And in a coffin short and wide
They lay together, side by side,

Their mother, as a lily pale,
Sat near them on a bed,

And bending o'er them told her tale,
And many a tear she shed.

But oft she cried, amidst her pain,

My babes and I shall meet again.

Anon.

THE WALL-FLOWER.

Why loves my flower, (the sweetest flower
That swells the golden breast of May,)

Thrown rudely o'er the ruined tower
To waste her solitary day?

'

Why, when the mead, the spicy vale, The grove, and genial garden call, Will she her fragrant soul exhale,

Unheeded on the lonely wall?

For never sure was beauty born

To lay in death's deserted shade: Come, lovely flower, my banks adorn, My banks for love and beauty made."

Thus pity waked the tender thought,
And by her sweet persuasion led,
To seize the hermit flower I sought,
And bear her from her stony bed.—

I sought-but sudden on my ear
A voice in hollow murmur broke,
And smote my heart with hollow fear-
The genius of the ruin spoke :

• From thee be far the ungentle deed, The honours of the dead to spoil;

Or take the sole remaining meed,

The flower that crowns their former toil!

Nor deem that flower the garden's foe,

Or fond to grace the barren shade,

'Tis nature tells her to bestow

Her honours on the lonely dead!—

For this obedient zephyrs bear

Her light seed round yon turrets mold, And undispersed by tempests there,

They rise in vegetable gold.

Nor shall thy wonder wake to see,
Such desert scenes destruction crave,

Oft have they been, and oft shall be

Truth's, honour's, valour's, beauty's grave.

When longs to fall that rifted spire,
As weary the insulting air,

The poet's thought, the warrior's fire,
The lover's sighs are sleeping there.-

When that too shakes the trembling ground, Borne down by some tempestuous sky,

And many a slumbering cottage round

Startles

how still their hearts will lie.

Of them who, wrapped in earth so cold,
No more the smiling day shall view,
Should many a tender tale be told,
For many a tender thought is due.

'Hast thou not seen some lover pale, When evening brought the pensive hour, Step slowly o'er the shadowy vale,

And stop to pluck the fragrant flower?

Those flowers he surely means to strew
On lost affection's lowly cell,

Tho' there, as fond remembrance grew,
Forgotten from the hand they fell.

Has not for thee the fragrant thorn Been taught its first rose to resign, With vain, though pious fondness borne, To deck thy Nancy's honoured shrine ?

''Tis nature pleading in the breast,

Fair memory of her works to find; And when to fall she yields the rest, She claims the monumental mind.

Why else the o'ergrown paths of time Would thus the lettered sage explore, With pain these crumbling ruins climb,

And on the doubtful sculpture pore ?

6

Why seeks he with unwearied toil,

Thro' death's dim walks to urge his

Reclaim his long asserted spoil,

And lead oblivion into day?

way,

'Tis nature prompts, by toil or fear Unmoved, to range thro' death's domain ;

The tender parent loves to hear

Her children's story told again.'

Langhorne.

THE TEAR.

On beds of snow the moon-beam slept,
And chilly was the midnight gloom,
When by the damp grave Ellen wept— ·
Sweet maid! it was her Lindor's tomb !

A warm tear gushed; the wintry air
Congealed it as it flowed away:

All night it lay an ice-drop there,

At morn it glittered in the ray.