Within some whispering osier isle,

Where Glym's low banks neglected smile;
And each trim meadow still retains

The wintry torrent's oozy stains:
Beneath a willow, long forsook,
The fisher seeks his custom'd nook;
And bursting through the crackling sedge
That crowns the current's cavern'd edge,
He startles from the bordering wood
The bashful wild-duck's early brood.

O'er the broad downs, a novel race,
Frisk the lambs with faltering pace,
And with eager bleatings fill

The foss that skirts the beacon'd hill.

His free-born vigour yet unbroke To lordly man's usurping yoke, The bounding colt forgets to play, Basking beneath the noontide ray, And stretch'd among the daisies pied Of a green dingle's sloping side: While far beneath, where nature spreads Her boundless length of level meads, In loose luxuriance taught to stray, A thousand tumbling rills inlay With silver veins the vale, or pass Redundant through the sparkling grass.

Yet, in these presages rude, Midst her pensive solitude, Fancy, with prophetic glance, Sees the teeming months advance; The field, the forest, green and gay, The dappled slope, the tedded hay; Sees the reddening orchard blow, The harvest wave, the vintage flow : Sees June unfold his glossy robe Of thousand hues o'er all the globe : Sees Ceres grasp her crown of corn, And Plenty load her ample horn.

Cowper.

BOADICEA.

From the "Poems" of 1782.

WH

HEN the British warrior Queen,
Bleeding from the Roman rods,

Sought with an indignant mien,
Counsel of her country's gods :

Sage beneath a spreading oak,
Sat the Druid, hoary chief,
Ev'ry burning word he spoke
Full of rage, and full of grief.

"Princess! if our aged eyes

Weep upon thy matchless wrongs,

'Tis because resentment ties

All the terrors of our tongues.

"Rome shall perish,-write that word
In the blood that she has spilt,—

Perish, hopeless and abhorr'd,
Deep in ruin as in guilt.

"Rome for empire far renown'd

Tramples on a thousand States; Soon her pride shall kiss the ground: Hark! the Gaul is at her gates!

"Other Romans shall arise,

Heedless of a soldier's name ;

Sounds, not arms, shall win the prize,Harmony the path to fame.

"Then the progeny that springs
From the forests of our land,
Armed with thunder, clad with wings,
Shall a wider world command.

"Regions Cæsar never knew
Thy posterity shall sway;
Where his eagles never flew,
None invincible as they."

Such the bard's prophetic words,
Pregnant with celestial fire,
Bending, as he swept the chords

Of his sweet but awful lyre.

She with all a monarch's pride
Felt them in her bosom glow;
Rushed to battle, fought, and fied :
Lying, hurled them at the foe.

"Raffians, pitiless as proud,

Heaven awards the vengeance due ;

Empire is on us bestowed,

Shame and ruin wait for you."