ALAS, delicious Spring! God sends thee down
To breathe upon his cold and perish'd works
Beauteous revival; earth should welcome thee-
Thee and the west wind, thy smooth paramour,
With the soft laughter of her flowery meads,
Her joys, her melodies: the prancing stag
Flutters the shivering fern; the steed shakes out
His main, the dewy herbage, silver-webb'd,
With frank step trampling; the wild goat looks down
From his empurpling bed of heath, where break
The waters deep and blue, with crystal gleams

Of their quick-leaping people; the fresh lark

Is in the morning sky; the nightingale
Tunes evensong to the dropping waterfall.
Creation lives with loveliness-all melts
And trembles into one wild harmony.

SPRING.

Milman.

EHOLD the young, the rosy Spring
Gives to the breeze her scented wing,
While virgin graces, warm with May,
Fling roses o'er her dewy way.
The murmuring billows of the deep.
Have languish'd into silent sleep.
And mark! the flitting sea-birds lave
Their plumes in the reflecting wave;
While cranes from hoary winter fly
To flutter in a kinder sky.

Now the genial star of day
Dissolves the murky clouds away,
And cultured field and winding stream
Are freshly glittering in his beam.
Now the earth prolific swells
With leafy buds and flow'ry bells;
Gemming shoots the olive twine,
Clusters bright festoon the vine;
All along the branches creeping,
Through the velvet foliage peeping,
Little infant fruits we see

Nursing into luxury.

Moorc

THE RETURN OF SPRING.

USH'D is the howl of wintry breezes wild;
The purple hour of youthful spring has smiled:
A livelier verdure clothes the teeming earth;
Buds press to life, rejoicing in their birth;
The laughing meadows drink the dews of night,
And fresh with opening roses glad the sight:
In song the joyous swains responsive vie ;
Wild music floats and mountain melody.

Adventurous seamen spread the embosom'd sail
O'er waves light heaving to the western gale;
While village youths their brows with ivy twine,
And hail with song the promise of the vine.

In curious cells the bees digest their spoil,
When vernal sunshine animates their toil,
And little birds, in warblings sweet and clear,
Salute thee, Maia, loveliest of the year :
Thee, on their deeps, the tuneful halcyons hail,
In streams the swan, in woods the nightingale.
If earth rejoices with new verdure gay,
And shepherds pipe, and flocks exulting play,
And sailors roam, and Bacchus leads his throng,
And bees to toil, and birds awake to song,
Shall the glad bard be mute in tuneful spring,
And, warm with love and joy, forget to sing?

Bland.

LOOK all around thee! How the spring advances !
New life is playing through the gay green trees;

See how, in yonder bower, the light leaf dances
To the bird's tread, and to the quivering breeze!