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Yet, ah! the other bland associations
To memory they vividly recall.

Pleased with their odoriferous sweets distilling,
How soft as sunshine on the fancy fall;
The charms of Eden bright divinely thrilling,
Ere o'er their vestal loveliness her pall
Had spread Apostasy, and poured her ban,
Blasting the blissful innocence of man.

I love the flowers !-still sacred in affection,
In pleasing sorrow are they not enshrined?
Rooted in hallowed, living recollection,

As round the past seraphic'ly entwined,
Renewing dreams of fairy joys departed,

Young loves extinguished, friendships long resigned; Enchanting all, when life's career I started,

The heaven-rained vital manna of the mind.

O to retrace, amid a vale of tears,
The evanescent bliss of early years!

I love the flowers !-dear types of flow'rets riven
From the fond heart in life's maturer day.
Ah! scarce the sun ascended the mid-heaven,

Till swept the blast my brightest hopes away,
Leaving for me, for scenes of love and gladness,
A lonely desert reft of every stay;

Its well-springs gone, no songs, but sighs and sadness, Inspiring only sorrow and dismay.

Time, death, vicissitude-ah! witness how

The bosom mourns, alas! but memories now!

I love the flowers !—but why so thus dejected
For those my dear, my loved companions gone,
While in the fate of every gem reflected,
Intuitively I image but my own?

What though in Spring, dispersed and alienated,
As birds of kindred feather having flown,
"Tis but to meet, ne'er to be separated,

In realms where death and sorrow are unknown.

Oh ecstasy! oh transport! how divine.

Hail to that morn-it ever shall be mine.

I love the flowers !-thrice welcome their arrival, Sweet hopeful captives from their dungeon cold, As eloquent prepledging man's revival,

Ere long, immortal from his native mould; And ah! the sage, the sacred admonition, Their fleeting forms and loveliness unfold, Heaven, may we hear; hence husband with ambition, And part with time as misers with their gold! What is its worth, let death-beds grave reply: I love the flowers-such are my reasons why.

HOME.

HERE is a well-spring Nature kind discloses In life's rough wild of sorrow and of careA green spot, where the weary soul reposes, And innate loves and longs to linger there.

'Tis there the balmy vernal dews of heaven
Soft on the heart in native freshness fall;
An impulse sacred to its powers is given,
And moral Spring fair blossoms over all.

There peace, content, and love united flourish
Beneath the sun of freedom's genial glow;
The social joys, the feelings there we cherish,
That hallowed scene endear to all below.

There is a balm for every wound, a pleasure For every pain, a smile for every tear, Despite of honour and of countless treasure: Unblessed the bosom it hath ceased to cheer.

When absent, deep in pleasing recollection
We feel it daily magic'lly enshrined;
While soft a thousand tendrils of affection

By angel hands around it seem entwined.

Dear source of many a sigh and sweet sensation,
Though to the strange and giddy world unknown,
Touched by thy magnet, fond imagination
In rapture kindles at thy name alone-

In fairy dreams revisits, and retraces

That blessed abode where kindred spirits dwell, There scans with gladness the familiar faces Of those who love and ever wish us well.

Charmed with the well-known music of their voices,
And there, as wonted with the social few,
The spell-bound soul re-mingles and rejoices,
The past with all its pleasures to renew.

In vain we ramble, other realms exploring,
To find a like Elysian retreat;

There gems of joy are but for others flow'ring,
And cold at best the sympathy we meet.

O hallowed truths! acknowledged and conceded
By saint, by savage, wheresoe'er we roam,
For, ah! that lovely scene, how hardly need it
Be told, my fellow-traveller, is HOME!

ODE TO THE DEITY.

H! mystery of mysteries art Thou; Perplexing problem, enigma of all, Thought struggling labours from her mine to call Of Thee conceptions adequate in vain, In whom all intellect is, as when fall Into the boundless ocean drops of rain; Unseen by mortal eye art Thou alone, Whom we call God, but little more is known.

To the great law of causes and effects,
Of all existence we our knowledge owe,
And from that principle we reasoning show,
Intuitively, whence all things first began;
But Thou the grand exception art, we know;
Before all time, and Nature's mighty plan,
Thou ever wert, and shalt for ever be-
Past, present, future, are alike with Thee.

Beneath Thy august and eternal throne

All is vicissitude and ceaseless change;
But no commotions nor events derange
Thy schemes and counsels, hallow'd be Thy name!
For thou alone remainest, passing strange,

From age to age, immutably the same—
The ever-blessed God, in whom unite

All rectitude, perfection infinite.

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