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How softly, in the pauses

Of song, re-echoed wide,

The cushat's coo, the linnet's lay,

O'er rill and river glide!

With evil deeds of evil men

The affrighted land is ringing; But still, O Lord! the pious heart

And soul-toned voice are singing! Hush! hush! the preacher preachet 1: "Wo to the oppressor, wo!" But sudden gloom o'ercasts the sun And sadden'd flowers below;

So frowns the Lord!-but, tyrants, ye
Deride his indignation,

And see not in the gather'd brow
Your days of tribulation!

Speak low, thou heaven-paid teacher!
The tempest bursts above:
God whispers in the thunder: hear
The terrors of his love!

On useful hands, and honest hearts,

The base their wrath are wreaking; But, thank'd be God! they can't prevent The storm of heaven from speaking.

RIBBLEDIN; OR THE CHRISTENING.

No name hast thou! lone streamlet

That lovest Rivilin.

Here, if a bard may christen thee,

I'll call thee Ribbledin;"

Here, where first murmuring from thine urn,
Thy voice deep joy expresses;

And down the rock, like music, flows
The wildness of thy tresses.

Here, while beneath the umbrage

Of Nature's forest bower,

Bridged o'er by many a fallen birch,
And watch'd by many a flower,
To meet thy cloud-descended love,
All trembling, thou retirest-
Here will I murmur to thy waves
The sad joy thou inspirest.
Dim world of weeping mosses!
A hundred year ago,
Yon hoary-headed holly tree

Beheld thy streamlet flow:

See how he bends him down to hear
The tune that ceases never!

Old as the rocks, wild stream, he seems,
While thou art young for ever.

Wildest and lonest streamlet!
Gray oaks, all lichen'd o'er!
Rush-bristled isles! ye ivied trunks
That marry shore to shore!
And thou, gnarl'd dwarf of centuries,
Whose snaked roots twist above me!
Oh for the tongue or pen of Burns,
To tell you how I love ye!

Would that I were a river,
To wonder all alone

Through some sweet Eden of the wild,

In music of my own;

And bathed in bliss, and fed with dew
Distill'd o'er mountains hoary,
Return unto my home in heaven
On wings of joy and glory!

Or that I were the lichen,

That, in this roofless cave,
(The dim geranium's lone boudoir,)
Dwells near the shadow'd wave,
And hears the breeze-bow'd tree-top's sign,
While tears below are flowing,

For all the sad and lovely things,
That to the grave are going?

Oh that I were a primrose,

To bask in sunny air!

Far, far from all the plagues that make
Town-dwelling men despair!

Then would I watch the building-birds,
Where light and shade are moving,
And lovers' whisper, and love's kiss,
Rewards the loved and loving!

Or that I were a skylark

To soar and sing above,
Filling all hearts with joyful sounds,
And my own soul with love!
Then o'er the mourner and the dead,

And o'er the good man dying,

My song should come like buds and flowers When music warbles flying.

Oh, that a wing of splendour,

Like yon wild cloud, were mine!

Yon bounteous cloud, that gets to give,
And borrows to resign!

On that bright wing, to climes of spring
I'd bear ail wintry bosoms,

And bid hope smile on weeping thoughts,
Like April on her blossoms;

Or like the rainbow, laughing

O'er Rivilin and Don,

When misty morning calleth up

Her mountains, one by one,

While glistening down the golden broom,
The gem-like dew-drop raineth,
And round the little rocky isles

The little wave complaineth.

Oh, that the truth of beauty

Were married to my rhyme!
That it might wear a mountain charma
Until the death of Time!
Then, Ribbled.n! would all the best
Of sorrow's sons and daughters
Sce truth reflected in my song,
Like beauty on thy waters.
No longer, nameless streamlet,
That marriest Rivilin!
Henceforth, lone Nature's devotees
Would call thee « Ribbledin,'
Whenever, listening where thy voice
Its first wild joy expresses,

And down the rocks all wildly flows
The wildness of thy tresses.

THE WONDERS OF THE LANE.

STRONG climber of the mountain's side,
Though thou the vale disdain,

Yet walk with me where hawthorns hide
The wonders of the lane.
High o'er the rushy springs of Don

The stormy gloom is roll'd;
The moorland hath not yet put on

His purple, green, and gold.
But here the titling spreads his wing,
Where dewy daises gleam;
And here the sun-flower of the spring
Burns bright in morning's beam.
To mountain winds the famish'd fox

Complains that Sol is slow

O'er headlong steeps and gushing rocks
His royal robe to throw.

But here the lizard seeks the sun,
Here coils in light the snake;
And here the fire-tuft hath begun

Its beauteous nest to make.
Oh then, while hums the earliest bee

Where verdure fires the plain,
Walk thou with me, and stoop to see
The gir ries of the lane!

