NOVEMBER.

HE mellow year is hasting to its close;
The little birds have almost sung their last,

Their small notes twitter in the dreary blast

That shrill-piped harbinger of early snows;

The patient beauty of the scentless rose,

Oft with the morn's hoar crystal quaintly glassed,
Hangs, a pale mourner for the summer past,
And makes a little summer where it grows :
In the chill sunbeam of the faint brief day

The dusky waters shudder as they shine,
The russet leaves obstruct the straggling way
Of oozy brooks, which no deep banks define,
And the gaunt woods, in ragged scant array,
Wrap their old limbs with sombre ivy-twine.

TO A DEAF AND DUMB LITTLE GIRL.

IKE a loose island on the wide expanse,
Unconscious floating on the fickle sea,
Herself her all, she lives in privacy;

Her waking life as lonely as a trance,
Doomed to behold the universal dance,

And never hear the music which expounds
The solemn step, coy slide, the merry bounds,
The vague, mute language of the countenance,
In vain for her I smooth my antic rhyme;

She cannot hear it, all her little being
Concentred in her solitary seeing-

What can she know of beauteous or sublime?

And yet methinks she looks so calm and good,

God must be with her in her solitude.

HEN we were idlers with the loitering rills,
The need of human love we little noted:

Our love was nature: and the peace that floated

On the white mist, and dwelt upon the hills,
To sweet accord subdued our wayward wills:

One soul was ours, one mind, one heart devoted
That wisely doating asked not why it doated,
And ours the unknown joy which knowing kills.
But now I find how dear thou wert to me;
That man is more than half of nature's treasure,
Of that fair beauty which no eye can see,

Of that sweet music which no ear can measure;

And now the streams may sing for others' pleasure,

The hills sleep on in their eternity.

TO A LOFTY BEAUTY FROM HER POOR

KINSMAN.

AIR maid, had I not heard thy baby cries,

Nor seen thy girlish, sweet vicissitude,

Thy mazy motions, striving to elude,

Yet wooing still a parent's watchful eyes,

Thy humours, many as the opal's dyes,

And lovely all ;-methinks thy scornful mood,
And bearing high of stately womanhood,-

Thy brow, where Beauty sits to tyrannize
O'er humble love, had made me sadly fear thee;
For never sure was seen a royal bride

Whose gentleness gave grace to so much pride,-
My very thoughts would tremble to be near thee;
But when I see thee at thy father's side,

Old times unqueen thee, and old loves endear thee.

THE FIRST MAN.

|HAT was't awakened first the untried ear
Of that sole man who was all human kind?
Was it the gladsome welcome of the wind,

Stirring the leaves that never yet were sere?
The four mellifluous streams which flowed so near,
Their lulling murmurs all in one combined?
The note of bird unnamed? The startled hind
Bursting the brake—in wonder, not in fear,
Of her new lord? Or did the holy ground
Send forth mysterious melody to greet
The gracious pressure of immaculate feet?
Did viewless seraphs rustle all around,

Making sweet music out of air as sweet?
Or his own voice awake him with its sound?