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النشر الإلكتروني

Thou liv'st with less ambitious aim,

Yet hast not gone without thy fame; Thou art indeed by many a claim The Poet's darling.

If to a rock from rains he fly,

Or, some bright day of April sky,
Imprison'd by hot sunshine lie

Near the green holly,

And wearily at length should fare;

He need but look about, and there

Thou art!-a Friend at hand, to scare His melancholy.

A hundred times, by rock or bower, Ere thus I haye lain couched an hour, Have I derived from thy sweet power Some apprehension;

Some steady love; some brief delight; Some memory that had taken flight; Some chime of fancy wrong or right; Or stray invention.

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If stately passions in me burn,

And one chance look to Thee should turn,

I drink out of an humbler urn

A lowlier pleasure;

The homely sympathy that heeds

The common life, our nature breeds;

A wisdom fitted to the needs

Of hearts at leisure.

When, smitten by the morning ray,

I see thee rise alert and gay,

Then, cheerful Flower! my spirits play
With kindred gladness:

And when, at dusk, by dews opprest
Thou sink'st, the image of thy rest

Hath often eased my pensive breast
Of careful sadness.

And all day long I number yet,
All seasons through, another debt,
Which I, wherever thou art met,
To thee am owing;

An instinct call it, a blind sense;

A happy, genial influence,

Coming one knows not how nor whence,
Nor whither going.

Child of the Year! that round dost run

Thy course, bold lover of the sun,

And cheerful when the day's begun

As morning Leveret,

*Thy long-lost praise thou shalt reĝain ;

Dear shalt thou be to future men

As in old time;-thou not in vain,

Art Nature's Favorite.

* See, in Chaucer and the elder Poets, the honours formerly paid

to this flower.

II.

A WHIRL-BLAST from behind the hill Rushed o'er the wood with startling sound: Then-all at once the air was still,

And showers of hailstones pattered round. Where leafless Oaks towered high above,

I sat within an undergrove

Of tallest hollies, tall and green;
A fairer bower was never seen.
From year to year the spacious floor
With withered leaves is covered o'er,

You could not lay a hair between:
And all the the bower is green.

year

But see! where'er the hailstones drop
The withered leaves all skip and hop,
There's not a breeze-no breath of air-
Yet here, and there, and every where

VOL. 1.

Along the floor, beneath the shade
By those embowering hollies made,
The leaves in myriads jump and spring,
As if with pipes and music rare

Some Robin Good-fellow were there,
And all those leaves in festive glee
Were dancing to the minstrelsy.

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