For, oh, I love these banks of rock,
This roof of sky and tree,

These tufts, where sleeps the gloaming clock,

And wakes the earliest bee!

As spirits from eternal day

Look down on earth secure,

Gaze thou, and wonder, and survey
A world in miniature!

A world not scorn'd by Him who made
Even weakness by his might;
But solemn in his depth of shade,
And splendid in his light.
Light not alone on clouds afar
O'er storm-loved mountains spread,
Or widely teaching sun and star,

Thy glorious thoughts are read;
Oh, no! thou art a wondrous book,
To sky, and sea, and land-
A page on which the angels look,

Which insects understand!
And here, O light! minutely fair,
Divinely plain and clear,
Like splinters of a crystal hair,

Thy bright small hand is here.
Yon drop-fed lake, six inches wide,
Is Huron, girt with wood;
This driplet feeds Missouri's tide-
And that, Niagara's flood.

What tilings from the Andes brings

Yon line of liquid light,

That down from heaven in madness flings
The blind foam of its might?

Do not hear his thunder roll-
The roar that ne'er is still ?

Tis mute as death!—but in my soul
It roars, and ever will.
What forests tail of tiniest moss
Clothe every little stone!

What pigmy oaks their foliage toss
O'er pigmy valleys lone!

With shade o'er shade, from ledge to edge,
Ambitious of the sky,

Thy feather o'er the steepest edge
Of mountains mushroom high.
O God of marvels! who can tell
What myriad living hings

On these gray stones unseen may dwell;
What nations, with their kings!

I feel no shock, I hear no groan,
While fate perchance o'erwhelms
Empires on this subverted stone--
A hundred ruin'd realms!
Lo! in that dot, some mite, like ne,
Impell'd by wo or whim,

May crawl some atom cliffs to sɛe-
A tiny world to him!

Lo! while he pauses, and admires

The works of Nature's might, Spurn'd by my foot, his world expires, And all to him is night!

O God of terrors! what are we?

Poor insects, spark'd with thought! Thy whisper, Lord, a word from thee Could smite us into nought!

But shouldst thou wreck our father-land,
And mix it with the deep,

Safe in the hollow of thine hand
Thy little ones would sleep.

HYMN.

NURSE of the Pilgrim sires, who sought,
Beyond the Atlantic foam,

For fearless truth and honest thought,
A refuge and a home!

Who would not be of them or thee
A not unworthy son,
That hears, amid the chain'd or free,
The name of Washington!

Cradle of Shakspeare, Milton, Knox
King-shaming Cromwell's throne!
Home of the Russells, Watts, and Lockes
Earth's greatest are thine own:

And shall thy children forge base chains
For men that would be free?

No! by thy Elliots, Hampdens, Vanes,
Pyms, Sydneys, yet to be!

No!-for the blood which kings have gorged Hath made their victims wise,

While every lie that fraud hath forged

Veils wisdom from his eyes:

But time shall change the despot's mood:
And mind is mightiest then,
When turning evil into good,
And monsters into men.

If round the soul the chains are bound
That hold the world in thrall-
If tyrants laugh when men are found
In brutal fray to fal-

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For freedom if thy Hampden fought;
For peace if Falkland fell;
For peace and love if Bentham wrote,
And Burns sang wildly well-
Let knowledge, strongest of the strong,
Bid hate and discord cease;
Be this the burden of her song:
"Love, liberty, and peace!"

Then, Father, will the nations all,
As with the sound of seas,
In universal festival,

Sing words of joy, like these:-
Let each love all, and all be free,
Receiving as they give;
Lord!-Jesus died for love and thee!
So let thy children live!

THOMAS.

THOU art not dead, my son! my son!
But God hath hence removed thee:
Thou canst not die, my buried boy,

While lives the sire who loved thee.
How canst thou die, while weeps for thes
The broken heart that bore thee;
And e'en the thought that thou art not
Can to her soul restore thee?
Will grief forget thy willingness
To run before thy duty?
The love of all the good and true,
That fill'd thine eyes with beauty?
Thy pitying grace, thy dear request,
When others had offended,

That made thee look as angels look,

When great good deeds are ended?

The strength with which thy soul sustain'd
Thy woes and daily wasting?

Thy prayer, to stay with us, when sure
That thou from us wast hasting?

And that last smile, which seem'd to say

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Why cannot ye restore me?"

Thy look'd farewell is in my heart,

And brings thee still before me.

