SUMMER.

BY REV. M. G. WATKINS, M.A.

AN English Summer! what a burst of joy—

What realms of beauty breathe in that brief phrase! Beauty that, dewy-fresh, can never cloy

Mirth running riot through wild woodland ways Where torrents leap, and birds sing roundelays, While Nature, never seen more blithe than here,

Seems quickening memories of her bygone Mays With June's rich smile, and April's gentle tear, What time she rests in this, the heyday of her year.

A loving presence haunts thy perfumed bowers,
Sweet English Summer! hence the ill-starred wight
Sighs for thy forest glades 'mong tropic flowers,
Recalls old elms, by fondest fancy dight,
That cloud the azure sea of balmy light,

Which o'er their curved tops hangs a lustrous dome,

Quivering on sprays in crisped-green splendours bright; Pity their lot to whom in dreams will come

On other shores such longing for an English home!

Grand is the glacier gliding from on high

Its yearlong inch through lonely wastes of snow; Awful the Alpine vastness where the

eye

Sees far blue gentian-clouds, or pink peaks throw
Their soft translucent tints o'er all below;

Praise me a sunset down an English vale,

Where soft grey shadows on the hill-sides lie;

While crimson skies, which flush and faint and pale,

Invite the pensive verse, revive the mournful tale.

My garden, blazing with a thousand blooms, Forestalls swarth Autumn with the rath-ripe pear; A heavy fragrance fills the darkened rooms,

Their casements starry wreaths of jasmine bear. Nightly the amorous nightingale you hear, In the larch-copse that hems the pleasaunce round; Long ere the point of dawn the larks sing clear, Thrushes with breaking day their rich notes sound, And lap the wakening sleeper in a dreamy swound.

How sweet to woo its shade in noontide heats!
To muse with Plato-list to Portia plead,
Miranda prattle, or with gorgeous Keats,
Poet of Summer, faëry islands tread,
Beauties and joys on every side dispread.
Hail, Genius! how thy charm doth sweeten life!
Bringing to earth once more the mighty dead.
Here linger spell-bound, far from civic strife,-
Armida's garden here, with purest pleasures rife.

Nor are these pleasures barren to the heart,
Mere food for selfish fancy, while the mind
From sympathetic cares doth sit apart;

Rather in Nature may she teachings find,
Love that will ne'er dissever from its kind,
Far-reaching fears and hopes for man's true good,

Like yon blue streams of smoke that upward wind
From cottage chimneys buried in the wood,
Upward here tend the issues of each thoughtful mood.

Wanting the warmth of human loves and fears

No beauty pleases; e'en an English moor, When summer floods it till each dell appears Purpled with waves of heather, seems but poorThere nothing human opes for love the door. Unheeded there the pines may moan, the brook Murmur low music to the west wind's roar: Eden was nought, its loveliness ne'er took The final praise of good, till man did on it look.

Man's works, man's conquests-these I love to trace,
To watch how wastes his will to blossom dooms:
The far-spread ocean has for me no grace

Unless defeated by man's skill it booms

In wrathful impotence, while for strange looms Or Seric silks, secure ships o'er the waves

Dare its worst anger, then as summer-glooms Deepen to storm with twilight, in his caves' Grandest to human senses Father Ocean raves.

The silver moon hath passed her central bound,

Turn we from salt-blasts to the ambrosial night That on this wood's edge wraps us closely round, Here halt to drink in Summer's full delight! List! surges still the dripping rock walls smite! Sweet English Summer, here 'mid dew-drenched flowers Breathing soft fragrance, let me learn aright

The wondrous affluence of thy magic powers,

The solemn joys which haunt thy silent dreamful hours!

What strong enchantment holds the listening earth? 'Tis the lone nightingale; in that young oak

She pours her thrilling melody-no mirth

To my mind fires her song; those strains evoke
Nought but deep feeling, as in Greece they woke

The ancient tale of Philomela's woe.

'Gainst that high chalk cliff-now those echoes broke! And now fresh strains she trills and bubbles low! Untired, sweet bird, we leave-morn's colder breezes blow!

Fain would I linger gathering varied lore

Of Nature, ere from night and thee I part,

'Tis truest wisdom thus to lay up store

When Summer reigns, ere winter chill the heart;

Hereafter oft to light will these joys start

'Mong sapless ghosts of golden days gone by,

And memory bid them heal life's sorest smart, Dwelling on thoughts of past felicity,

And taught 'midst homely scenes to meet Eternity.

J

To endeavour to offer any new observations on the subject of epitaphs after the wondrous deal which has at all times been written about them, would be as profitless a task as giving advice to one's friends. We do not pretend to do so; but we think that in our peregrinations in search of these curious evidences of human vanity, we have succeeded in finding at least one or two epitaphs which are not yet known to the public. If we have trodden anew ground which other travellers have already passed over, we offer a very humble apology.

Among the most ancient epitaphs on record-which seem to be old as the tombs themselves-are those of Simonides on Megistius, the soothsayer of the renowned little army of Leonidas, and upon the heroes who fell at Thermopylæ, preserved by Herodotus. The epitaph referred to in the ancient Greek inscription found in the Ceramicus at Athens, upon the warriors who fell at Potidæa, in the year 432 before Christ, is also of very high antiquity. The original, in a mutilated state, is now among the Elgin marbles in the British Museum. The earliest epitaphs of this country seem to be those of the Romans or Romanized Britons, which generally begin with D.M. (Dies manibus), followed by the name, age, and office of the deceased being usually in the form of a speech or personal eulogy, supposed to be uttered by the dead. The Athenians, in like manner, put over the tomb simply the name of the deceased, with the word "good," or "hero," or the like; frequently adding, however, the name of the father and his tribe. The Lacedæmonians accorded epitaphs as a sort of military honour to those only who had died in battle. The ancient Jews are supposed not to have used epitaphs at all, but it is exceedingly uncertain whether they did or not; and it is also doubted whether the Saxons or Danes used monumental inscriptions either in their own or the Latin tongue, those which are handed down to us being supposed to be