The nightingales, in the cold blooms, are there
Fullest of heart, hushing our open'd windows;
The cuckoo ripest in the warmed thicks.
Autumn, the princely season, purple-rob'd
And liberal-handed, brings no gloom to us,
But, rich in its own self, gives us rich hope
Of winter-time; and when the winter comes,
We burn old wood, and read old books that wall
Our biggest room, and take our heartiest walks
On the good, hard, glad, ground; or when it rains
And the rich dells are mire, make much and long
Of a small bin we have of good old wine;
And talk of, perhaps entertain, some friend,
Whom, old or young, we gift with the same grace
Of ancient epithet; for love is time

With us; youth old as love, and age as young;
And stars, affections, hopes, roll all alike

Immortal rounds, in heaven when not on earth.
Therefore the very youngest of us all

Do we call old,-" old Vincent," or "old Jule,"
Or "old Jacintha ;" and they count us young,
And at a very playfellow time of life,

As in good truth we are: witness the nuts
We seek, to pelt with, in thy trampled leaves,
November; and the merry Christmas ring,
Hot-fac'd and loud with too much fire and food,-
The rare excess, loving the generous gods.
"Old Mary," and "old Percy," and "old Henry,"
Also there are, with more beyond their teens ;
But these are reverend youngsters, married now,
And ride no longer to our cottage nest
On that unbridled horse, their father's knee.

Custom itself is an old friend with us; Though change we make a friend, too, if it come To better custom: nay, to bury him, Provided soul be gone, and it be done Rev'rently and kindly; and we then install

His son, or set a new one in his place;

"

For all good honest customs, from all lands, 14′′
Find welcome here,-seats built up in old elms
From France; and evening dances on the green;
And servants (home's inhabiting strangers) turn'd
To zealous friends; and gipsy meals, whose smoke
Warms houseless glades; and the good bout
Chinese

At pen and ink, in rhyming summer bow'rs,
Temper'd with pleasant penalties of wine.
The villagers love us; and on Sabbath-days,
(Such luck is ours, and round harmonious life)
In an old, ivied church (which God preserve,
And make a mark forever of the love

That by mild acquiescence bears all change
And keeps all better'd good!) no priest like ours
Utters such Christian lore, so final sweet,
So fit for audience in those flowery dells.
Not a young heart feels strange, nor old misgives:
You scarcely can help thinking, that the sound
Must pierce with sweetness to the very graves.

But mark-not the whole week do we pass thus,
No, nor whole day. Heav'n, for ease' sake forbid!
Half of the day (and half of that might serve,
Were all the world active and just as we)
Is mix'd with the great throng, playing its part
Of toil and pain; we could not relish else
Our absolute comfort; nay, should almost fear
Heav'n counted us not worthy to partake
The common load with its great hopes for all,
But held us flimsy triflers-gnats i' the sun-
Made but for play, and so to die, unheav'n'd.
Oh, hard we work, and carefully we think,
And much we suffer! but the line being drawn
'Twixt work and our earth's heav'n, well do we
draw it,

Sudden, and sharp, and sweet; and in an instant
Are borne away, like knights to fairy isles,

And close our gates behind us on the world.

And where (cries some one) is this blessed spot? May I behold it? May I gain admittance ?”

Ay, true as tears or smiles that fiction makes,
Waking the ready heaven in men's eyes ;—
True as effect to cause ;-true as the hours
You spend in joy while sitting at a play.
Is there no truth in those? Or was your heart
Happier before you went there? Oh, if rich
In what you deem life's only solid goods,
Think what unjoyous blanks ev'n those would be,
Were fancy's light smitten from out your world,
With all its colourings of your prides, your gains,
Your very toys and tea-cups, nothing left

But what you touch, and not what touches you.
The wise are often rich in little else,
The rich, if wise, count it their gold of gold.
Say, is it not so, thou who art both rich
In the world's eye, and wise in solitude's,-
Stoneleigh's poetic lord, whose gentle name
No echo granted at the font to mine,

I trust, shall have made ruder. What would'st care,
O Leigh, for all the wooden matter-o'-fact
Of all thine oaks, depriv'd of what thy muse
Can do to wake their old oracular breath,

Or whisper, with their patriarch locks, of heaven?
Lo! Southwood Smith, physician of mankind,
Bringer of light and air to the rich poor

Of the next age :-he, when in real woods
He rests the mildest energy alive,

Scorns not these fancied ones, but hails and loves
A vision of the dawn of his own world.

Horace Smith, lo! rare compound, skill'd alike
In worldly gain and its unworldliest use:
He prospers in the throng, makes fact his slave,
Then leads a life with fiction and good deeds.
Lo! Bulwer, genius in the thick of fame,

With smiles of thrones, and echoes from the Rhine,
He too extends his grounds to Fairy-land,

And while his neighbours think they see him looking

Hard at themselves, is in Armorica,

Feasting with lovers in enchanted bowers.
Lo! Jeffrey the fine wit, the judge revered,
The man belov'd, what spirit invokes he
To make his hasty moments of repose
Richest and farthest off?-The Muse of Keats,
One of the inmost dwellers in the core

Of the old woods, when Nymphs and Graces liv'd,

Where still they live, to eyes, like their's, divine.

Fancy's the wealth of wealth, the toiler's hope, The poor man's piecer-out; the art of Nature, Painting her landscapes twice; the spirit of fact, As matter is the body; the pure gift

Of heav'n to poet and to child; which he
Who retains most in manhood, being a man
In all things fitting else, is most a man ;
Because he wants no human faculty,
Nor loses one sweet taste of the sweet world.,

A HEAVEN UPON EARTH.

FRAGMENT OF AN UNPUBLISHED PLAY. A HUSBAND IS CONVERSING WITH HIS WIFE.

FOR there are two heavens, sweet,

Both made of love,-one, inconceivable

Ev'n by the other, so divine it is;

The other, far on this side of the stars,

By men call'd home, when some blest pair are met
As we are now; sometimes in happy talk,
Sometimes in silence (also a sort of talk,
Where friends are match'd) each at its gentle task
Of book, or household need, or meditation,
By summer-moon, or curtain'd fire in frost;
And by degrees there come,-not always come,
Yet mostly,-other, smaller inmates there,
Cherubic-fac'd, yet growing like those two,
Their pride and playmates, not without meek fear,
Since God sometimes to his own cherubim

Takes those sweet cheeks of earth. And so 'twixt joy,

And love, and tears, and whatsoever pain

Man fitly shares with man, these two grow old;
And if indeed blest thoroughly, they die

In the same spot, and nigh the same good hour,
And setting suns look heavenly on their grave.

REFLECTIONS OF A DEAD BODY.

SCENE. A female sitting by a bed-side, the face of her husband, just dead. dead body soliloquizes.

anxiously looking at The soul within the

WHAT change is this! What joy! What depth of

rest!

What suddenness of withdrawal from all pain