,

My soul into the boughs does glide: There, like a bird, it sits and sings, Then whets and claps its silver

wings,

And, till prepared for longer flight, Waves in its plumes the various light.

Such was that happy garden-state, While man there walked without a mate:

After a place so pure and sweet,
What other help could yet be meet!
But 'twas beyond a mortal's share
To wander solitary there:
Two paradises are in one,
To live in paradise alone.

How well the skilful gardener drew Of flowers and herbs this dial new, Where, from above, the milder sun Does through a fragrant zodiac run, And, as it works, the industrious bee Computes its time as well as we! How could such sweet and wholesome hours

Be reckoned but with herbs and flowers?

MARVELL.

LACHIN Y GAIR.

AWAY, ye gay landscapes, ye gardens of roses!

In you let the minions of luxury

rove;

That pauses of deep silence mocked his skill,

Then, sometimes, in that silence, while he hung

Listening, a gentle shock of mild surprise

Has carried far into his heart the voice

Of mountain torrents; or the visible

scene

Would enter unawares into his mind With all its solemn imagery, its rocks,

Its woods, and that uncertain heaven, received

Into the bosom of the steady lake. WORDSWORTH.

THE EARTH-SPIRIT.

I HAVE WOven shrouds of air
In a loom of hurrying light,
For the trees which blossoms
bear,

And gilded them with sheets of
bright;

I fall upon the grass like love's first kiss;

I make the golden flies and their fine bliss;

I paint the hedgerows in the lane, And clover white and red the pathways bear;

I laugh aloud in sudden gusts of rain

To see the ocean lash himself in air;

I throw smooth shells and weeds along the beach,

And pour the curling waves far o'er the glossy reach;

Swing birds' nests in the elms, and shake cool moss

Along the aged beams, and hide their loss.

The very broad rough stones I gladden too;

Some willing seeds I drop along their sides,

Nourish the generous plant with freshening dew,

Till there where all was waste, true joy abides.

The peaks of aged mountains, with

I bind the caverns of the sea with hair,

Glossy, and long, and rich as kings' estate;

I polish the green ice, and gleam the wall

With the white frost, and leaf the brown trees tall.

CHANNING.

THE PASS OF KIRKSTONE.

WITHIN the mind strong fancies work,

A deep delight the bosom thrills,
Oft as I pass along the fork

Of these fraternal hills,

Where, save the rugged road, we find

No appanage of human kind,
Nor hint of man; if stone or rock
Seem not his handiwork to mock
By something cognizably shaped;
Mockery, or model roughly hewn,
And left as if by earthquake strewn,
Or from the flood escaped:
Altars for Druid service fit;
(But where no fire was ever lit,
Unless the glow-worm to the skies
Thence offer nightly sacrifice,)
Wrinkled Egyptian monument;
Green moss-grown tower; or hoary

There is a rapture on the lonely shore;

There is society where none intrudes,

By the deep sea, and music in its

roar:

I love not man the less, but nature

more,

From these our interviews, in which I steal

From all I may be, or have been before,

To mingle with the universe, and feel

What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal.

Roll on, thou deep and dark-blue ocean, roll!

Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain:

Man marks the earth with ruin: his control

Stops with the shore: upon the watery plain

The robin and the wren are flown, and from the shrubs 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 sprang 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 the cold November rain Calls not, from out the gloomy

earth, the lovely ones again.

The wind-flower and the violet, they perished long ago; And the brier-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 sunflower 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;