THE HOMES OF ENGLAND.

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Where couldst thou fix on mortal ground

Thy tender thoughts and high?
-Now peace the Woman's heart hath found,

And joy the Poet's eye!

THE HOMES OF ENGLAND.

The stately Homes of England,

How beautiful they stand!
Amidst their tall ancestral trees,

O'er all that pleasant land !
The deer across their green-sward bound,

Through shade and sunny gleam;
And the swan glides past them with the sound

Of some rejoicing stream.

The merry Homes of England !

Around their hearths by night
What gladsome looks of household love

Meet in the ruddy light!
There woman's voice flows forth in song,

Or childhood's tale is told ;
Or lips move tunefully along.

Some glorious page of old.

The blessed Homes of England !

How softly on their bowers Is laid the holy quietness

That breathes from Sabbath hours ! Solemn, yet sweet, the church-bell's chime

Floats through their woods at morn; All

other sounds, in that still time, Of breeze and leaf are born.

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OUR DAILY PATHS.

The Cottage Homes of England !

By thousands, on her plains,
They are smiling o'er the silvery brooks,

And round the hamlet-fanes.
Through glowing orchards forth they peep,

Each from its nook of leaves,
And fearless there they lowly sleep,

As the bird beneath their eaves.

The free, fair Homes of England:

Long, long, in but and ball,
May hearts of native proof be rear'd

To guard each ballow'd wall!
And green for ever be the groves,

And bright the flowery sod,
Where first the child's glad spirit loves

Its Country and its God!

OUR DAILY PATHS. ,

There's Beauty all around our paths, if but our watchful

eyes Can trace it 'midst familiar things, and through their lowly

guise ; We may find it where a hedgerow showers its blossoms o'er

our way, Or a cottage-window sparkles forth in the last red light of

day. We may find it where a spring shines clear, beneath an aged

tree, With the foxglove o'er the water's glass borne downward by

the bee; Or where a swift and sunny gleam on the birchen-stems is

thrown, And a soft wind playing parts the leaves, in copses green and

a

OUR DAILY PATHS.

201

blue sky,

We may find it in the winter boughs, as they cross the cold While soft on icy pool and stream their pencilled shadows

lie, When we look upon their tracery, by the fairy frost-works

bound, Whence the flitting redbreast shakes a shower of crystals

to the ground.

Yes! Beauty dwells in all our paths--but Sorrow too is

there; How oft some cloud within us dims the bright still summer

air ! When we carry our sick hearts abroad amidst the joyous

things That through the leafy places glanc’d on many-coloured

wings.

With shadows from the past we fill the bappy woodland

shades, And a mournful memory of the dead is with us in the

glades; And our dream-like fancies lend the wind an echo's plain

tive tone, Of voices, and of melodies, and of silvery laughter gone.

But are we free to do e'en thus-to wander as we will Bearing sad visions through the grove, and o'er the breezy

bill? No! in our daily paths lie cares, that oft-times bind us fast, While from the narrow round we see the golden day fleet

past.

They hold us from the woodlark's haunts and the violet-din

gles back, And from all the lovely sounds and gleams in the shining

river's track; They bar us from our heritage of spring-time hope and mirth, And weigh our burdened spirits down with the cumbering

dust of earth.

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THE MEMORY OF THE DEAD.

Yet should this be? – Too much, too soon, despondingly we

yield! A better lesson we are taught by the lilies of the field ! A sweeter by the birds of heaven—which tells us, in their

flight, Of One that through the desert air forever guides them right! Shall not this knowledge calm our hearts, and bid vain con

flicts cease ? -Aye, when they commune with themselves in boly hours

of

pe And feel that by the lights and clouds through which our

pathway lies, By the Beauty and the Grief alike, we are training for the

skies!

1

THE MEMORY OF THE DEAD.

FORGET then not! tho' now their name

Be but a mournful sound,
Tho' by the hearth its utterance claim

A stillness round.

Tho' for their sakes this earth no more

As it hath been may be,
And shadows, never marked before,

Brood o'er each tree;

And tho' their image dim the sky,

Yet, yet forget them not !
Nor, where there love and life went by,

Forsake the spot!

They have a breathing influence there,

A charm, not elsewhere found;
Sad-yet it sanctifies the air,

The stream, the ground.

THE MEMORY OF THE DEAD.

203

Then, tho' the wind an altered tone

Through the young foliage bear, Tho' every flower, of something gone,

A tinge may wear;

Oh! fly it not! no fruitless grief

Thus in their presence felt, A record links to every leaf

There, wbere they dwelt.

Still trace the path which knew thier tread,

Still tend their garden.bower, And call them back, the holy Dead,

To each lone hour!

The holy Dead !-oh! blest we are,

That we may name them so, And to their spirits look afar,

Through all our woe!

Blest, that the things they loved on earth,

As relics we may bold,
Which wake sweet thoughts of parted worth,

By springs untold!

Blest, that a deep and chastening power

Thus o'er our souls is given, If but to bird, or song, or flower,

Yet all for Heaven!