Ode for an Agricultural Celebration.

AR back in the ages,

The plough with wreaths was

crowned;

The hands of kings and sages

Entwined the chaplet round;
Till men of spoil disdained the toil
By which the world was nourished,
And dews of blood enriched the soil
Where green their laurels flourished:
Now the world her fault repairs-
The guilt that stains her story;
And weeps her crimes amid the cares
That formed her earliest glory.

The proud throne shall crumble,
The diadem shall wane,

The tribes of earth shall humble

The pride of those who reign;
And War shall lay his pomp away-
The fame that heroes cherish,
The glory earned in deadly fray,
Shall fade, decay, and perish.
Honour waits, o'er all the Earth,

Through endless generations,
The art that calls her harvests forth,

And feeds the expectant nations.

W. C. BRYANT.

MOTHER'S love-how sweet the name!

What is a mother's love?

-A noble, pure, and tender flame,

Enkindled from above,

To bless a heart of earthly mould :

The warmest love that can grow cold-
This is a mother's love.

A MOTHER'S LOVE.

The infant, reared alone for earth,

May live, may die-to curse his birth;
-Is this a mother's love?

A parent's heart may prove a snare ;
The child she loves so well,

Her hand may lead, with gentlest care,
Down the smooth road to hell;
Nourish its frame-destroy its mind:
Thus do the blind mislead the blind,
E'en with a mother's love.

Blest infant! whom his mother taught
Early to seek the Lord,

And poured upon his dawning thought
The day-spring of the Word:

This was the lesson to her son,
-Time is Eternity begun :

Behold that mother's love.

Blest mother! who in Wisdom's path,
By her own parent trod,

Thus taught her son to flee the wrath,
And know the fear of God:

Ah! youth, like him enjoy your prime,

Begin Eternity in time,

Taught by that mother's love.

That mother's love!-how sweet the name!

What was that mother's love?

-The noblest, purest, tenderest flame,

That kindles from above,

51

52

TO THE MOON.

Within a heart of earthly mould,
As much of heaven as heart can hold,
Nor through Eternity grows cold;

This was that mother's love.

JAMES MONTGOMERY.

To me,

To the Moon.

ITH how sad steps, O moon, thou climb'st the skies,
How silently, and with how wan a face!
What! may it be, that e'en in heav'nly place
That busy archer his sharp arrow tries?
Sure, if that long-with-love-acquainted eyes
Can judge of love, thou feel'st a lover's case;
I read it in thy looks; thy languish'd grace
that feel the like, thy state descries.

Then, even of fellowship, O moon, tell me,

Is constant love deem'd there but want of wit?

Are beauties there as proud as here they be?

Do they above love to be loved, and yet

Those lovers scorn, whom that love doth possess?
Do they call virtue there—ungratefulness?

SIR PHILIP SIDNEY.

[SIR PHILIP SIDNEY, the best and bravest of the noble train who surrounded the throne of the "Virgin Queen," the Bayard of the Elizabethan era, who, dying in the field at Zutphen, put away the cup of water from his parched lips, that it might refresh the soldier "whose need was greater than his," was an ardent lover of poetry, and the earliest and kindest patron of the author of the "Faerie Queene." His poetical works are confined to a few sonnets and short poems, but some of these are marvellous for the force of their language and the purity of their tone.]