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THE FOUNTAIN AND THE STREAMLET.

Flowers on its grassy margin sprang,

Flies o'er its eddying surface played,
Birds 'midst the waving branches sang,

Flocks through the verdant meadows strayed;

The weary there lay down to rest,

And there the halcyon built her nest.

"Twas beautiful to stand and watch

The fountain's crystal turn to gems,
And such resplendent colours catch,
As though 'twere raining diadems;
Yet all was cold and curious art,

That charmed the eye but missed the heart.

Dearer to me the little stream,

Whose unimprisoned waters run,

Wild as the changes of a dream,

By rock and glen, through shade and sun;

Its lovely links have power to bind,

And whirl away my willing mind.

So thought I, when I saw the face,

By happy portraiture revealed,
Of one, adorned with every grace;
Her name and date from me concealed,

But not her story ;-she had been

The pride of many a splendid scene.

She cast her glory round a court,
And frolicked in the gayest ring,

THE FOUNTAIN.

Where fashion's high-born minions sport,

Like gilded insects on the wing;

But thence, when love had touched her soul,

To nature and to truth she stole.

From din, and pageantry, and strife,

'Midst woods and mountains, vales and plains,

She treads the paths of lowly life,

Yet in affection's bosom reigns;

No fountain scattering diamond showers,

But the sweet streamlet, edged with flowers.

MONTGOMERY.

THE FOUNTAIN.

MIDST the court a Gothic fountain played,
Symmetrical, but decked with carvings quaint;
Strange faces like to men in masquerade,

And here perhaps a monster, there a saint:

The spring gushed through grim mouths, of granite made,
And sparkled into basins, where it spent

Its little torrent in a thousand bubbles,

Like man's vain glories, and his vainer troubles.

BYRON.

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A POOL AT MID-DAY.

A WELL.

THROUGH the dell

Silence and twilight here, twin-sisters, keep
Their noon-day watch, and sail among the shades
Like vaporous shapes half-seen; beyond, a well,
Dark, gleaming, and of most translucent wave,

Images all the woven boughs above,
And each depending leaf, and every speck
Of azure sky, darting between their chasms;
Nor aught else in the liquid mirror lave
Its portraiture, but some inconstant star,
Between one foliaged lattice, twinkling fair;
Or painted bird, sleeping beneath the moon ;
Or gorgeous insect, floating motionless,
Unconscious of the day, ere yet his wings
Have spread their glories to the gaze of noon.

SHELLEY.

A POOL AT MID-DAY.

EARKEN, sweet Peona!

Beyond the matron-people of Latona,

Which we should see, but for these darkening boughs,

Lies a deep hollow, from whose ragged brows

Bushes and trees do lean all round athwart,

And meet so nearly, that with wings outraught,
And spreading tail, a vulture could not glide
Past them, but he must brush on every side.

THE GROTTO OF EGERIA.

Some mouldered steps lead into this cool cell,
Far as the slabbed margin of a well,

Whose patient level peeps its crystal eye

Right upward, through the bushes, to the sky.

Oft have I brought thee flowers, on their stalks set
Like vestal primroses, but dark velvet
Edges them round, and they have golden pits:
'Twas there I got them, from the gaps and slits
In a mossy stone, that sometimes was my seat,
When all above was faint with mid-day heat.
And there in strife, no burning thoughts to heed,
I'd bubble up the water through a reed;

So reaching back to boyhood: make me ships

Of moulted feathers, touchwood, alder chips,
With leaves stuck in them; and the Neptune be
Of their petty ocean. Oftener, heavily,
When lovelorn hours had left me less a child,

I sat contemplating the figures wild

Of o'er-head clouds melting the mirror through.

KEATS.

THE GROTTO OF EGERIA.

GUSH of waters, faint, and sweet, and wild,
Like the far echo of the voice of years;

The ancient Nature, singing to her child

The self-same hymn that lulled the infant spheres.

A spell of song not louder than a sigh,

Yet speaking like a trumpet to the heart;

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