What though the change, the fearful change,
From thought, which left thee never,
To unremembering ice and clay,
Proclaim thee gone for ever?
Thy half-closed lids, thy upturn'd eyes,
Thy still and lifeless tresses;
Thy marble lip, which moves no more,
Yet more than grief expresses;
The silence of thy coffin'd snow,

By awed remembrance cherish'd;
These dwell with me, like gather'd flowers,
That in their April perish'd.
Thou art not gone, thou canst not go,
My bud, my blasted blossom!

The pale rose of thy faded face

Still withers in my bosom.

O Mystery of Mysteries,

That took'st my poor boy from me! What art thou, Death? all-dreaded Death' If weakness can o'ercome thee? We hear thee not! we see thee not,

E'en when thy arrows wound re
But, viewless, printless, echoless,

Thy steps are ever round us.
Though more than life a mystery
Art thou, the undeceiver,
Amid thy trembling worshippers
Thou seest no true believer.
No!-but for life, and more than life,
No fearful search could find thee
Tremendous shadow! who is He
That ever stands behind thee?
The Power who bids the worm deny
The beam that o'er her blazes,
And veils from us the holier light

On which the seraph gazes,

Where burns the throne of Him, whose came The sunbeams here write faintly;

And where my child a stranger stands

Amid the blest and saintly,

And sobs aloud-while in his eyes

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The tears, o'erflowing, gather

They come not yet!-until they come, Heaven is not Heaven, my father! Why come they not? why comes not she From whom thy will removes me? Oh, does she love me-love me still? I know my mother loves me! Then send her soon! and with her send The brethren of my bosom! My sisters too! Lord, let them all

Bloom round the parted blossom! The only pang I could not hear

Was leaving them behind me:

I cannot bear it. Even in heaven
The tears of parting blind me!"

SLEEP.

SLEEP! to the homeless, thou art home;
The friendless find in thee a friend;
And well is he, where'er he roam,
Who meets thee at his journey's end.
Thy stillness is the planet's speed;

Thy weakness is unmeasured might:
Sparks from the hoof of death's pale stecd◄◄
Worlds flash and perish in thy sight.
The daring will to thee alone-

The will and power are given to thee-
To lift the veil of the unknown,

The curtain of eternity-
To look uncensured, though unbidden,
On marvels from the seraph hidden!
Alone to be-where none have been!
Alone to see-wnat none have seen.
And to astonish'd reason tell
The secrets of the Unscarchable'

THE PILGRIM FATHERS.

A VOICE of grief and anger

Of pity mix'd with scornMoans o'er the waters of the west,

Through fire and darkness borne;
And fiercer voices join it-

A wild triumphant yell!
For England's foes, on ocean slain,
Have heard it where they fell.
What is that voice which cometh
Athwart the spectred sea?

The voice of men who left their homes

To make their children free;

Of men whose hearts were torches

For freedom's quenchless fire;

Of men, whose mothers brave brought forth
The sire of Franklin's sire.

They speak!—the Pilgrim Fathers
Speak to ye from their graves!

For earth hath mutter'd to their bones
That we are soulless slaves!
The Bradfords, Carvers, Winslows,
Have heard the worm complain,
That less than men oppress the men
Whose sires were Pym and Vane!
What saith the voice which boometh
Athwart the upbraiding wayes?
"Though slaves are ye, our sons are free,
Then why will you be slaves?
The children of your fathers

Were Hampden, Pym, and Vane !"
Land of the sires of Washington,
Bring forth such men again!

I think, I feel-but when will she
Awake to thought again?

A voice of comfort answers me,

That God does nought in vain: He wastes nor flower, nor bud, nor leaf, Nor wind, nor cloud, nor wave; And will he waste the hope which grief Hath planted in the grave?

CORN LAW HYMN.

LORD! call thy pallid angel-
The tamer of the strong!
And bid him whip with want and wo
The champions of the wrong!
Oh say not thou to ruin's flood,

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Up sluggard! why so slow?"
But alone let them groan,

The lowest of the low;

And basely beg the bread they curse,
Where millions curse them now!

No; wake not thou the giant

Who drinks hot blood for wine;
And shouts unto the east and west,
In thunder-tones like thine;
Till the slow to move rush all at once,
An avalanche of men,

While he raves over waves

That need no whirlwind then; Though slow to move, moved all at once, A sea, a sea of men!

A GHOST AT NOON.

THE day was dark, save when the beam
Of noon through darkness broke;

In gloom I sate, as in a dream,
Beneath my orchard oak;
Lo! splendour, like a spirit, came,
A shadow like a tree!

While there I sat, and named her name,
Who once sat there with me.

I started from the seat in fear;
I look'd around in awe;
But saw no beauteous spirit near,
Though all that was I saw;

The scat, the tree, where oft, in tears,

She mourn'd her hopes o'erthrown Her joys cut off in early years,

Like gather'd flowers half-blown.
Again the bud and breeze were met,
But Mary did not come;

And e'en the rose, which she had set,
Was fated ne'er to bloom!

