Now all the flowers were up, and drest
In robes of rainbow-color'd light;
The pale primroses look'd their best,
Peonies blush'd with all their might;
Dutch tulips from their beds
Flaunted their stately heads;
Auriculas, like belles and beaux,

Glittering with birth-night splendor, rose;
And polyanthuses display'd

The brilliance of their gold brocade:
Here hyacinths of heavenly blue
Shook their rich tresses to the morn,
While rose-buds scarcely show'd their hue,
But coyly linger'd on the thorn,

Till their loved nightingale, who tarried long,
Should wake them into beauty with his song.
The violets were past their prime,
Yet their departing breath
Was sweeter, in the blast of death,
Than all the lavish fragrance of the time.

Now, to return (for we have wander'd far)
To what was nothing but a simple star;
-Where all was jollity around,
No fellowship the stranger found.
Those lowliest children of the earth,
That never leave their mother's lap,
Companions in their harmless mirth,
Were smiling, blushing, dancing there,
Feasting on dew, and light, and air,
And fearing no mishap,

Save from the hand of lady fair,
Who, on her wonted walk,
Pluck'd one and then another,
A sister or a brother,

From its elastic stalk;

Happy, no doubt, for one sharp pang, to die On her sweet bosom, withering in her eye.

Thus all day long that star's hard lot,
While bliss and beauty ran to waste,
Was but to witness on the spot
Beauty and bliss could not taste.

At length the sun went down, and then
Its faded glory came again,
With brighter, bolder, purer light,
It kindled through the deepening night,
Till the green bower, so dim by day,
Glow'd like a fairy-palace with its beams;
In vain, for sleep on all the borders lay,
The flowers were laughing in the land of dreams

Our star, in melancholy state,
Still sigh'd to find itself alone,
Neglected, cold, and desolate,
Unknowing and unknown.
Lifting at last an anxious eye,
It saw that circlet empty in the sky
Where it was wont to roll,
Within a hair-breadth of the pole:
In that same instant, sore amazed,
On the strange blank all Nature gazed;
Travellers, bewilder'd for their guide,
In glens and forests lost their way;
And ships, on ocean's trackless tide,
Went fearfully astray.

But, should a breath of danger sound,
With sails quick-furl'd it dives profound,
And far beneath the tempest's path,
In coral grots, defies the foe,
That never brake, in heaviest wrath,
The sabbath of the deep below.

Up from his dream, on twinkling wings,
The Sky-lark soars amid the dawn;
Yet, while in Paradise he sings,
Looks down upon the quiet lawn,
Where flutters, in his little nest,
More love than music e'er express'd:
Then, though the nightingale may thrill
The soul with keener ecstacy,
The merry bird of morn can fill
All Nature's bosom with his glee.

The Elephant, embower'd in woods,
Coeval with their trees might seem,
As though he drank from Indian floods
Life in a renovating stream;
Ages o'er him have come and fled,
'Midst generations of the dead,
His bulk survives, to feed and range,
Where ranged and fed of old his sires;
Nor knows advancement, lapse, or change,
Beyond their walks, till he expires.

Gem, flower, and fish, the bird, the brute,
Of every kind occult or known,
(Each exquisitely form'd to suit
Its humble lot, and that alone),
Through ocean, earth, and air, fulfil,
Unconsciously, their Maker's will,
Who gave, without their toil or thought,
Strength, beauty, instinct, courage, speed;

While through the whole his pleasure wrought
Whate'er his wisdom had decreed.

But Man, the masterpiece of God,
Man, in his Maker's image framed,—
Though kindred to the valley's clod,
Lord of this low creation named,—
In naked helplessness appears,
Child of a thousand griefs and fears:
To labor, pain, and trouble born,
Weapon, nor wing, nor sleight hath he;
Yet, like the sun, he brings his morn,
And is a king from infancy.

