CORN FIELDS.

What joy in dreamy ease to lie,
Amid a field new-shorn,

And see all round on sunlit slopes,
The piled-up stacks of corn,
And send the fancy wandering o'er
All pleasant harvest fields of yore.

I feel the day; I see the field;
The quivering of the leaves;
And good old Jacob and his house
Binding the yellow sheaves;

And at this very hour I seem
To be with Joseph in his dream.

I see the fields of Bethlehem,
And reapers many an one,
Bending unto their sickle strokes,
And Boaz looking on;

And Ruth the Moabitess fair,
Among the gleaners stooping there.

Again, I see, I see a little child,
His mother's sole delight;
God's living gift of love unto

The kind, good, Shunamite;

To mortal pangs I see him yield,
And the lad bear him from the field.

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LEAVING A PLACE OF RETIREMENT.

The sun-bathed quiet of the hills;
The fields of Galilee,

That eighteen hundred years agone,
Were full of corn, I see,

And the dear Saviour take his way
'Mid ripe ears on the sabbath day.

O golden fields of bending corn,
How beautiful they seem!-
The reaper-folk, the piled-up sheaves
To me are like a dream;

The sunshine and the very air

Seem of old time and take me there!

Mary Howitt.

ON LEAVING A PLACE OF RETIREMENT.

Low was our pretty lot; our tallest rose Peeped at the chamber window. We could

hear

ま

At silent hour, and eve, and early morn, The sea's faint murmur. In the open air

Our myrtles blossomed; and across the porch Thick jessamines twined: the little landscape round

LEAVING A PLACE OF RETIREMENT. 21

Was green and woody, and refreshed the eye.

Ah! quiet dell! dear cot and mount
sublime!

I was constrained to quit you. Was it right While my unnumbered brethren toiled and bled,

That I should dream away the entrusted hours

O'er rose-leaf beds, pampering the cowardheart

With feelings all too delicate for use?

Sweet is the tear that from some Howard's

eye,

Drops on the cheek of one he lifts from earth. And he that works me good with unmoved

face,

Does it but half; he chills me while he aids,
My benefactor, not my brother man!
Yet even this, this cold beneficence,

Praise, praise it, O my soul! yet as thou

scann'st

The Sluggard Pity's vision-weaving tribe! Who sigh for wretchedness, yet shun the wretched,

Nursing in some delicious solitude

Their slothful loves and dainty sympathies!

I therefore go, and join head, heart, and hand, Active and firm, to fight the bloodless fight Of science, freedom, and the truth in Christ. Yet oft when after honourable toil

Rests the tired mind, and waking loves to dream,

My spirit shall revisit thee, dear Cot!
Thy jessamine and thy window-peeping rose,
And myrtles fearless of the mild sea-air.

Coleridge.

TO A CHILD.

Small service is true service while it lasts; Of humblest friends, bright creature, scorn

not one:

The Daisy, by the shadow that it casts, Protects the lingering dew-drop from the sun.

Wordsworth.

THE YOUTHFUL KING. Suggested by a Portrait of Edward VI. in his State robes.

Monarch, pictured here in state,
Better honours far were thine

THE YOUTHFUL KING.

Than the grandeur of the great,
Than the jewels of the mine.

Born to govern and command,
Thou wast easy of controul;
With a sceptre in thy hand,
There was meekness in thy soul.

Of thy haughty father's frown,
Little on thy brow we trace,
And that little softened down
By simplicity and grace.

Child in age, and child in heart,
Gold, and gems, and bright array,
Could not joy or pride impart,

Thou had'st treasures more than they :

More than Courtiers kneeling low;
More than flattery's ready smile;
More than conquest o'er the foe ;

More, even more than England's isle :-
Treasures in which mind hath part;
Joys that teach the soul to rise;
Hopes that can sustain the heart
When the body droops and dies.

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