Poetical Pictures in August.

VIRGINIA WATER: by CHARLES Knight.
A wild and solemn scene in the green woods-
A close and shaded scene-where the quick water
Wakes its own musical voice, unvexed by man.
It is a quiet, heart-entrancing tone,

A mellow sound, in which, amidst the leaps
Of the white sparkling foam, a constant roll
Swells like the deep flow of the organ's peal.
Unwearied minstrelsy! thou art not dull;

But in the noontide glow 'twere sweet to dream,
Hushed by thy murmuring song, and hear in thee
Gushes of choral hymns, the slumbering airs
Of music indistinct, such as the wind
Breathes on its own lute with a balmy kiss.
Faint image of the loud and mighty falls
That headlong tumble down unfathomed steeps,
And lift, amidst the hills eternally,

A voice more dreary than the whirlwind's roar,
I love thee not the less that thou hast come
Fresh from the hand of art, a gentle thing,
A pleasant tranquil thing, such as in groves,
Where a soft glimmering light for ever lies,
May mingle with the breeze and the blithe song
Of evening nightingales. Yet thou art not
A crude unripened bauble; for the sun,
And dew, and frost, have long conversed with thee,
Till thy brown rocky stones are crumbling and hoar,
While the moss clings to them as if they grew
Here with the hills. The graceful willows droop
Beautiful o'er thee, and the weeping birch
Is listening to thy voice. Fair at thy feet
The acacia blooms; the uncropped turf is fresh
With spongy moss, mid knots of rank thick grass,
And straggling fern, and frequent dewy nooks,

Where the bright harebell gleams like a precious gem.
Deep by thy side there is a rocky cave,

Piled up as if in sport, where the high sun

Not often looks through its thick doming boughs
Here, the close lichen, and the delicate heath,
And yellow pellitory, have singled out

Green vegetative spots, where they may creep
Blooming amidst the dark and dripping walls.
Hollowly here the gushing water sounds,
With a mysterious voice; and one might pause
Upon its echoes, till it seemed a noise

Of fathomless wilds where man had never walked. Friendship's Offering, 1828.

Oh! 'tis sad to see the splendour
Of the Summer pass away,
When the night is always stealing
Precious moments from the day:
But in Spring each lengthened evening
Tempts us farther off from home;
And if Summer has more beauty,
All that beauty is to come.

It is thus in manhood's summer,
That the heart too often grieves
Over friends lost prematurely,

Like the fall of blighted leaves;
But life's spring-time is far sweeter,
When each green bud that appears
May expand into a blossom

To enliven future years.

T. H. BAYLY.

How like an image of repose it looks
That ancient, holy, and sequestered pile!
Silence abides in each tree-shaded aisle,
And on the grey spire caw the hermit rooks;
So absent is the stamp of modern days,

That, in the quaint, carved oak, and oriel stained,

With saintly legend, to Reflection's gaze

The star of Eld seems not yet to have waned.

At pensive eventide, when streams the west
On moss-ground pediment, and tombstone grey,
And spectral silence pointeth to decay,

6

How preacheth wisdom to the conscious breast,
Saying, each foot that roameth here shall rest;'
To God and heaven, Death's is the only way.
Delta, of Blackwood's Magazine.

A Lapland Summer.

In no part of the world are the opposite seasons of the year more strikingly contrasted, and nowhere do the alterations of summer and winter present, in every point of view, a more sudden and remarkable change, than in the countries beyond the polar circle. Should the traveller be pursuing his way at the commencement of the former season, he cannot see without astonishment the rapidity with which the whole vegetable kingdom starts into life; accustomed as he has been to the slowness with which, in more temperate climes, it recovers from the torpidity of winter. His journeying is slow, laborious, and even painful; contending, as he is obliged to do, against the endless rapids that oppose the progress of his slight canoe; toiling through pathless thickets, or climbing the rugged mountain's side. Should he, when exhausted by fatigue, seek shelter from the blaze of the meridian sun, the silence that reigns throughout the deep and interminable pine-forests is interrupted by the loud hum of myriads of the insect tribe which disturb his slumbers; while their incessant attacks are directed against him equally during the noontide heat and the midnight glare. If, during what would be night in other climes, he repose himself on the banks of the broad Tornea river, and be lulled to sleep by the murmurings of the distant rapids, his slumber is no sooner broken than his eye is caught by the dazzling beams of the sun high above the northern horizon, and bringing forcibly to his mind the recollection, that he is far from those countries where the approach of evening is announced by the deep glow of the western sky, and midnight is devoted to obscurity. How different is the scene that is presented to the winter traveller, whose course throughout the day is illumined by the pale moon, while at night ten thousand meteors serve him for torches, as lashed in his boat, with his eye directed to the starry vault of heaven, he lightly glides with swift and silent steps along the trackless snows of the north.—De Capell Brooke's Winter in Lapland.

To a Fountain.

Sweet Fountain, in thy cool and glassy bed
The forms of things around reflected lie
With all the brightness of reality,

And all the softness which thy wave can shed→
As clear as if within thy depths were laid

Some brighter world beneath that pictured sky:
But with a thought the vision passes by,
Before the rising breeze, and all is fled.
So on the stream of life, all bright and gay,
A thousand pleasures glitter to the view,
Which Hope enlightens with her fairest ray,
And Fancy colours with her richest hue;
But with the breath of TRUTH they pass away,
Like thine, sweet Fountain, fair, but fleeting too.

New Monthly Magazine.