They sang but to entice, and thou dost sing
As if to lull our senses to repose,

That thou may'st use, unharmed, thy little sting
The very moment we begin to doze;

Thou worse than Syren, thirsty, fierce blood-sipper,
Thou living Vampyre, and thou Gallinipper!

Nature is full of music, sweetly sings

The bard, (and thou dost sing most sweetly too,) Through the wide circuit of created things,

Thou art the living proof the bard sings true. Nature is full of thee; on every shore,

'Neath the hot sky of Congo's dusky child, From warm Peru to icy Labrador,

The world's free citizen thou roamest wild. Wherever "mountains rise or oceans roll," Thy voice is heard, from "Indus to the Pole."

The incarnation of Queen Mab art thou,

"The Fairies' midwife;"-thou dost nightly sip,

With amorous proboscis bending low,

The honey dew from many a lady's lip— (Though that they "straight on kisses dream," I doubt) On smiling faces, and on eyes that weep,

Thou lightest, and oft with "sympathetic snout" "Ticklest men's noses as they lie asleep ;"

And sometimes dwellest, if I rightly scan, "On the fore-finger of an alderman.”

Yet thou can'st glory in a noble birth.

As rose the sea-born Venus from the wave, So didst thou rise to life; the teeming earth, The living water, and the fresh air gave

A portion of their elements to create

Thy little form, though beauty dwells not there. So lean and gaunt, that economic fate

Meant thee to feed on music or on air.

Our vein's pure juices were not made for thee,
Thou living, singing, stinging atomy.

The hues of dying sunset are most fair,
And twilight's tints just fading into night,
Most dusky soft, and so thy soft notes are

By far the sweetest when thou tak'st thy flight.
The swan's last note is sweetest, so is thine;

Sweet are the wind harp's tones at distance heard; "Tis sweet in distance at the day's decline,

To hear the opening song of evening's bird. But notes of harp or bird at distance float

Less sweetly on the ear than thy last note.

The autumn winds are wailing: 'tis thy dirge;
Its leaves are sear, prophetic of thy doom.
Soon the cold rain will whelm thee, as the surge
Whelms the tost mariner in its watery tomb,
Then soar, and sing thy little life away!
Albeit thy voice is somewhat husky now.
'Tis well to end in music life's last day,

Of one so gleeful and so blithe as thou:
For thou wilt soon live through its joyous hours,
And pass away with Autumn's dying flowers.

INCONSTANCY.

BY J. R. DRAKE.

YES! I swore to be true, I allow,

And I meant it, but, some how or other,

The seal of that amorous vow

Was pressed on the lips of another.

Yet I did but as all would have done,
For where is the being, dear cousin,
Content with the beauties of one

When he might have the range of a dozen?

Young Love is a changeable boy,

And the gem of the sea-rock is like him,
For he gives back the beams of his joy
To each sunny eye that may strike him.

From a kiss of a zephyr and rose

Love sprang in an exquisite hour, And fleeting and sweet, heaven knows, Is this child of a sigh and a flower.

THE CALLICOON IN AUTUMN.

BY A. B. STREET.

FAR in the forest's heart, unknown,
Except to sun and breeze,
Where solitude her dreaming throne
Has held for centuries;

Chronicled by the rings and moss
That tell the flight of years across
The seamed and columned trees,
This lovely streamlet glides along
With tribute of eternal song!

Now, stealing through its thickets deep
In which the wood-duck hides,
Now, picturing in its basin sleep
Its green pool-hollowed sides,

Here, through the pebbles slow it creeps,
There, 'mid some wild abyss it sweeps,
And foaming, hoarsely chides;
Then slides so still, its gentle swell
Scarce ripples round the lily's bell.

Nature, in her autumnal dress
Magnificent and gay,

Displays her mantled gorgeousness

To hide the near decay,

Which, borne on Winter's courier breath, Warns the old year prepare for death,

When, tottering, seared, and gray,

Ice-fettered, it will sink below

The choking winding-sheet of snow.

A blaze of splendour is around,

As wondrous and as bright
As that, within the fairy ground,
Which met Aladdin's sight.

The sky, a sheet of silvery sheen
With breaks of tenderest blue between,
As though the summer light
Was melting through, once more to cast
A glance of gladness ere it passed.

The south-west airs of ladened balm

Come breathing sweetly by,

And wake amid the forest's calm
One quick and shivering sigh,
Shaking, but dimpling not the glass
Of this smooth streamlet, as they pass-
They scarcely wheel on high

The thistle's downy, silver star,
To waft its pendent seed afar.

Dream-like the silence, only woke
By the grasshopper's glee,
And now and then the lazy stroke
Of woodcock * on the tree:
And mingling with the insect hum,
The beatings of the partridge drum,
With frequently a bee

Darting its music, and the crow

Harsh cawing from the swamp below.

*Not the sportsman's favourite (scolopax minor) of our Atlantic shores, but

the large crested woodpecker, so called in the western counties.