In many a minster's solemn gloom,
In shattered abbeys lone,
Lie all thy crowned enemies,

In midnight vaults of stone!
The towers are torn, the gates outworn,
Portcullis, moat, and mound
Are vanished all, or faintly mark
Some rarely-trodden ground.

O'er all those abbeys, convents, all
Those chantries and crosses,
Where thou didst glide past in thy pride,
Grow tawny ferns and mosses.

Where banners waved, the ivy grows ;-
Baronial times are o'er!

The forests now are cornfields green,
Green is the lakelet's shore.

Where grew the furze, now runs the fence;
Where waved the wild-rush free,
And whistled moorland-grasses sere,

Fat cattle roam the lea.

Yet here and there some remnant Of those old woodland times;

Some waste lies brown; some forest spreads; Some rocky streamlet chimes.

And there, beside the waters, On moorland and on wold. I find thee watching still,

Thou fisherman of old.

Oh fair, fair is the forest,

When summer is in prime! And I love to lie by mountain lake, On its slopes of heath and thyme!

In the thyme so richly fragrant,

In the heath that blooms so fair, And list the quaint bird-voices

From the moorland and the air.

All those that lead their sweetest lives
Far from the haunt of men,
Are sending forth their gladness
In many a wild cry then.

The curlew and the plover,

The gor-cock on the brae, Send, with the singing of the lark, Their voices far away!

The coot and moor-hen from the reeds,
Or where the waters run
Crystal and warm and glittering,
O'er the pebbles in the sun.
And from the air, in circling flight,
Comes suddenly the crowd
Of all the wild-duck army,

With pinions rustling loud; And, dashing down into the lake, The splashing waters bound In drops and showers of silver,

And in snow-flakes all around. Such is the joy that wakens,

That clamours, and that lives, In all the winged creatures,

Where nature still survives; Where nature still survives

In her regions wild and free; So lives in all her creatures,

Old fisherman, but thee! Whene'er I meet thee, Heron,

By river broad and deep, Where mountain-torrents run and moan, Or ponded waters sleep;

By tarns upon the naked hills;
In stony regions grey,
Or wading in the sounding sea
Amid the hissing spray:

'Tis grand 'neath palace-walls to grow ;
To blaze where lords and ladies go;
To hang o'er marble founts, and shine
In modern gardens trim and fine; -
But the rose of May is only seen
Where the great of other days have been.
The house is mouldering stone by stone;
The garden-walks are overgrown;
The flowers are low, the weeds are high;
The fountain-stream is choked and dry;
The dial-stone with moss is green,
Where'er the rose of May is seen.

The rose of May its pride display'd
Along the old stone balustrade;
And ancient ladies, quaintly dight,
In its pink blossoms took delight,
And on the steps would make a stand,
To scent its sweetness, fan in hand.

Long have been dead those ladies gay;
Their very heirs have passed away;
And their old portraits, prim and tall,
Are mouldering in the mouldering hall;
The terrace and the balustrade
Lie broken, weedy, and decayed.

But, lithe and tall, the rose of May
Shoots upward through the ruin grey,
With scented flower, and leaf pale-green,
Such rose as it hath ever been;
Left, like a noble deed, to grace
The memory of an ancient race!

What exact species of rose this is I do not know; it appears not to be approved of in modern gardens, -at least if it be, it is so much altered by cultivation as to have lost much of its primitive character. I saw it in three different situations in Nottinghamshire. In the small remains of gardens and old labyrinthine shrubbery at Awthorpe Hall,-which, when we were there, had just been taken down,-the residence of the good Colonel John Hutchinson and his sweet wife Lucy-in the very gardens which, as she relates in his life, he laid out and took so much pleasure in. It was growing also, with tall shoots and abundance of flowers, in the most forlorn of gardens at an old place called Burton Grange, a house so desolate and deserted as to have gained from a poetical friend of ours the appropriate name of The Dead House. It was a dreary and most lonesome place; the very bricks of which it was built were bleached by long exposure to wind and weather; there seemed no life within or about it. Every trace of furniture and wainscot was gone from its interior, and its principal rooms were the depositories of old ploughs and disused ladders; yet still its roof, floors, and windows were in decent repair. It had once upon a time been a well-conditioned house; had been moated, and its garden-wall had been terminated by stately stone pillars surmounted by well-cut urns, one of which, at the time we were there, lay overgrown with grass in the ground beneath; the other, after a similar fall, had been replaced, but with the wrong end uppermost. To add still more to its lonesomeness, thick, wild woods encompassed it on three sides, whence of an evening, and often too in the course of the day, came the voices of owls and other gloomy wood-creatures.

"There's not a flower in the garden," said a wo man who, with her husband and child, we found, to our astonishment, inhabiting what had once been the scullery," not a flower but fever-few and the rose of May, and you'll not think it worth getting." She was mistaken; I was delighted to find this sweet and favourite rose in so ruinous a situation.

Again, we found it in the gardens of Annesley Hall,

that most poetical of old mansions; and the ancient housekeeper, at that time its sole inhabitant, pointed out this flower with a particular emphasis. "And here's the rose of May," said she, drawing out a slender spray from a tangle of jessamine that hung about the stone-work of the terrace; "a main pretty thing, though there's little store set by it now-adays!"

THE DOR.HAWK.

