To pine with wild, luxurious love,
While coos thy timid partner near thee;
Flowers below, and boughs above;
And nought around to fear thee;
While thy bill so gently carries
To thy young, from field or wood,
Seeds, or fruits, or purple berries, .
For their slender food.
Rapidly thou wing'st away-
I saw thee now, a tiny spot-
Again and now I see thee not-
Nought save the skies of day.—
The Psalmist once his prayer address'd-
"Dove, could I thy pinions borrow,
My soul would flee, and be at rest,
Far from the earth's oppressing sorrow!"
Alas! we turn to brave the billows
Of the world's tempestuous sway,
Where Life's stream, beneath care's willows,
Murmurs night and day!
THE SILK-WORM.
THE beams of April, ere it goes,
A worm, scarce visible, disclose;
All Winter long content to dwell,
The tenant of his native shell.
The same prolific season gives
The sustenance, by which he lives,
The mulberry leaf,* a simple store,
That serves him-till he needs no more!
By patience and labour the mulberry-leaf be comes satin.-Oriental Proverb.
For, his dimensions once complete,
Thenceforth none ever sees him eat;
Though, till his growing time be past,
Scarce ever is he seen to fast.
That hour arriv'd, his work begins:
He spins and weaves, and weaves and spins;
Till circle upon circle wound
Careless around him and around
Conceals him with a veil, though slight,
Impervious to the keenest sight.
Thus self-inclos'd, as in a cask,
At length he finishes his task ;
And, though a worm, when he was lost,
Or caterpillar at the most.
When next we see him, wings he wears,
And in Papilio-pomp appears;
Becomes oviparous; supplies
With future worms and future flies
The next-ensuing year ;-and dies!
The Silk-worm, Bombyx Mori, previous to its change from the caterpillar to the chrysalis, forms for itself a casement of silky filaments, termed by naturalists, a cocoon. Ten thousand of these cocoons produce on an average about five pounds of silk, and a thread unwound from one of them, which weighed three grains, measured four hundred yards. When we consider the immense quantity of silk, used at present, the number of caterpillars, which produce it, will almost exceed calculation. "Think but of a cocoon of the silk worm! How many hands, how many machines does not this little ball put in motion! Of what riches should not we have been deprived, if the moth of the Silk-worm had been born a moth without having been previously a caterpillar!"
Wherefore did Nature pour her bounties forth,
And set to work millions of spinning worms,
That in their green shops weave the smooth-hair'd silk
To deck her sons?
In addition to the above translation of V. Bourne's Poem on the Silk-worm, by our Poet, Cowper, the following lines from Peacham's Emblems, (1612,) may not be inaptly quoted;
These little creatures here, as white as milk,
That, shame to sloth, are busy at their loom
All Summer long in weaving of their silk,
Do make their webs both winding sheet and tomb ;
Thus to the ungrateful world bequeathing all
Their lives have gotten at their funeral.
AGAIN rejoicing Nature sees
Her robe assume its vernal hues,
Her leafy locks wave in the breeze,
All freshly steep'd in morning dews.
In vain to me the cowslips blaw,
In vain to me the vi’lets spring;
In vain to me, in glen or shaw,*
The mavis and the lintwhite+ sing.
The merry ploughboy cheers his team,
Wi' joy the tentie‡ seedman stauks,
But life to me 's a weary dream,
A dream of ane that never wauks.
The wanton coot the water skims,
Amang the reeds the ducklings cry,
The stately swan majestic swims,
And everything is bless'd but I.
The sheep-herd steeks § his faulding slap, ||
And owre the moorland whistles shrill,
Wi' wild, unequal, wand'ring step,
I meet him on the dewy hill.
And when the lark, 'tween light and dark,
Blithe waukens by the daisy's side,
And mounts and sings on flittering wings,
A woe-worn ghaist, I hameward glide.
Come, Winter, with thine angry howl,
And raging bend the naked tree;
Thy gloom will soothe my cheerless soul,
When Nature all is sad like me!
* A small wood in a hollow.
Heedful, cautious.
THE Oak of Old England for ages
The Parent and Pride of the far spreading wood,
And it waved in its glory o'er corn-field and glade,
And our forefathers happy sat under the shade.
O! the old Parent Oak was a Monarch to see,
The hand of good Alfred it planted the tree,
And the best and the bravest, the warrior and sage,
Were the Priests of its glory in youth and in age.
And once, when the storm of wild anarchy spread,
And the blood of a king and the loyal was shed,
In its sheltering branches a Monarch it bore,
And our fathers they hallow'd and loved it the more.
O! the old Parent Oak! from its branches it flung
Its acorns around, whence a progeny sprung,
That took root in the soil heaven bless'd with its dew,
And forests of freedom in vigour upgrew.
And they bore on the ocean full bravely their might,
And their stout hearts of oak braved the storm and the fight,
And the halls of Old England's dominion uprear'd,
Where Liberty spoke, and where Law was revered.
In arches of triumph the branches were spread,
Where Religion might hallow the living and dead-
And the blessing-taught people long cherished with awe,
The structures of peace, and of learning, and law.
O! the Old Parent Oak, as the forests upgrew,
Was fresh in its age, and rejoiced in the view;
And lifted its head, in its power and its pride,
And shook the wild storms from its branches aside.
And who would have thought that a change would come o'er
The heart of a people to reverence no more
The Oak of Old England,—to deem themselves wise,
When all that their fathers most lov'd they despise !
The hurricane bellow'd, the lightnings shot round,
And far forests blazed, or lay low on the ground:
And the storm demons yelled in their fury, and pass'd,
And the Oak of Old England stood firm in the blast.
The rebels and regicides stood round the tree,
And its proud top unscathed they rejoiced not to see,
And they niggardly envied the cost and the care,
To preserve it uninjur'd—and hoped it was bare.
"The axe to the root! in their fury they cried;
And who should have guarded the precincts, replied,
"The axe to the root!" and obeyed the command,
And struck the first blow with his parricide hand.
Though the axe has cut deep accurs'd Treachery aim'd,
And the trunk of the Monarch of forests be maim'd,
Its proud branches injur'd, and yet doom'd to fade,
Let us trust that the hand of the spoiler is stayed;
That the old Oak of England is still sound at heart,
That its honours, now fading, shall never depart;
It may tempests defy, in new vigour arise,
And burst in its glory once more to the skies;
That the eye that o'erruleth the thunders may shed
The sunshine of Peace on its still verdant head,
And if victims must fall-that the Traitor lie low,
'Neath the trunk of the tree where he struck the first blow.
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