NOVEMBER.

PERFECT.

AH! whither bright God of the Spring,
Art thou and thy blessings withdrawn?
The warblers that prune the gay wing
No longer enliven the lawn.

Ye breezes of softness, ah! where
Are you and your odours exil'd ?
No longer you sport through the air,
Invitingly pleasant and mild.

Of verdure the loss do we moan;
Lament that the suu's soothing rays
To climates more southern are gone,
And darken'd our spiritless days!
Such feelings are common to all;

Lo! Nature shall sympathize too;
Who, tho' she descends to her fall,
At intervals smiles on the view.

Does the woodcock, itinerate, come,
For nurture solicit our plains;
Ah! why thus abandon his home

To crimson the sport of our swains,
Who rise with the dawn for their game,

And pierce tho' the spring and the copse,

With eagerness level their aim,

When the emigrant flutters and drops!

Ye streams, that run purling along,
Your banks your own Flora has fled,
And Philomel issues no song

From willows that bower'd her head:
The bleating of lambs from the fold
No longer in symphony blends;
No tale of soft passion is told

Where, arching, the sycamore bends.

Ah! where is the couch of green moss,
Which erst for my Delia I found,
As cheerful we wander'd across

The cowslip and daisy-dress'd ground?
No more to the 'bine-twisted bow'r
With Delia, delighted, I run,
In coolness to pass the still hour,
Eluding the heat of the sun.

See! Nature so pensive is grown,
Her tears steep in dew all the plain;
Congenial to hers is my own,

But avails not our mutual pain:
November, the tomb of the year,
Usurps with tyrannical hand;
His horrors successive appear,
Successive stalk over the land;

His glooms all around us arise;
Does Sol with less lustre appear,
Beam pale from his throne in the skies,
Or shine unempower'd to cheer?
Your funeral notes in the wind

I hear, ye disconsolate shades !—
Your foliage, so sickly resign'd,
Shrouds over the face of the glades.

To pine and weep over your bier
Melpomene shall not refuse!
The fall of the leaf and the year

Such heart-feeling sorrow renews:
While tuneless and sad, as the breeze,
Are the strains that arise from the spray
Of the naked, cold, quiv'ring trees,-
Sepulchral sad signs of decay!

Might fancy, excursive of wing,
When all is so baleful and bleak,
In simile venture to sing,

Your copse on the lawn let her seek:

The yew, in its centre, compare
To some prelate, whose rev'rend head
Reclines, sympathetic, with care

To close the last rites of the dead.

Who knows, but that priest of the shade
By nature herself is ordain'd,
In vestments too sacred to fade,

And thro' every season sustain'd;
In spring to invite the warm breeze
That awakens the bud as it blows;
In summer to guard the green trees,
In winter to hush all their woes?

Does ought soothe the blast on the heath,
The griefs that arise from the grove,
The rigours above and beneath,-

'Tis undisguis'd friendship and love:
Those myrtles of peace and repose,
Cherubic content as their guide,
But soften the season of woes,

And make all its terrors subside..

Then where does my Celadon rove,

The friend of my analiz'd breast?And where is the Empress of Love, My Delia, with innocence blest? Can winter to Celadon bring

The troubles which friendship annoy? Or Lethe e'er venture to spring.

O'er such a pure fountain of joy!.

Shall Delia, whose heart is the seat Where love the most faithful is stor'd, Unfeelingly fly my retreat,

By winter's obtrusion explor'd? No, Celadon, no ;-to complain Of goodness attach'd to thy heart, Would cross our connection with pain,, Ungrateful in me to impart..

Integrity, artless of form,

In vest of sincerity's thine: Unruffled, unhurt by the storm,

Though tempests of life snall combine:
Let winter approach to destroy

The comforts thy presence can bring,
When Celadon comes we'll enjoy,
And soften his gloom into spring.

Nor let me of Delia complain,

Tho' the trees their gay verdure resign; The North bids his tyrannies reign,

And Phoebus, for clouds, cannot shine: She comes in her presence is loveHer eyes are the heralds of joy !— November no longer can prove

The season of grief and annoy.

THE PEASANT OF THE ALPS.

CHARLOTTE SMITH.

WHERE cliffs arise, by winter crown'd, And through dark groves of pine around, Down the chasms the snow-fed torrents foam, Within some hollow, shelter'd from the storms, The Peasant of the Alps his cottage forms, And builds his humble, happy home.

Unenvy'd is the rich domain,

That far beneath him on the plain

Waves its wide harvests and its olive groves:

More dear to him his hut, with plaintain thatch'd, Where long his unambitious heart attach'd,

Finds all his wishes, all he loves.

There dwells the mistress of his heart,
And love, which teaches every art,

Has bid him dress tne spot with fondest care:
When borrowing from the vale its fertile soil,
He climbs the precipice with patient toil,
To plant her favourite flow'rets there.

With native shrubs, an hardy race,
There the green myrtle finds a place,

And roses there, the dewy leaves decline:

While from the crags abrupt and tangled steeps, With bloom and fruit the Alpine berry peeps, And, blushing, mingles with the vine.

His garden's simple produce stor'd, Prepar'd for him by hands ador'd, Is all the little luxury he knows:

And by the same dear hands are softly spread The Chamois' velvet spoil that forms the bed Where in her arms he finds repose.

But absent from the calm abode,

Dark thunder gathers round his road,

Wild raves the wind, the arrowy lightnings flash,
Returning quick the murm'ring rocks among,
His faint heart trembling as he winds along,
Alarm'd-he listens to the crash.

Of rifted ice!-Oh, man of woe!
O'er his dear cot-a mass of snow,

By the storm sever'd from the cliff above,

Has fall'n-and buried in its marble breast, All that for him, lost wretch the world possest, His home, his happiness, his love!

Aghast the heart-struck mourner stands, Glaz'd are his eyes, convuls'd his hands! O'erwhelming anguish checks his labouring breath; Crush'd by despair's intolerable weight,

Frantic he seeks the mountain's giddiest height, And headlong seeks relief in death.