Thy singed top and branches bare, Now struggle in the evening sky; ROGERS. TO THE BRAMBLE FLOWER. Thy fruit full well the school-boy knows, Wild bramble of the brake ! I love it for his sake. Though woodbines flaunt, and roses glow O'er all the fragrant bowers, Thy satin-threaded flowers ; That cannot feel how fair, Thy tender blossoms are ! How rich thy branchy stem ! And thou sing'st hymns to them; And 'mid the general hush, Lone whispering through the bush ! The hawthorn flower is dead; Hath laid her weary head; In all their beauteous power, And boyhood's blossomy hour. Thou bidd'st me be a boy, In freedom and in joy. ELLIOTT. THE GRASSHOPPER. Happy insect ! what can be Thou dost innocently joy COWLEY. THE HAREBELL. The forest-tree beneath, Light as a breeze astir, Stemmed with the gossamer, Soft as the blue eyes of a poet's child. The very flower to take Into the heart and make Name but the light harebell, And straight is pictured well Where'er of fallen state lie lonely traces. We vision wild sea-rocks, Where hang its clustering locks, Waving at dizzy height o'er ocean's brink; The hermit's scoopèd cell ; The forest's sylvan well, We vision moors far-spread, Where blooms the heather red, Lone shepherd-boys who keep On mountain-sides their sheep, Old slopes of pasture-ground; We see the sere turf brown, Scarce raising from the stem its thick-set flowers; And the strong ivy-growth o'er crumbling towers. Light harebell, there thou art, Of the old splendour of the days gone by, Waving, if but a breeze Pant through the distant trees, That on the hill-top grow broad-branch'd and high. Oh, when I look on thee, In thy fair symmetry, And look on other flowers as fair beside, My sense is gratitude That God has been thus good, To scatter flowers, like common blessings wide. MARY HOWITT. The poetry of earth is never dead; When all the birds are faint with the hot sun, KEATS. Here rustic taste at leisure trimly weaves CLARE. |