varied carpet of yellow cistus, purple foxglove, blue harebell, white wild strawberry flower, and scarlet strawberry fruit, and tracts of bilberry bushes with the blue purple bloom on their juicy berries. In autumn, the banks of purple heather and ling, and sweeping fronds of bracken fern,-the brilliant glow of colour over all,—golden, and crimson, and green, over beech tree and oak,-scarlet, and yellow, on sycamore, plane tree, and maple,—whilst unchanged through all, rises the dark green shadow of the cedars and pine trees, through whose gently waving branches, the autumn wind murmurs soothingly, as it whirls the sere leaves in rustling masses to one's feet. In mid-winter, on a bright frosty day, how beautifully does the frosted tracery of dark firs, gleam out against the cold blue sky, whilst on the ground, around their red branching roots, lies the track of the wild rabbit, or forest squirrel, over the new fallen

snow.

Through these sylvan scenes, the young poet loved to wander. Hither would he resort on summer evenings, sometimes in company with a merry group of his sisters, and their young friends; when, choosing some sequestered nook of mossy turf, with the "green boughs arching overhead," they would pass pleasant social hours, in the reading of the last new poem by Campbell, or Rogers, or talk over the characters and points of interest, of the latest" Waverley," till the last ray of setting sunlight, gleamed red on the stems of pine tree and cedar, and they wended their way

homewards in the gloaming, or tarried yet later until

Calmly shone the moonshine pale,
On glade and hillock, flower and tree,
And sweet the gurgling nightingale,
Poured forth her music wild and free."

More often he would wander forth alone through the woodland paths, and flinging himself down at the foot of his favourite old Pine tree, give free scope to the fancies of his imagination.

In his poem on " Aspley Wood," he thus describes the influence of Nature upon his spirit :

III.

"O Nature! woods, winds, music, valleys, hills,
And gushing brooks,-in you there is a voice
Of potency, an utterance which instils
Light, life, and freshness, bidding Man rejoice
As with a spirit's transport: from the noise,
The hum of busy towns, to you I fly;

Ye were my earliest nurses, my first choice,
Let me not idly hope, nor vainly sigh;

Whisper once more of peace-joys-years long vanished by !

IV.

To you I fled in childhood, and arrayed
Your beauty in a robe of magic power;
Ye made me what I am and shall be, made
My being stretch beyond the shadowy hour
Of narrow life,―ye granted me a dower
Of thoughts and living pictures, such as stir
In the eye's apple; to the breathing bower,
Here where bright chesnut weds the towering fir,

Recall fair Wisdom back, that I may dwell with her."

'Aspley Wood," is the principal poem, in a volume

containing several, published by J. H. Wiffen in 1819,

under the title "Aonian Hours," a second edition of which was called for in the following year. It is dedicated to his brother.

ΤΟ

B. B. WIFFEN,

IN RECREATION AND IN STUDY,

IN GLADNESS AND IN TRIAL,

THE COMPANION, THE BROTHER, AND THE FRIEND,

THIS POEM

IS AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED BY

THE AUTHOR.

A few selected stanzas will present the beauty of the woodland scenery, and its charms for a poetic

nature.

XXVII.

But I thereon in the warm luxury

Of an Italian sky will fling me down

Unscrupulously, lightly envy I

The cowled monk's scapulaire or hermit's gown
Woven of sackcloth, and a bed of down

I scorn as lightly; but on Nature's breast,

'Mid flowers and ferns and freshness all her own,

And soft airs giving sweetness sweeter zest,

O who could slight such charms? who shun so pure a rest?

XXVIII.

The far-extended prospect—the dim spire

Which bounds the blue horizon-white walls seen
In glittering distance-wreathing from the fire
Of pastoral huts, ascending smoke—the sheen
Of hamlets humming in the morn-the green

And beautiful hue of youth on every flower,

And herb where spring's betraying steps have beenThe bright leaves sparkling in a sunny shower,-Music on every bough, and life in every bower.

XXXIII.

He who hath ne'er invested Solitude

With an undying beauty, ne'er hath knelt
In worship when her sceptre brought the mood
Of melancholy o'er him, hath not felt
Sweetness in sorrow-is not used to melt

With the humanities of life, nor hears

The whispered lore, the music which is dealt
Invisibly around us from the spheres,

The tender, bright, and pure--the Paradise of tears.

XXXIV.

The ineffably serene, the kind regret

Which speaks without upbraiding, the mild gloom
Of thought without austerity, but yet
Heavy with pensiveness, our future doom
Seen without fear, presages which assume
The features of an Angel-feelings grand
Grand and of incommunicable bloom,

The growth of Eden; O he hath not spanned
The soul's infinitude with an Archangel's hand!

LXIV.

Look on that flower-the daughter of the vale,

The Medicean statue of the shade!

Her limbs of modest beauty, aspect pale,
Are but by her ambrosial breath betrayed.
There, half in elegant relief displayed,

She standeth to our gaze, half-shrinking shuns;
Folding her green scarf like a bashful Maid
Around, to screen her from her suitor suns,
Not all her many sweets she lavisheth at once.

LXXVI.

That pageant past, comes the quick Squirrel forth
From his high cedar with a burst and bound,
To sport upon the warm grass of the earth
Feeding, and wave his graceful brush around,
And pause, and prick his ears, and at each sound
List in a breathless attitude, and start

If far away intruding steps resound :

With feet already raised to spring, to dart
On to the nearest pine, but claims a moment's part.

LXXVII.

Anon he cowers upon a branch, and thence
Looks deeply down on his pursuer's shape,
And yet alarmed, on his glad eminence
Stamps wrathfully, then looks a laughing ape,
Playing his thousand pranks o'er an escape
Almost too lofty for our eye to reach

Through the thick gloom, then hies he to the rape
Of the pine's cones, or to his nest, the pleach
Of many a wilding bough in the next giant beech.

LXXVIII.

This his spring life-e'en when the October wind
His firm beech rocks with a sea-murmur loud,
That squirrel the same merry mime I find-

A mariner on his vibrating shroud :

Though darkly glooms the burning thunder-cloud,
And rends with sulphurous bolt some mighty tree,
He hears the roar as fearlessly and proud

As a Fleet-admiral when dark-alee,

The fiery battle joins, and chaos shakes the sea."

*

Another favourite resort, was the grove of pines within the gates of Woburn Park, called "The Evergreens." There, fir-crowned heights, and piny glades