2

L

OOK round our world; behold the chain of love

Combining all below and all above;

See plastic nature working to this end,
The single atoms each to other tend,
Attract, attracted to, the next in place,
Formed and impelled its neighbor to embrace.
See matter next, with various life endued,
Press to one center still, the general good.
See dying vegetables life sustain,
See life dissolving vegetate again:

All forms that perish other forms supply,
(By turns we catch the vital breath, and die);
Like bubbles on the sea of matter borne;
They rise, they break, and to that sea return:
Nothing is foreign; parts relate to whole;
One all-extending, all-preserving soul
Connects each being, greatest with the least;
Made beast in aid of man, and man of beast;
All served: all serving; nothing stands alone;
The chain holds on, and where it ends, unknown.
-Alexander Pope.

Roused by the cock, the soon-clad shepherd leaves His mossy cottage, where with peace he dwells;

And from the crowded fold, in order, drives
His flock, to taste the verdure of the morn.
-James Thomson.

HO has not dreamed a world of bliss
On

Won a bright sunny noon like this,
WH

Couched by his native brook's green maze,
With comrade of his boyish days,
While all around them seemed to be
Just as in joyous infancy?

Who has not loved at such an hour,
Upon that heath, in birchen bower,
Lulled in the poet's dreamy mood,
Its wild and sunny solitude?
While o'er the waste of purple ling
You mark a sultry glimmering;
Silence herself there seems to sleep,
Wrapped in a slumber long and deep,
Where slowly stray these lonely sheep

Through the tall foxglove's crimson bloom,
And gleaming of the scattered broom.
Love you not, then, to list and hear
The crackling of the gorse-flowers near,
Pouring an orange-scented tide
Of fragrance o er the desert wide?
To hear the buzzard's whimpering shrill,
Hovering above you high and still?
The twittering of the bird that dwells
Among the heath's delicious bells?
While round your bed, o'er fern and blade,
Insects in green and gold arrayed,
The sun's gay tribes have lightly strayed;
And sweeter sound their humming wings
Than the proud minstrel's echoing strings.
-William Howitt.

Soak up the sunshine; sleeps the brimming tide Save when the wedge-shaped wake in silence passes Of some slow water-rat; whose sinuous glide Wavers the long green sedge's shade from side to side;

But up the west, like a rock-shivered surge,

Climbs à great cloud edged with sun-whitened

sprays,

Huge whirls in the toil toppling o'er its verge,
And falling in streams, and yet it climbs alway.

Suddenly all the sky is hid

As with the shutting of a lid,

One by one great drops are falling

Doubtful and slow;

Down the pane they are crookedly crawling,
And the wind breathes low;

Slowly the circles widen on the river,

Widen and mingle, one and all;

Here and there the slenderer flowers shiver,

Struck by an icy rain-drop's fall.
Now on the hills I hear the thunder mutter,
The wind is gathering in the west;

The upturned leaves first whiten and flutter,
Then droop to a fitful rest;

Up from the stream with sluggish flap
Struggles the gull and floats away;
Nearer and nearer rolls the thunder clap,-
We shall not see the sun go down to-day:
Now leaps the wind on the sleepy marsh,
And tramples the grass with terrified feet,
The startled river turns leaden and harsh,

You can hear the quick heart of the tempest beat.

Look! look! that livid flash!

And instantly follows the rattling thunder,
As if some cloud-crag, split asunder,

Fell, splintering with a ruinous crash,

On the earth, which crouches in silence under;
And now a solid gray wall of rain

Shuts off the landscape, mile by mile;

For a breath's space I see the blue wood again, And, ere the next heart-beat, the wind-hurled pile, That seemed but now a league aloof,

Bursts crackling o'er the sun-parched roof; Against the windows the storm comes dashing, Through tattered foliage the hail tears crashing, The blue lightning flashes,

The rapid hail clashes,
The white waves are tumbling,
And, in one baffled roar,
Like the toothless sea mumbling
A rock-bristled shore,
The thunder is rumbling

And crashing and crumbling,-
Will silence return nevermore ?

Hush! Still as death,

The tempest holds his breath
As from a sudden will;

The rain stops short, but from the eaves

You see it drop, and hear it from the leaves,

All is so bodingly still:
Again, now, now, again
Splashes the rain in heavy gouts,
The crinkled lightning
Seems ever brightening

And loud and long,
Again the thunder shouts

His battle song –

One quivering flash,

One wildering crash,

Followed by silence dead and dull

As if the cloud, let go

Leapt bodily below

To whiten the earth in one mad overthrow,

And then a total lull,

Gone, gone, so soon!

No more my half-crazed fancy there Can shape a giant in the air, No more I see his streaming hair, The writhing portent of his form: The pale and quiet moon Makes her calm forehead bare, And the last fragments of the storm, Like shattered rigging from a fight at sea Silent and few are drifting over me.

[P the dale and down the bourne,

Uther the meadow swift we fly;

Now we sing and now we mourn,
Now we whistle, now we sigh.

-James Russell Lowell.

By the grassy-fringed river,

Through the murmering reeds we sweep;

Mid the lily-leaves we quiver,

To their very hearts we creep.