Farewell-for lo!

'Tis sunset, and the heron wading in

The shallows, 'mong the reeds now spreads her wings,
And, rising, flies away, home to her nest;
With neck back-arched, and their long trailing legs,
Distinctly seen athwart the glowing sky!

A. J. SYMINGTON.

"It is a strange thing how little, in general, people know about the sky. It is the part of the creation in which nature has done more for the sake of pleasing man, more for the sole and evident purpose of talking to him and teaching him, than in any other of her works, and it is just the part in which we least attend to her. There are not many of her dim works in which some more material or essential purpose than the mere pleasing of man is not answered by every part of their organisation; but every essential purpose of the sky might, so far as we know, be answered if once in three days, or thereabouts, a great, ugly, black, rain-cloud were brought up over the blue, and everything well watered, and so all left blue again till the next time, with perhaps a film of morning and evening mist for dew. And instead of this, there is not a moment of any day of our lives, when nature is not producing scene after scene, picture after picture, glory after glory, and working still upon such exquisite and constant principles of the most perfect beauty, that it is quite certain it is all done for us, and intended for our profit, not pleasure. And every man, wherever placed, however far from other sources of interest or beauty, has this doing for him constantly. The noblest scenes of the earth can be seen and known but by few; it is not intended that man should live always in the midst of them; he injures them by his presence; he ceases to feel them if he be always with them; but the sky is, for all; bright as it is, it is not

Too bright, nor good
For human nature's daily food;

it is fitted in all its functions for the perpetual comfort and exalting of the heart, for soothing it and purifying it from its dross and dust. Sometimes gentle, sometimes capricious,

STORY OF THE HEAVENS.

279

sometimes awful, never the same for two moments together; almost human in its passions, almost spiritual in its tenderness, almost divine in its affinity; its appeal to what is immortal in us, is as distinct as its ministry of chastisement or of blessing to what is moral is essential. And yet we never attend to it, we never make it a subject of thought, but as it has to do with our animal sensations; we look upon all which bears witness to the intention of the Supreme, that we are to receive more from the covering vault than the light and the dew which we share with the weed and the worm, only as a succession of meaningless and monotonous accidents, too common and too vain to be worthy of a moment of watchfulness, or a glance of admiration. If in our moments of utter idleness and insipidity we turn to the sky as a last resource, which of its phenomena do we speak of? One says, it has been wet; and another, it has been windy; and another, it has been warm. Who, among the whole chattering crowd, can tell me of the forms and the precipices of the chain of tall white mountains that girded the horizon at noon, yesterday? Who saw the narrow

sunbeam that came out of the south, and smote upon their summits until they melted and mouldered away in a mist of blue rain? Who saw the dance of the dead clouds when the sunlight left them last night, and the west wind blew them before it like withered leaves? All has passed unregretted as unseen; or if the apathy be ever shaken off even for an instant, it is only by what is gross, or what is extraordinary; and yet it is not in the broad and fierce manifestations of the elemental energies, not in the crash of the hail, nor the drift of the whirlwind, that the highest characters of the sublime are developed. God is not in the earthquake, nor in the fire, but in the still small voice. They are but the blunt and the low faculties of his nature, which can only be addressed through lampblack and lightning. It is in quiet and subdued passages of unobtrusive majesty, the deep and the calm, and the perpetual; that which must be sought ere it can be seen, and loved ere it is understood; things which the angels work out for us daily, and yet vary eternally; which are never wanting and never repeated; which are to be found always, yet each found but once; it is through these that her lesson of

devotion is chiefly taught, and the blessing of beauty given."-RUSKIN'S MODERN PAINTERS.

THE LONGEST DAY.

Let us quit the leafy arbour,
And the torrent murmuring by;
Sol has dropp'd into his harbour,
Weary of the open sky:

Evening now unbinds the fetters
Fashion'd by the glowing light;
All that breathe are thankful debtors
To the harbinger of night.

Yet by some grave thoughts attended
Eve renews the calm career :
For the day that now is ended,
Is the longest of the year.

Laura sport, as now thou sportest,
On this platform, light and free;
Take thy bliss while longest, shortest,
Are indifferent to thee!

Who would check the happy feeling
That inspires the linnet's song!
Who would stop the swallow wheeling
On her pinions swift and strong?

Yet at this impressive season,

Words which tenderness can speak,
From the truths of homely reason,
Might exalt the loveliest cheek ;

And, while shades to shades succeeding
Steal the landscape from the sight,
I would urge this moral pleading,
Last forerunner of " Good-night!"

Summer ebbs ;-each day that follows
Is a reflux from on high,
Tending to the darksome hollows
Where the frosts of winter lie.

He who governs the creation,
In his providence, assign'd
Such a gradual declination

To the life of human kind.

THE LONGEST DAY.

Yet we mark it not ;-fruits redden,

Fresh flowers blow, as flowers have blown, And the heart is loth to deaden

Hopes that she so long hath known.

Be thou wiser, youthful maiden !
And when thy decline shall come,
Let not flowers, or boughs fruit-laden,
Hide the knowledge of thy doom.

Now, even now, ere wrapp'd in slumber,
Fix thine eyes upon the sea
That absorbs time, space, and number;
Look towards eternity.

Follow thou the flowing river

On whose breast are thither borne All deceived, and each deceiver,

Through the gates of night and morn;

Through the year's successive portals;
Through the bounds which many a star
Marks, not mindless of frail mortals,
When his light returns from far.

Thus when thou with Time hast travell'd
Towards the mighty gulf of things,
And the mazy stream unravell'd
With thy best imaginings;

Think, if thou on beauty leanest,
Think how pitiful that stay,
Did not virtue give the meanest
Charms superior to decay.

Duty, like a strict preceptor,

Sometimes frowns or seems to frown;

Choose her thistle for thy sceptre,

While thy brow youth's roses crown.

Grasp it,-if thou shrink and tremble,
Fairest damsel of the green,
Thou wilt lack the only symbol
That proclaims a genuine queen;

And ensures those palms of honour
Which selected spirits wear,
Bending low before the Donor,

Lord of Heaven's unchanging year.

281

WORDSWORTH.

How affluent in beauty the gardens are at this season!

A thousand flowers-each seeming one
That learnt by gazing on the sun,

To counterfeit his shining-
Within whose leaves the holy dew
That falls from heaven, hath now anew
A glory-in declining.

Red roses, used to praises long,
Contented with the poet's song,
The nightingale's being over;
And lilies white, prepared to touch
The whitest thought, nor soil it much,
If dreamer turn'd to lover.

Deep violets, you liken to
The kindest eyes that look on you,
Without a thought disloyal:
And cactuses, a queen might don,
If weary of a golden crown,
And still appear as royal.

Pansies for ladies all! I wis

That none who wear such brooches miss

A jewel in the mirror:

And tulips, children love to stretch
Their fingers down, to feel in each
Its beauty's secret treasure.

"Nothing can be more delicious than the rural paradises which now surround our country-houses. Walks, waters, lawns of velvet softness, trees casting broad shadows, or whispering in the stirrings of the breeze; seclusion, and yet airiness; flowers from all regions, besides all the luxuries which the kitchen-garden, the orchard, conservatories, hothouses, and sunny-walls, pour upon our tables, are 80 blended and diffused around our dwellings, that nothing on earth can be more delectable. It is impossible, without looking back through many ages of English life, to form any idea of the real advantages which we enjoy of this kind-of the immense stride we have made from the bare and rigid life of our ancestors. How many of the fruits, or flowers, or culinary vegetables, which we possess in such excellence and perfection, did this country originally pro