H ODE TO THE CUCKOO. AIL, beauteous stranger of the grove! Now Heaven repairs thy rural seat, What time the daisy decks the green, Delightful visitant! with thee The schoolboy, wandering in the wood Starts, the new voice of Spring to hear, Soon as the pea puts on the bloom, Thou fliest thy vocal vale, Another Spring to hail. Sweet bird! thy bower is ever green, Thy sky is ever clear; No Winter in thy year! O could I fly, I'd fly with thee! JOHN LOGAN. CORONACH.1 [FROM "THE LADY OF THE LAKE."] E is gone on the mountain, HE He is lost to the forest; Like a summer-dried fountain, When our need was the sorest. The font, reappearing, From the rain-drops shall borrow; But to us comes no cheering, No Duncan to-morrow. The hand of the reaper Takes the ears that are hoary; Waft the leaves that are serest, Fleet foot on the correi,2 Sage counsel in cumber, Red hand in the foray, How sound is thy slumber! Like the dew on the mountain, Like the foam on the river, Like the bubble on the fountain, 1 Coronach, funeral song. SCOTT. 2 Correi, the hollow side of the hill. IT is not beautie I demand, IT A chrystall brow, the moon's despair, Nor the snow's daughter, a white hand, Nor mermaid's yellow pride of hair. Tell me not of your starrie eyes, A bloomie pair of vermeil cheeks, These are but gauds: nay, what are lips? Corall beneath the ocean-stream, Whose brink when your adventurer slips, Full oft he perisheth on them. And what are cheeks, but ensigns oft That wave hot youth to fields of blood? Did Helen's breast, though ne'er so soft, Do Greece or Ilium any good? Eyes can with baleful ardour burn; Poison can breath, that erst perfum'd; There's many a white hand holds an urn, With lovers' hearts to dust consumed. For chrystall brows, there's nought within; Give me, instead of Beautie's bust, One in whose gentle bosom I Could pour my secret heart of woes, My earthlie comforter! whose love That, when my spirit wonn'd above, THE QUESTION. DREAM'D that, as I wander'd by the way, Bare Winter suddenly was changed to Spring, And gentle odours led my steps astray, Mix'd with a sound of waters murmuring, Along a shelving bank of turf, which lay Under a copse, and hardly dared to fling Its green arms round the bosom of the stream, But kiss'd it, and then fled, as thou mightest in dream. There grew pied wind-flowers and violets; Faint oxlips; tender bluebells, at whose birth The sod scarce heaved; and that tall flower that wets Its mother's face with heaven-collected tears, When the low wind its playmate's voice it hears. And in the warm hedge grew lush eglantine, may, And cherry blossoms, and white cups, whose wine Was the bright dew yet drain'd not by the day; And wild roses, and ivy serpentine, With its dark buds and leaves, wandering astray; And flowers azure, black, and streak'd with gold, Fairer than any waken'd eyes behold. And nearer to the river's trembling edge And starry river-buds among the sedge, Methought that of these visionary flowers I made a nosegay, bound in such a way That the same hues which in their natural bowers Were mingled or opposed, the like array Kept these imprison'd children of the Hours Within my hand,-and then, elate and gay, I hasten'd to the spot whence I had come, That I might there present it! Oh! to whom? SHELLEY. |