Leave AMBITION to its cares,

Daily toils and nightly fears,

In the Peasant's lone retreat,

Shun, O shun the storms of Fate!

Sweet CONTENT the good man's treasure,

Still shall bless thy happy lot,

Nor despise the humble pleasure

Of the ivy-shaded cot;

Meek-eyed PEACE shall ever dwell

In the lowly BRIER'D DELL.

то

A FLY IN WINTER.

POOR feeble wanderer, driven by the blast

Of piercing north wind o'er yon field of snow,

(To thee a desert dreary, wild, and vast)

That seek'st my hearth with weaken'd steps and slow:

Shall churlish MAN then drive thee forth again :

Or crush with hard inhospitable hand

Thy fragile form?-No, PITY shall restrain;

And wretched he who can her call withstand.

к 3

Now drooping hangs thy silver silken wing,

Which erst has born thee thro' the fields of air; No longer now that teasing giddy thing

Which came ere while, a bold intruder here.

Where's now thy vest of azure, green, and gold? The blasting winds thy rain-bow tints deface, And doom'd to die, with hunger pinch'd and cold; The feeble remnant of thy numerous race.

What tho' the genial heat awhile prevails,
Awhile retards the fate thou canst not shun;

To lengthen out thy span-ah, what avails

The weaken'd radiance of a winter's sun!

Thus the gay COURTIER for a passing while,
All joyous sails on PLEASURE's downy wing;
Basks in the sunshine of a monarch's smile,

An idle, flutt'ring, tinsell❜d, giddy thing.

The DESPOT frowns-and soon from native home;
From wife and children ever dear he

goes;

Condemned for life, a banish'd man to roam
Thro' wilds SIBERIAN, hid in endless snows,

There clad in robes of never varying white,
Sits HORROR brooding o'er the dreary waste;

And SILENCE, ne'er disturb'd, save when at night
The howl of wolves rides dreadful on the blast.

K 4

In vain th' unhappy EXILE heaves the sigh;

HOPE never comes those savage wilds to cheer ; But GRIEF and SOLITUDE are ever nigh,

And MELANCHOLY, nurse of comfortless DESPAIR.

But short his date-for life now ebbing fast
Amidst the arctic winter's drear domain,

Where SORROW keener than the northern blast,
Lays him a corse along the frozen plain.