WINTER TALES.

'Tis a low chant, according well

With the soft solitary knell,

As homeward from some grave beloved we turn,
Or by some holy deathbed dear,

Most welcome to the chastened ear

Of her whom Heaven is teaching how to mourn.

O cheerful, tender strain! the heart
That duly bears with you its part,
Singing so thankful to the dreary blast,

Though gone and spent its joyous prime,
And on the world's autumnal time,

'Mid withered hues and sere, its lot be cast :

That is the heart for thoughtful seer, Watching, in trance nor dark nor clear, Th' appalling future, as it nearer draws: His spirit calmed the storm to meet, Feeling the rock beneath his feet,

And tracing through the cloud th' Eternal Cause.

WINTER TALES.

Ar night, when all, assembling round the fire,
Closer and closer draw till they retire,

A tale is told of India or Japan,

Of merchants from Golcond, or Astracan,

What time wild Nature revelled unrestrained,

And Sinbad voyaged, and the caliphs reigned :

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Of knights renowned from holy Palestine,
And minstrels, such as swept the lyre divine,
When Blondel came, and Richard in his cell
Heard, as he lay, the song he knew so well :—
Of some Norwegian, while the icy gale

Rings in her shrouds, and beats her iron-sail
Among the shining Alps of polar seas
Immovable-for ever there to freeze!

Or some great caravan, from well to well
Winding as darkness on the desert fell,

In their long march, such as the Prophet bids,
To Mecca from the Land of Pyramids,
And in an instant lost-a hollow wave
Of burning sand their everlasting grave!

A NOVEMBER SCENE.

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SONNET TO WINTER.

THE mellow year is hasting to its close.
The little birds have almost sung their last;
Their small notes twitter in the dreary blast—
That shrill-piped harbinger of early snows.
The patient beauty of the scentless rose,
Oft with the morn's hoar crystal quaintly glassed,
Hangs, a pale mourner for the Summer past,
And makes a little Summer where it grows.
In the chill sunbeam of the faint, brief day
The dusky waters shudder as they shine;
The russet leaves obstruct the straggling way
Of oozy brooks, which no deep banks define;
And the gaunt woods, in ragged, scant array,
Wrap their old limbs with sombre ivy twine.

A NOVEMBER SCENE.

I SAW the woods and fields at close of day
A variegated show; the meadows green,
Though faded, and the lands, where lately waved
The golden harvest, of a mellow brown,
Upturned so lately by the peaceful share.

I saw, far off, the weedy fallow smile

With verdure not unprofitable, grazed

By flocks, fast feeding, and selecting each

His favourite herb; while all the leafless groves

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That skirt the horizon, wore a sable hue,
Scarce noticed in the kindred dusk of eve.
To-morrow brings a change, a total change,
Which even now, though silently performed,
And slowly, and by most unfelt, the face
Of universal Nature undergoes.

Fast falls the fleecy shower; the downy flakes
Descending, and with never-ceasing lapse,
Softly alighting upon all below,

Assimilate all objects. Earth receives

Gladly the thickening mantle, and the green
And tender blade, that feared the chilling blast,
Escapes unhurt beneath so warm a veil.

WINTER MUSIC.

THE poetry of earth is never dead:

When all the birds are faint with the hot sun,

And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run
From hedge to hedge, about the new-mown mead :
That is the grasshopper's-he takes the lead
In summer luxury-he has never done
With his delights, for when tired out with fun,
He rests at ease beneath some pleasant weed.
The poetry of earth is ceasing never:

On a lone winter evening, when the frost

Has wrought a silence, from the stove there shrills The cricket's song, in warmth increasing ever,

And seems, to one in drowsiness half lost,

The grasshopper's among some grassy hills.

THE BRAMBLE.

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HAT wildness dost thou give the scene, Long trailing bramble of the waste! With thorn and furze-bush interlaced, And broad-leaved fern let in between So close, there's barely room to pass; Many such tangling spots we know, With patches of short velvet grass, Where heath and nodding blue-bells blow, The bullace and the dark blue sloe, And gushing bramble-berries grow, All hung with rime