Stern Lawgiver! yet thou dost wear
The Godhead's most benignant grace;
Nor know we any thing so fair
As is the smile upon thy face:
Flowers laugh before thee on their beds;
And Fragrance in thy footing treads;
Thou dost preserve the Stars from wrong;
And the most ancient Heavens, through Thee, are fresh

and strong

ODE TO DUTY. Srers Daughter of the Voice of God! Day! if that name throu love,

Fho art a Light to guide, a Rod
• To check the erring, and reprove;

Thou who art victory and law
When empty terrors overawe;
From sain templations dost set free;
And calm'se the weary strife of frail humanity!
There are who ask not if thine eye
Be on them; who, in love and truth,
Wbere no misgiving is, rely
l'pon the genial sense of youth:
Glad Hearts! without reproach or blot;
Who do thy work, and know it not:

To humbler functions, awful Power!
I call thee: I myself commend
Unto thy guidance from this hour;;"
Oh, let my weakness have an end !
Give unto me, made lowly wise,
The spirit of self-sacrifice;
The confidence of reason give;
And in the light of truth thy Boodman let me live!

will probably

i
THE OLD CUMBERLAND BEGGAR. On a low structure of rude masonry

Built at the foot of a huge hill, that they
1 The class of Beggars, to which the Old Man hero described belongs. Who lead their horses down the steep rough road

soon be estinct. It consisted of poor, and, mooily; May thence remount at ease. The aged Man old and inform persons, who contined themselves to a stard rona 1

llad placed his staff across the broad smooth stone atheir neighbourbood, and bad certain fixed days, on which, at different bouses, they regularly received alms, sometimes in mo- That overlays the pile; and, from a bag sey, but mostly in provisions.

All white with tlour, the dole of village dames,

He drew his scraps and fragments, one by one; I saw an aged Beggar in my walk;

And scanned them with a fixed and serious look And he was seated, by the highway side,

Of idle coinputation. In the sun,

Themselves, the fathers and the dealers-out

A Farmer be was; and his house far and near
Of some small blessings; have been kind to such Was the boast of the Country for excellent cheer:
As needed kindness, for this single cause,

llow oft have I heard in sweet Tilsbury Vale That we have all of us one human heart.

Of the silver-rimmed horn whence he dealt his mild -Such pleasure is to one kind Being known,

ale ! My Neighbour, when with punctual care, each week Duly as Friday comes, though pressed herself

Yet Adam was far as the farthest from ruin, ly her own wants, she from her store of meal

His fields seemed to know what their Master was doing; Takes one unsparing handful for the scrip

And turnips, and coru-land, and meadow, and lea, of this old Mendicant, and, from her door

All caught the infection-as generous as he.
Returning with exhilarated heart,
Sits by her fire, and builds her hope in heaven. Yet Adam prized little the feast and the bowl,—

The fields better suited the ease of his Soul :
Then let him pass, a blessing on his head!

He strayed through the fields like an indolent Wight, And while in that vast solitude to which

The quiet of nature was Adam's delight.
The tide of things has borde him, he appears
To breathe and live but for himself alone,

For Adam was simple in thought, and the Poor,
Unblamed, uninjured, let him bear about

Familiar with him, made an ion of his door :
The good which the benignant law of Heaven

Пе
gave

them the best that he had ; or, to say Has hung around him : and, while life is liis,

What less may mislead you, they took it away.
Still let him prompt the uolettered Villagers
To tender offices and pensive thoughts.

Thus thirty smooth years did he thrive on his farm; -Then let him pass, a blessing on his head!

The Genius of plenty preserved him from harm : And, long as he can wander, let him breathe

At length, what to most is a season of sorrow, The freshoess of the valleys ; let his blood

flis means are run out,- he must beg, or must borrow. Strucgle with frosty air and winter snows; And let the chartered wiud that sweeps the heath Beat his grey locks against his withered face.

To the neighbours he went,-all were free with their Revereuce the hope whose vital anxiousness

money; Gives the last human interest to his heart.

For his hive had so long been replenished with honey,

That they dreamt not of dearth; He continued his May never House, misnamed of INDUSTRY, Make him a captive! for that pent-up din,

rounds,

Knocked here—and knocked there, pounds still adding Those life-consuming sounds that clog the air, Be his the natural silence of old age!

to pounds. Let him be free of mountain solitudes; And have around him, whether heard or not,

Ile paid what he could with this ill-gotten pelf, The pleasant melody of woodland birds.

And something, it might be, reserved for himself : Few are his pleasures : if his eyes have now

Then, (what is too true,) without hinting a word, Been doomed so long to settle on the earth

Turned his back on the Country; and off like a Bird. That not without some effort they beliold The countenance of the horizontal sun,

You lift up your eyes !- but I guess that you frame Rising or setting, let the light at least

A judgment too harsh of the sin and the shame; Find a free entrance to their languid orbs.

lo him it was scarcely a business of art, And let bim, where and when he will, sit down

For this he did all in the ease of his heart.
Beneath the trees, or by the grassy bank
Of highway side, and with the little birds

To London—a sad emigration I ween-
Share bis chance-gathered meal; and, finally,

With his grey hairs he went from the brook and the As in the cye of Nature he has lived,

green; So in the eye of Nature let him die!