The thrush proclaim'd, in accents sweet,
That winter's rain was o'er;
The bluebells throng'd around my feet,
But Mary came no more.

FLOWERS FOR THE HEART.

FLOWERS! winter flowers!-the child is des
The mother cannot speak :

Oh softly couch his little head,
Or Mary's heart will break!
Amid those curls of flaxen hair
This pale pink ribbon twine,
And on the little bosom there

Place this wan lock of mine.
How like a form in cold white stone,
The coffin'd infant lies!

Look, mother, on thy little one!

And tears will fill thine eyes.
She cannot weep-more faint she grows.
More deadly pale and still:
Flowers! oh, a flower! a winter rose,
That tiny hand to fill.

Go, search the fields! the lichen wet
Bends o'er the unfailing well;
Beneath the furrow lingers yet.
The scarlet pimpernel.

Peeps not a snow-drop in the bower,
Where never froze the spring?

A daisy Ah! bring childhood's flower!
The half-blown daisy bring!
Yes, lay the daisy's little head

Beside the little check;

Oh haste! the last of five is dead!
The childless cannot speak!

REGINALD HEBER.

(Born 1783-Died 1826).

THIS eminent prelate and accomplished scholar was born at Malpas, in Cheshire, on the twenty-first of April, 1783, and in his seventeenth year was sent to Brazen Nose College, Oxford. While here he obtained the Chancellor's prize for a Latin poem, and greatly distinguished himself by a poem in English entitled Palestine. Unlike the mass of undergraduate prize poems, Palestine attained at once a high reputation which promises to be permanent. On receiving his bachelor's degree, Mr. HEBER travelled in Germany, Russia, and the Crimea, and wrote notes and observations, from which many curious passages are given in the well-known journals of Dr. EDWARD DANIEL CLARKE. On his return, he published Europe, a Poem, and was elected to a fellowship in All Soul's College. He was soon after presented with a living in Shropshire, and for several years devoted himself with great assiduity to his profession. He however found time, while discharging his parochial duties, to make some admirable translations from Pindar, and to write many of his beautiful hymns and other brief poems, a volume of which was published in 1812. Three years afterward, he was appointed to deliver the Bampton Lectures, and fulfilled the duty in so able a manner as to add greatly to his literary reputation. In 1822 he was elected to the important office of preacher of Lincoln's Inn; in the same year appeared his edition of the works of JEREMY TAYLOR, with notes and an elaborate memoir; and in 1823 he embarked for the East Indies, having accepted the appointment to the bishopric of the see of Calcutta, made vacant by the death of Dr. Middleton. He held his first visitation in the Cathedral of the capital of Hindostan, on Ascension day, 1824, and from that time devoted himself with great earnestness and untiring industry to missionary labours.

He left Calcutta to visit the different presidencies of his extensive iocese, and while at Trichinopoli, on the second of April, 1826, was seized with an apoplectic fit, which on the following day ter

minated his life, in the "orty-third year of his age. He was a man of the most elevated character, whose histor was itself a poem of stateliest and purest tone, and most perfect harmony. In the church he was like MaLANCTHON, the healer of bruised hearts, the reconciler of all differences, the most enthusiastic yet the most placid of all the teachers of religion. In society he was a universal favourite, from his varied knowledge, his remarkable colloquial powers, and his unva rying kindness. India never lost more in a single individual than when HEBER died.

The lyrical writings of HEBER possess great and peculiar merits. He is the only Englishman who has in any degree approached the tone of PINDAR, his translations from whom may be regarded as nearly faultless; and his hymns are among the sweetest which English literature contains, breathing a fervent devotion in the most poetical language and most melodious verse. I doubt whether there is a religious lyric so universally known in the British empire or in our own country, as the beautiful missionary piece beginning "From Greenland's icy mountains." The fragments of Morte d'Arthur, the Mask of Gwendolen, and the World before the Flood, are not equal to his Palestine, Europe, or minor poems; but they contain elegant and powerful passages. The only thing unworthy of his reputation which I have seen is Blue Beard, a seriocomic oriental romance, which I believe was first published after his death.

The widow of Bishop HEBER, a daughter of Dean Shipley, of St. Asaph, and a woman whose gentleness, taste, and learning made her a fit associate for a man of genius, has published his Life, and his Narrative of a Journey through the Upper Provinces of India from Calcutta to Bombay, each in two volumes quarto. A complete edition of his Poetical Works has been issued in this coun. try in good style, and his Memoirs, Travels, Sermons, and other prose writings, have also been reprinted. They possess considerable interest.

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