Who foremost now delight to cleave,
With pliant arm, thy glassy wave?

The captive linnet which enthrall?
What idle progeny succeed
To chase the rolling circle's speed,
Or urge the flying ball?

While some, on earnest business bent,

Their murmuring labors ply

'Gainst graver hours that bring constraint To sweeten liberty,

Some bold adventurers disdain

The limits of their little reign,

And unknown regions dare descry: Still as they run they look behind, They hear a voice in every wind, And snatch a fearful joy.

Gay hope is theirs, by fancy fed,
Less pleasing when possest;
The tear forgot as soon as shed,
The sunshine of the breast:
Theirs buxom health of rosy hue,
Wild wit, invention ever new,

And lively cheer, of vigor born;
The thoughtless day, the easy night,
The spirits pure, the slumbers light,
That fly the approach of morn.

Alas! regardless of their doom,
The little victims play;

No sense have they of ills to come,
Nor care beyond to-day:

Yet see how all around them wait

The ministers of human fate,

And black misfortune's baleful train! Ah, show them where in ambush stand, To seize their prey, the murtherous band! Ah, tell them they are men!

These shall the fury passions tear,
The vultures of the mind,
Disdainful anger, pallid fear,

And shame that skulks behind;
Or pining love shall waste their youth,
Or jealousy, with rankling tooth,
That inly gnaws the secret heart;
And envy wan, and faded care,
Grim-visaged comfortless despair,
And sorrow's piercing dart.

Ambition this shall tempt to rise,
Then whirl the wretch from high,
To bitter scorn a sacrifice,

And grinning infamy.

The stings of falsehood those shall try,
And hard unkindness' altered eye,

That mocks the tear it forced to flow;
And keen remorse with blood defiled,
And moody madness laughing wild
Amid severest woe.

Lo! in the vale of years beneath
A grisly troop are seen,
The painful family of Death,

More hideous than their queen:

This racks the joints, this fires the veins,
That every laboring sinew strains,

Those in the deeper vitals rage:
Lo! poverty, to fill the band,
That numbs the soul with icy hand,
And slow-consuming age.

To each his sufferings: all are men,
Condemned alike to groan;
The tender for another's pain,

The unfeeling for his own.

Yet, ah! why should they know their fate,
Since sorrow never comes too late,

And happiness too swiftly flies ?

Thought would destroy their paradise.
No more; where ignorance is bliss,
"T is folly to be wise.

Thomas Gray.

Falmouth.

FALMOUTH HAVEN.

ERE Vale a lively flood, her nobler name that gives

HERE

To Falmouth, and by whom it famous ever lives, Whose entrance is from sea so intricately wound,

Her haven angled so about her barbarous sound, That in her quiet bay a hundred ships may ride, Yet not the tallest mast be of the tall'st descried. Michael Drayton.

Farrington.

A LANCASHIRE DOXOLOGY.

"SOME cotton has lately been imported into Farringdon, where the mills have been closed for a considerable time. The people, who were previously in the deepest distress, went out to meet the cotton: the women wept over the bales and kissed them, and finally sang the Doxology over them."-Spectator of May 14, 1863.

66

“PRAISE

God from whom all blessings flow."
Praise him, who sendeth joy and woe.
The Lord who takes, the Lord who gives,
O, praise him, all that dies, and lives.

He opens and he shuts his hand,
But why, we cannot understand;
Pours and dries up his mercies' flood,
And yet is still all-perfect Good.

We fathom not the mighty plan,
The mystery of God and man.
We women, when afflictions come,
We only suffer and are dumb.

And when, the tempest passing by,
He gleams out, sun-like, through our sky,

We look up, and through black clouds riven,
We recognize the smile of Heaven.

Ours is no wisdom of the wise,
We have no deep philosophies :
Childlike we take both kiss and rod,

For he who loveth knoweth God.

Dinah Maria Mulock Craik.

COME

Farringford.

TO THE REV. F. D. MAURICE.

YOME, when no graver cares employ,
Godfather, come and see your boy:
Your presence will be sun in winter,
Making the little one leap for joy.

For, being of that honest few,
Who give the Fiend himself his due,
Should eighty thousand college-councils
Thunder Anathema,' friend, at you;

Should all our churchmen foam in spite
At you, so careful of the right,

Yet one lay-hearth would give you welcome (Take it and come) to the Isle of Wight;

Where, far from noise and smoke of town,
I watch the twilight falling brown