One impulse from a vernal wood
May teach you more of man,
Of moral evil and of good,

Than all the sages can.

Sweet is the lore which Nature brings;
Our meddling intellect

Mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things:
-We murder to dissect.

Enough of Science and of Art;

Close up these barren leaves :

Come forth, and bring with you a heart

That watches and receives.

W. Wordsworth.

THE INVITATION.

(The Pine Forest.)

DEAREST, best and brightest,

Come away,

To the woods and to the fields!

Dearer than this fairest day,

Which like thee to those in sorrow,
Comes to bid a sweet good-morrow
To the rough year just awake

In its cradle in the brake.

The eldest of the hours of spring,

Into the winter wandering,

Looks upon the leafless wood;

And the banks all bare and rude

Found it seems this halcyon morn,
In February's bosom born,

Bending from heaven, in azure mirth,
Kissed the cold forehead of the earth,
And smiled upon the silent sea,

And bade the frozen streams be free;
And waked to music all the fountains,
And breathed upon the rigid mountains,
And made the wintry world appear
Like one on whom thou smilest, dear.

Radiant Sister of the Day,
Awake! arise! and come away!
To the wild woods and the plains,
To the pools where winter rains
Image all the roof of leaves,
Where the Pine its garlands weaves,

Sapless, grey, and ivy dun

Round stones that never kiss the sun,
To the sandhills of the sea,

Where the earliest violets be.

P. B. Shelley.

THE SEA.

(Childe Harold's Pilgrimage.)

ROLL on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean-roll! Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain ; Man marks the earth with ruin-his control Stops with the shore ;-upon the watery plain The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain

A shadow of man's ravage, save his own, When, for a moment, like a drop of rain, He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan, Without a grave, unknelled, uncoffined, and unknown.

His steps are not upon thy paths,-thy fields
Are not a spoil for him,-thou dost arise

And shake him from thee; the vile strength he wields
For earth's destruction thou dost all despise,
Spurning him from thy bosom to the skies,
And send'st him, shivering in thy playful spray
And howling, to his gods, where haply lies
His petty hope in some near port or bay,

And dashest him again to earth :—there let him lay.

The armaments which thunderstrike the walls
Of rock-built cities, bidding nations quake,
And monarchs tremble in their capitals,
The oak leviathans, whose huge ribs make
Their clay creator the vain title take
Of lord of thee, and arbiter of war;
These are thy toys, and, as the snowy flake,
They melt into thy yeast of waves, which mar
Alike the Armada's pride, or spoils of Trafalgar.

Thy shores are empires, changed in all save theeAssyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage, what are they? Thy waters wasted them while they were free, And many a tyrant since; their shores obey The stranger, slave, or savage; their decay Has dried up realms to deserts:-not so thou, Unchangeable save to thy wild waves' play— Time writes no wrinkle on thine azure browSuch as creation's dawn beheld, thou rollest now.

Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty's form
Glasses itself in tempests; in all time,

Calm or convulsed-in breeze, or gale, or storm,
Icing the pole, or in the torrid clime

Dark-heaving ;-boundless, endless, and sublime-
The image of Eternity-the throne

Of the Invisible; even from out thy slime
The monsters of the deep are made; each zone
Obeys thee; thou goest forth, dread, fathomless, alone.

And I have loved thee, Ocean! and my joy
Of youthful sports was on thy breast to be
Born, like thy bubbles, onward: from a boy
I wantoned with thy breakers-they to me
Were a delight; and if the freshening sea
Made them a terror-'twas a pleasing fear,
For I was as it were a child of thee,
And trusted to thy billows far and near,

And laid my hand upon thy mane-as I do here.

Lord Byron.

THE GARDEN.

(The Sensitive Plant.)

THE snowdrop, and then the violet,

Arose from the ground with warm rain wet;
And their breath was mixed with fresh odour, sent
From the turf, like the voice and the instrument.

Then the pied wind-flowers and the tulip tall,
And narcissi, the fairest among them all,
Who gaze on their eyes in the stream's recess,
Till they die of their own dear loveliness;

And the Naiad-like lily of the vale,

Whom youth makes so fair, and passion so pale,
That the light of its tremulous bells is seen
Through their pavilions of tender green;

And the hyacinth purple, and white, and blue,
Which flung from its bells a sweet peal anew
Of music so delicate, soft, and intense,
It was felt like an odour within the sense;

And the rose, like a nymph to the bath addrest,
Which unveiled the depth of her glowing breast,
Till, fold after fold, to the fainting air
The soul of her beauty and love lay bare;

And the wand-like lily, which lifted up,

As a Mænad, its moonlight-coloured cup,
Till the fiery star, which is its eye,

Gazed through the clear dew on the tender sky ;

And the jessamine faint, and the sweet tuberose,
The sweetest flower for scent that blows;

And all rare blossoms from every clime
Grew in that Garden in perfect prime.

And on the stream whose inconstant bosom
Was prankt, under boughs of embowering blossom,
With golden and green light, slanting through
Their heaven of many a tangled hue,

Broad water-lilies lay tremulously,

And starry river-buds glimmered by,

And around them the soft stream did glide and dance With a motion of sweet sound and radiance.