Such grounds, however, as I had, should look
Like something" still; have seats, and walks, and

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brook;

One spot for flowers, the rest all turf and trees;
For I'd not grow my own bad lettuces.
I'd build a cover'd path too against rain,
Long, peradventure, as my whole domain,
And so be sure of generous exercise,
The youth of age and med'cine of the wise.
And this reminds me, that behind some screen
About my grounds, I'd have a bowling-green;
Such as in wits' and merry women's days
Suckling preferr'd before his walk of bays.
You may still see them, dead as haunts of fairies,
By the old seats of Killigrews and Careys,
Where all, alas! is vanish'd from the ring,
Wits and black eyes, the skittles and the king! 44
Fishing I hate, because I think about it,

Which makes it right that I should do without it.
A dinner, or a death, might not be much,
But cruelty's a rod I dare not touch.

I own I cannot see my right to feel

For my own jaws, and tear a trout's with steel;
To troll him here and there, and spike, and strain,
And let him loose to jerk him back again.
Fancy a preacher at this sort of work,

Not with his trout or gudgeon, but his clerk :
The clerk leaps gaping at a tempting bit,
And, hah! an ear-ache with a knife in it!
That there is pain and evil, is no rule
That I should make it greater, like a fool ;
Or rid me of my rust so vile a way,
As long as there's a single manly play.
Nay, fool's a word my pen unjustly writes,
Knowing what hearts and brains have dozed o'er
bites; "

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But the next inference to be drawn might be,
That higher beings made a trout of me;
Which I would rather should not be the case,

Though "Izaak" 45 were the saint to tear my face,
And, stooping from his heaven with rod and line,
Made the fell sport, with his old dreams divine,
As pleasant to his taste, as rough to mine.
Such sophistry, no doubt, saves half the hell,
But fish would have preferr'd his reasoning well,
And, if my gills concern'd him, so should Ï.
The dog, I grant, is in that "equal sky;"
But, heav'n be prais'd, he's not my deity.
All manly games I'd play at,-golf and quoits,
And cricket, to set lungs and limbs to rights,
And make me conscious, with a due respect,
Of muscles one forgets by long neglect.
With these, or bowls aforesaid, and a ride,
Books, music, friends, the day would I divide,
Most with my family, but when alone,
Absorb'd in some new poem of my own;
A task which makes my time so richly pass,
So like a sunshine cast through painted glass,
(Save where poor Captain Sword crashes the
panes,)

That, could my friends live too, and were the gains
Of toiling men but freed from sordid fears,
Well could I walk this earth a thousand years.

WEALTH AND WOMANHOOD.

HAVE you seen an heiress

In her jewels mounted,

Till her wealth and she seem'd one,

And she might be counted?

Have you seen a bosom

With one rose betwixt it?

And did you mark the grateful blush,
While the bridegroom fix'd it?

READER! what soul that loves a verse, can see The spring return, nor glow like you and me? Hear the quick birds, and see the landscape fill, Nor long to utter his melodious will?

This, more than ever, leaps into the veins, When spring has been delay'd by winds and rains, And coming with a burst, comes like a show, Blue all above, and basking green below. And all the people culling the sweet prime: Then issues forth the bee to clutch the thyme, And the bee poet rushes into rhyme.

For lo! no sooner has the cold withdrawn,
Than the bright elm is tufted on the lawn;
The merry sap has run up in the bowers,
And burst the windows of the buds in flowers;
With song the bosoms of the birds run o'er,
The cuckoo calls, the swallow's at the door,
And apple-trees at noon, with bees alive,
Burn with the golden chorus of the hive.
Now all these sweets, these sounds, this vernal
blaze,

Is but one joy, express'd a thousand ways:
And honey from the flowers, and song from birds,
Are from the poet's pen his overflowing words.

Ah friends! methinks it were a pleasant sphere, If, like the trees, we blossom'd every year; If locks grew thick again, and rosy dyes Return'd in cheeks, and raciness in eyes, And all around us, vital to the tips,

The human orchard laugh'd with cherry lips!

Lord! what a burst of merriment and play, Fair dames, were that! and what a first of May! So natural is the wish, that bards gone by Have left it, all, in some immortal sigh!

And yet the winter months were not so well: Who would like changing, as the seasons fell? Fade every year; and stare, midst ghastly friends, With falling hairs, and stuck-out fingers' ends? Besides, this tale of youth that comes again, Is no more true of apple-trees than men. The Swedish sage, the Newton of the flow'rs, Who first found out those worlds of paramours, Tells us, that every blossom that we see Boasts in its walls a separate family; So that a tree is but a sort of stand, That holds those filial fairies in its hand; Just as Swift's giant might have held a bevy Of Lilliputian ladies, or a levee.

It is not he that blooms: it is his race,

Who honour his old arms, and hide his rugged face.

Ye wits and bards then, pray discern your duty, And learn the lastingness of human beauty. Your finest fruit to some two months may reach: I've known a cheek at forty like a peach.

Here's a bee

But see the weather calls me.
Comes bounding in my room imperiously,
And talking to himself, hastily burns
About mine ear, and so in heat returns.
O little brethren of the fervid soul,

Kissers of flowers, lords of the golden bowl,
follow to your fields and tufted brooks:
Winter's the time to which the poet looks

For hiving his sweet thoughts, and making honied books.

ALTER ET DIEM.

A CHEMICO-POETICAL THOUGHT.

O LOVERS, ye that poorly love, and ye
That think ye love beyond sobriety,
Twine me a wreath, if but for only this,-
I'll prove the roses in the poet's kiss.
Not metaphors alone are lips and roses,
Whate'er the gallant or the churl supposes:
Ask what compounds them both, and science tells
Of marvellous results in crucibles,-

Of common elements,—say two in five,-
By which their touch is soft, their bloom's alive;
So that the lip and leaf do really, both,
Hold a shrewd cut of the same velvet cloth.
The maxim holds, where'er the compounds fall,—
In birds, in brooks, in wall-flowers, and the wall:
The beauty shares them with her very shawl.

'Tis true, the same things go to harden rocks;
There's iron in the shade of Julia's locks;
And when we kiss Jacintha's tears away,
A briny pity melts in what we say:
But read these common properties aright,
And shame in love is quench'd, and wise delight.
The very coarsest clay, the meanest shard
That hides the beetle in the public yard,
Shares with the stars, and all that rolls them on,
Much more the face we love to look upon;
And be the drops compounded as they may,
That bring sweet sorrows from sweet eyes away,
Where's the mean soul shall honour not the tears
Shed for a lover's hopes, a mother's fears?
Rise, truth and love, and vindicate my rhyme!
The crabbed Scot, that once upon a time
Asked what a poem prov'd, and just had wit