For him no destiny hath bound
To do what others did before,
Pace the same dull perennial round,
And be a man, and be no more:
A man?-a self-will'd piece of earth,
Just as the lion is, by birth;
To hunt his prey, to wake, to sleep,
His father's joys and sorrows share,
His niche in Nature's temple keep,
And leave his likeness in his heir!-

No: infinite the shades between
The motley millions of our race;
No two the changing moon hath seen
Alike in purpose, or in face;

Yet all aspire beyond their fate;
The last, the meanest would be great;
The mighty future fills the mind,
That pants for more than earth can give
Man, to this narrow sphere confined,
Dies when he but begins to live.

Oh! if there be no world on high
To yield his powers unfetter'd scope;
If man be only born to die,
Whence this inheritance of hope?
Wherefore to him alone were lent
Riches that never can be spent?
Enough, not more, to all the rest,
For life and happiness, was given;
To man, mysteriously unblest,
Too much for any state but heaven.

It is not thus:-it cannot be,
That one so gloriously endow'd
With views that reach eternity,
Should shine and vanish like a cloud :
Is there a God?-all Nature shows
There is, and yet no mortal knows:
The mind that could this truth conceive,
Which brute sensation never taught,
No longer to the dust would cleave,
But grow immortal with the thought,

VERSES TO THE MEMORY OF

THE LATE RICHARD REYNOLDS,

Member of the Society of Friends, and Founder of the Samaritan Society of Bristol.

I.

THE DEATH OF THE RIGHTEOUS.

THIS place is holy ground; World, with thy cares, away! Silence and darkness reign around, But, lo! the break of day: What bright and sudden dawn appears, To shine upon this scene of tears?

"T is not the morning-light,

That wakes the lark to sing; "T is not a meteor of the night, Nor track of angel's wing:

It is an uncreated beam,

Like that which shone on Jacob's dream.

Eternity and Time

Met for a moment here;

From earth to heaven, a scale sublime

Rested on either sphere, Whose steps a saintly figure trod,

By Death's cold hand led home to God.

He landed in our view,

'Midst flaming hosts above; Whose ranks stood silent, while he drew Nigh to the throne of love,

And meekly took the lowest seat,

Yet nearest his Redeemer's feet.

As a cedar of the Lord,

On the height of Lebanon,
Shade and shelter doth afford,
From the tempest and the sun :-
While in green luxuriant prime,
Fragrant airs its boughs diffuse,
From its locks it shakes sublime,
O'er the hills, the morning dews.
Thus he flourish'd, tall and strong,
Glorious in perennial health;
Thus he scatter'd, late and long,
All his plenitude of wealth:
Wealth, which prodigals had deem'd
Worth the soul's uncounted cost;
Wealth, which misers had esteem'd
Cheap, though Heaven itself were lost.

This, with free unsparing hand,
To the poorest child of need,
This he threw around the land,
Like the sower's precious seed.

In the world's great harvest-day,
Every grain on every ground,
Stony, thorny, by the way,

Shall an hundred-fold be found.
Yet like noon's refulgent blaze,

Though he shone from east to west,
Far withdrawn from public gaze,
Secret goodness pleased him best.
As the sun, retired from sight,
Through the purple evening gleams,
Or, unrisen, clothes the night

In the morning's golden beams:
Thus beneath the horizon dim

He would hide his radiant head, And on eyes that saw not him Light and consolation shed.

Oft his silent spirit went,

Like an angel from the throne, On benign commissions bent, In the fear of God alone.

Then the widow's heart would sing,
As she turn'd her wheel, for joy;
Then the bliss of hope would spring
On the outcast orphan boy.

To the blind, the deaf, the lame,
To the ignorant and vile.
Stranger, captive, slave, he came
With a welcome and a smile.

Help to all he did dispense,

Gold, instruction, raiment, food; Like the gifts of Providence, To the evil and the good.

Deeds of mercy, deeds unknown, Shall eternity record,

Which he durst not call his own,

For he did them to the Lord.

As the Earth puts forth her flowers,

Heaven-ward breathing from below; As the clouds descend in showers, When the southern breezes blow;

Thus his renovated mind,

Warm with pure celestial love, Shed its influence on mankind,

While its hopes aspired above.

Full of faith at length he died,

And victorious in the race, Won the crown for which he vied, -Not of merit, but of grace.

III.

A GOOD MAN'S MONUMENT.