And there, with small wealth but his legs and his hands,

As lonely he stood as a Crow on the sands.
THE FARMER OP TILSBURY VALE.
T is not for the up feeling, the falsely refined,

All trades, as need was, did old Adam assume,-
The squcamish in taste, and the narrow of mind,

Served as Stable-boy, Errand-boy, Porter, and Groom; And the small critic wielding his delicate pen,

But nature is gracious, necessity kind, That I sing of old Adam, the pride of old men. And, in spite of the shame that may lurk in his mind, He dwells in the centre of London's wide Town;

He seems ten birthdays younger, is green and is stout; Ilis staff is a sceptre-his grey hairs a crown;

Twice as fast as before does bis blood run about; Erect as a suollower he stands, and the streak

You would say that each hair of his beard was alive, Of the unfaded rose still enlivens his cheek.

And his fingers are busy as bees in a hive.
Mid the dows, in the sunshine of morn,-mid the joy
Of the fields, he collected that bloom, when a Boy;

For he 's not like an Old Man that leisurely goes There fashioned that countenance, which, in spite of a about work that he knows, in a track that he knows; stain

But often his mind is compelled to demur, That his life hath received, to the last will remain. And you guess that the more then his body must stir.

In the throng of the Town like a Stranger is he,
Like one whose own Country's far over the sea;
And Nature, while through the great City he hies,
Full ten times a day takes his heart by surprise.

To be a Prodigal's Favourite-then, worse truth,
A Miser's Pensioner-behold our lot!
O Man, that from thy fair and shining youth
Age might but take the things Youth needed not !

This gives him the fancy of one that is young,
More of soul in his face than of words on his tongue;

THE TWO THIEVES ;
Like a Maiden of twenty he trembles and sighs,

OR, THE LAST STAGE OF AVARICE. And tears of fifteen will come into his eyes.

O now that the genius of Bewick were mine, What 's a tempest to him, or the dry parching heats ? And the skill which he learned on the banks of the Tube Yet he watches the clouds that pass over the streets;

Then the Muses might deal with me just as they chose, With a look of such earnestness oflen will stand, For I'd take my last leave both of verse and of prose. You might think he'd twelve Reapers at work in the

What feats would I work with my magical hand! Strand.

Book-learning and books should be banished the land: Where proud Covent-garden, in desolate hours

And, for hunger and thirst, and such troublesome calis, of snow and hoar-frost, spreads her fruit and her Every Ale-house should then have a feast on its walk flowers,

The Traveller would hang his wet clothes on a chair; Old Adam will smile at the pains that have made Poor Winter look fine in such strange masquerade.

Let them smoke, let them burn, not a straw would be

care! Mid coaches and chariots, a Waggon of straw,

For the Prodigal Son, Joseph's Dream and his Sheaves, Like a magnet, the heart of old Adam can draw;

Oh, what would they be to my tale of two Thieves ? With a thousand soft pictures his memory will teem, And his bearing is touched with the sounds of a dream. Uis Grandsire that age more than thirty times told;

The One, yet unbrecched, is not three birthdays old, Up the Haymarket hill he oft whistles his way,

There are ninely good seasons of fair and foul weather Thrusts his hands in the Waggon, and smells at the hay;

Between them, and both go a-stealing together. He thinks of the fields he so often hath mown,

With chips is the Carpenter strewing his floor? And is happy as if the rich freight were liis own.

Is a cart-load of turf at an old Woman's door ?
But chiefly to Smithfield he loves to repair,-

Old Daniel his hand to the treasure will slide!
If you pass by at morning, you 'll meet with him there: And his Grandson's as busy at work by his side.
The breath of the Cows you may see him inhale,
And his heart all the while is in Tilsbury Vale.

Old Daniel begins, he stops short-and his eye,

Through the lost look of dotage, is cunning and sly. Now farewell, Old Adam! when low thou art laid,

'T is a look which at this time is hardly his own, May one blade of grass spring up over thy head;

But tells a plain tale of the days that are dowa. And I hope that thy grave, wheresoever it be,

Ile once had a licart which was moved by the wires Will hear the wind sigh through the leaves of a tree.

Of manifold pleasures and many desires :

And what if he cherished his purse! 'T was no more THE SMALL CELANDINE.

Thaa treading a path trod by thousands before. Taere is a Flower, the Lesser Celandine,

'T was a path trod by thousands; but Daniel is one That shrinks, like many more, from cold and rain ;

Who went something farther than others have gone, And, the first moment that the sun may shine,

And now with old Daniel you see how it fares; Bright as the sun itself, 't is out again!

You see to what end he has brought his grey hairs. When hailstones have been falling, swarm on swarm,

The pair sally forth hand in hand: ere the sun
Or blasts the green field and the trees distressed, las peered o'er the beeches, their work is begun:
Oft have I seen it muffled

up
from harm,

And yet, into whatever sin they may fall,
In close self-shelter, like a Thing at rest.

This Child but half knows it, and that not at all. But lately, one rough day, this Flower I passed They hunt through the streets with deliberate tread, And recognized it, though an altered Form,

And each, in his turn, is both leader and led; Now standing forth an offering to the Blast,

And, wherever they carry their plots and their wiles, And buffeted at will by Rain and Storm.

Every face in the village is dimpled with smiles. I stopped, and said with inly-muttered voice,

Neither checked by the rich nor the needy they roam; It doch not love the shower, nor seek the cold: The grey-headed Sire has a daughter at home, This neither is its courage nor its choice,

Who will gladly repair all the damage that's done ; But its necessity in being old.

And three, were it asked, would be rendered for one. « The sunshine may not cheer it, nor the dew; Old Man! whom so oft I with pity have eyed, It cannot help itself in its decay;

I love thee, and love the sweet Boy at thy side : Stiff in its members, withered, changed of hue.» Long yet mayst thou live! for a teacher we see And, in my spleen, I smiled that it was grey.

That lifts up the veil of our nature in thee.

Epitaphs and Elegiac Poems.