THE LONE THORN.

ENEATH the scant shade of an agëd thorn,
Silvered with age, and mossy with decay,

I stood, and there bethought me of its morn

Of verdant lustyhood, long passed away;

Of its meridian vigour, now outworn

By cankering years, and by the tempest's sway
Bared to the pitying glebe.-Companionless,
Stands the gray thorn complaining to the wind-
Of all the old wood's leafy loveliness

The sole memorial that lags behind;

Its compeers perished in their youthfulness,

Though round the earth their roots seem'd firmly twined:

How sad it is to be so anchored here

As to outlive one's mates, and die without a tear!

WILLIAM MOTHERWELL.

AUTUMN.

OW bravely Autumn paints upon the sky
The gorgeous fame of summer which is fled:

Hues of all flowers that in their ashes lie,

Trophied in that fair light whereon they fed,
Tulip, and hyacinth, and sweet rose red,-
Like exhalations from the leafy mould,

Look here how honour glorifies the dead,

And warms their scutcheons with a glance of gold ! Such is the memory of poets old,

Who on Parnassus hill have bloomed elate;

Now they are laid under their marbles cold,

And turned to clay, whereof they were create;
But god Apollo hath them all enrolled,
And blazoned on the very clouds of fate.

THOMAS HOOD.

SILENCE.

HERE is a silence where hath been no sound,
There is a silence where no sound may be,

In the cold grave-under the deep, deep sea,

Or in wide desert where no life is found,

Which hath been mute and still must sleep profound;

No voice is hushed-no life treads silently,

But clouds and cloudy shadows wander free,
That never spoke, over the idle ground:
But in green ruins, in the desolate walls
Of antique palaces, where Man hath been,
Though the dun fox, or wild hyena calls,

And owls, that flit continually between,

Shriek to the echo, and the low winds moan,

There the true Silence is, self-conscious and alone. THOMAS HOOD.

JT is not death, that sometime in a sigh

This eloquent breath shall take its speechless flight;

That sometime these bright stars, that now reply

In sunlight to the sun, shall set in night;

That this warm conscious flesh shall perish quite,

And all life's ruddy springs forget to flow;

That thoughts shall cease, and the immortal sprite
Be lapped in alien clay and laid below;

It is not death to know this,--but to know

That pious thoughts, which visit at new graves

In tender pilgrimage, will cease to go

So duly and so oft,-and when grass waves

Over the past-away, there may be then

No resurrection in the minds of men.

THOMAS HOOD.

.

ARE composition of a poet-knight,
Most chivalrous amongst chivalric men,
Distinguished for a polish'd lance and pen
In tuneful contest and in tourney-fight;
Lustrous in scholarship, in honour bright,
Accomplished in all graces current then,
Humane as any in historic ken,

Brave, handsome, noble, affable, polite;
Most courteous to that race become of late
So fiercely scornful of all kind advance,
Rude, bitter, coarse, implacable in hate,
To Albion, plotting ever her mischance,—
Alas, fair verse! how false and out of date
Thy phrase sweet enemy" applied to France!

1 See page 6.

M

THOMAS HOOD.