FERN-OWL, Churn-owl, or Goat-sucker,
Night-jar, Dor-hawk, or whate'er
Be thy name among a dozen,-
Whip-poor-Will's and Who-are-you's cousin,
Chuck-Will's-widow's near relation,
Thou art at thy night vocation,

Thrilling the still evening air!
In the dark brown wood beyond us,
Where the night lies dusk and deep;
Where the fox his furrow maketh,
Where the tawny owl awaketh

Nightly from his day-long sleep;
There Dor-hawk is thy abiding,

Meadow green is not for thee; While the aspen branches shiver, 'Mid the roaring of the river,

Comes thy chirring voice to me. Bird, thy form I never looked on, And to see it do not care; Thou hast been, and thou art only As a voice of forests lonely,

Heard and dwelling only there. Bringing thoughts of dusk and shadow;

Trees huge-branched in ceaseless change; Pallid night-moths, spectre-seeming ; All a silent land of dreaming,

Indistinct and large and strange.

Be thou thus, and thus I prize thee

More than knowing thee face to face, Head and beak and leg and feather, Kept from harm of touch and weather, Underneath a fine glass-case.

I can read of thee, and find out
How thou fliest, fast or slow;
Of thee in the north and south too,
Of thy great moustachioed mouth too,
And thy Latin name also.

But, Dor-hawk, I love thee better

While thy voice unto me seems Coming o'er the evening meadows, From a dark brown land of shadows,

Like a pleasant voice of dreams!

This singular bird, which is found in every part of the old world, as well in the cold regions of Siberia, as in the hot jungles of India, and the lion-haunted forests of Africa, has, as we have said, a large class

of relations also in America: the Whip-poor-Will, the Willy-come-go, the Work-away, and the Whoare-you? being all of the same family. In Africa and among the American Indians these birds are looked upon with reverence or fear; for, by some they are supposed to be haunted by the dead, and by others to be obedient to gloomy or evil spirits. The Dor-Hawk of our own country has been subject to slander, as his name of the goal-sucker shows. This name originated of course in districts where goats were used for milking, and furnished, no doubt, an excuse for the false herd, who stole the milk and blamed the bird.

The Dor-Hawk, like the owl, is not seen in the day; and like it also, is an inhabitant of wild and gloomy scenes; heathy tracks abounding in fern; moors, and old woods. It is so regular in the time of beginning its nightly cry, that good old Gilbert White declares, it appeared to him to strike up exactly when the report of the Portsmouth evening gun was heard. He says also, that its voice, which resembles the loud purring of a cat, occasions a singu. lar vibration even in solid buildings; for that, as he and some of his neighbours sate in a hermitage on a steep hill-side, where they had been taking tea, a Dor-Hawk alighted on the little cross at the top, and uttered his cry, making the walls of the building sensibly vibrate, to the wonder of all the company.

I can give no anecdotes of the bird from my own experience. I know him best by his voice, heard mostly from scenes of a wild and picturesque character, in the gloom and shadow of evening, or in the deep calm of summer moonlight. I heard him first in a black, solemn-looking wood, between Houghton Tower, and Pleasington Priory, in Lancashire. Since then I have become familiar with his voice in the pleasant woods of Winter-down, and Claremont, in Surrey.

THE OAK-TREE.

Sing for the Oak-Tree,

The monarch of the wood; Sing for the Oak-tree,

That groweth green and good; That groweth broad and branching Within the forest shade; That groweth now, and yet shall grow When we are lowly laid!

The Oak-Tree was an acorn once, And fell upon the earth; And sun and showers nourished it,

And gave the Oak-tree birth. The little sprouting Oak-Tree!

Two leaves it had at first, Till sun and showers had nourished it, Then out the branches burst.

The little sapling Oak-Tree!

Its root was like a thread, Till the kindly earth had nourished it, Then out it freely spread:

POLL'S MISTRESS.

I've heard of imp, I've heard of sprite;
Of fays and fairies of the night;
Of that renowned fiend Hobgoblin,
Running, racing, jumping, hobbling;
Of Puck, brimful of fun; also
Of roguish Robin Goodfellow.
I've seen a hearth where, as is told,
Came Hobthrush in the days of old,
To make the butter, mend the linen,
And keep the housewife's wheel a-spinning.
I've heard of pigmies, pixies, lares,
Shoirim, gemedim, and fairies:-
And, Parrot, on my honest word,
I hardly think thou art a bird ;-

I'm very glad to see you!-You remember, perhaps, That wood in Carolina, the guns and all the traps;To be sure you do!-Ladies, I'm a Carolina bird,Some come from the East Indies, from the Cape, too, I have heard;

But I'm of Carolina- to the Big-bone lick I've been,

Now in that country there is something to be seen!
Our Captain knows that! Ay, Captain, I say,
Do you remember crossing the Cedar Swamp one
particular day,

When I got out of your pocket and flew away?
Ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! How it makes me laugh!
You'd a pretty chase after me!-ha! ha! a pretty

chase!

And I sat in the hiccory trees, laughing in your face! Ha! ha ha! how I did laugh. What cypress-berries, cockle-burrs, and beech-nuts grew there!

You may look all this country over, and find none anywhere.

And what fun it was-me, and a thousand beside, To fly in the merry sunshine through those forests

wide,

And build our nests-Oh, what nests we had!Did you ever see one of our nests, Captain? Eh, my lad?"

CAPTAIN.

I've heard of nests of cinnamon, With the great Phoenix set thereon;