THE pyre, that burns the aged Bramin's bones, Runs cold in blood, and issues living groans, When the whole Haram with the husband dies, And demons dance around the sacrifice.

In savage realms, when tyrants yield their breath, Herds, flocks, and slaves, attend their lord in death; Arms, chariots, carcasses, a horrid heap, Rust at his side, or share his mouldering sleep.

When heroes fall triumphant on the plain; For millions conquer'd, and ten thousands slain, For cities levell'd, kingdoms drench'd in blood, Navies annihilated on the flood;

-The pageantry of public grief requires
The splendid homage of heroic lyres;

And genius moulds impassion'd brass to breathe
The deathless spirit of the dust beneath,
Calls marble honor from its cavern'd bed,
And bids it live-the proxy of the dead.

Reynolds expires, a nobler chief than these; No blood of widows stains his obsequies; But widows' tears, in sad bereavement, fall, And foundling voices on their father call: No slaves, no hecatombs, his relics crave, To gorge the worm, and crowd his quiet grave; But sweet repose his slumbering ashes find, As if in Salem's sepulchre enshrined; And watching angels waited for the day, When Christ should bid them roll the stone away.

Not in the fiery hurricane of strife,
'Midst slaughter'd legions, he resign'd his life;
But peaceful as the twilight's parting ray,
His spirit vanish'd from its house of clay,
And left on kindred souls such power imprest,
They seem'd with him to enter into rest.
Hence no vain pomp, his glory to prolong,
No airy immortality of song;

No sculptured imagery, of bronze or stone,
To make his lineaments for ever known,
Reynolds requires :-his labors, merits, name,
Demand a monument of surer fame;
Not to record and praise his virtues past,
But show them living, while the world shall last;

Not to bewail one Reynolds snatch'd from earth,
But give, in every age, a Reynolds birth;
In every age a Reynolds; born to stand
A prince among the worthies of the land,
By Nature's title, written in his face:
More than a Prince-a sinner saved by grace,
Prompt at his meek and lowly Master's call
To prove himself the minister of all.

BRISTOL! to thee the eye of Albion turns; At thought of thee, thy country's spirit burns; For in thy walls, as on her dearest ground, Are "British minds and British manners" found: And, 'midst the wealth which Avon's waters pour, From every clime, on thy commercial shore, Thou hast a native mine of worth untold; Thine heart is not encased in rigid gold, Wither'd to mummy, steel'd against distress; No-free as Severn's waves, that spring to bless Their parent hills, but as they roll expand In argent beauty through a lovelier land, And widening, brightening to the western sun, In floods of glory through thy channel run; Thence, mingling with the boundless tide, are hurl'd In Ocean's chariot round the utmost world: Thus flow thine heart-streams, warm and unconfined, At home, abroad, to woe of every kind. Worthy wert thou of Reynolds ;-worthy he To rank the first of Britons even in thee. Reynolds is dead ;-thy lap receives his dust Until the resurrection of the just: Reynolds is dead; but while thy rivers roll, Immortal in thy bosom live his soul!

Go, build his monument:-and let it be Firm as the land, but open as the sea. Low in his grave the strong foundations lie, Yet be the dome expansive as the sky, On crystal pillars resting from above, Its sole supporters-works of faith and love; So clear, so pure, that to the keenest sight, They cast no shadow: all within be light: No walls divide the area, nor inclose; Charter the whole to every wind that blows; Then rage the tempest, flash the lightnings blue, And thunders roll,-they pass unharming through.

One simple altar in the midst be placed, With this, and only this, inscription graced, The song of angels at Immanuel's birth, "Glory to God! good-will, and peace on earth." There be thy duteous sons a tribe of priests, Not offering incense, nor the blood of beasts, But with their gifts upon that altar spread; -Health to the sick, and to the hungry bread, Beneficence to all, their hands shall deal, With Reynolds' single eye and hallow'd zeal Pain, want, misfortune, thither shall repair; Folly and vice reclaim'd shall worship there The God of him-in whose transcendent mind Stood such a temple, free to all mankind : Thy God, thrice-honor'd city! bids thee raise That fallen temple, to the end of days: Obey his voice; fulfil thine high intent; -Yea, be thyself the Good Man's Monument