The frog, with reckoning leap, enjoys apart,
Till now and then the woodcock frights his heart
With brushing down to dip his dainty bill.
Close by, from bank to bank,
A little bridge there is, a one-railed plank ;
And all is woody, mossy, and watery.
Sometimes a poet from that bridge might see
A Nymph reach downwards, holding by a bough

With tresses o'er her brow,

And with her white back stoop

The pushing stream to scoop
In a green gourd cup, shining sunnily.

THE CLOUD,

A FRAGMENT.

*

As I stood thus, a neighbouring wood of elms
Was moved, and stirred and whispered loftily,
Much like a pomp of warriors with plumed helms,
When some great general whom they long to see
Is heard behind them, coming in swift dignity;
And then there fled by me a rush of air
That stirred up all the other foliage there,
Filling the solitude with panting tongues ;
At which the pines woke up
Shaking their choral locks; and on the place
There fell a shade as on an awe-struck face ;

into their songs,

And overhead, like a portentous rim
Pulled over the wide world, to make all dim,
A grave gigantic cloud came hugely uplifting him.

It passed with it's slow shadow; and I saw Where it went down beyond me on a plain, Sloping it's dusky ladders of thick rain ; And on the mist it made, and blinding awe, The sun, re-issuing in the opposite sky, Struck the all-coloured arch of his great eye, And the disburthened country laughed again : The leaves were amber; the sunshine Scored on the ground it's conquering line; And the quick birds, for scorn of the great cloud, Like children after fear, were merry and loud.

SONNETS.