202 TO A WITHERED TREE IN JUNE. Where you may freely slake your thirst, There's many a wandering stream that flows For Scotia from her hills hath come, To give the mountain breeze the feuds And, like two friends, around whose hearts Love all the better for the past, And sit them down as one. SIGOURNEY TO A WITHERED TREE IN JUNE. DESOLATE tree, why are thy branches bare ? What hast thou done, To win strange winter from the summer air, Frost from the sun? Thou wert not churlish in thy palmier year Tenderly gav'st thou shelter to the deer, And ever, once, the earliest of the grove, Thy smiles were gay: Opening thy blossoms, with the haste of love, To the young May. Then did the bees, and all the insect wings, Feaster and darling of the gilded things Thy liberal course, poor prodigal, is sped; How bird and bee, light parasites, have fled Tell me, sad tree, why are thy branches bare! What hast thou done, To win strange winter from the summer air, Frost from the sun? "Never," replied that forest hermit lone, (Old truth and endless!) "Never for evil done, but fortune flown, Are we left friendless. "Yet wholly, nor for winter, nor for storm, Doth love depart, We are not all forsaken till the worm Creeps to the heart! 204 THE EARLY SETTLERS. "Ah, nought without-within thee, if decay Can heal or hurt thee! Nor boots it if thy heart itself betray, Who may desert thee !" BULWER. THE EARLY SETTLERS. How strange a dream it seems to me, Her thickly crowded page, More vivid far those pictures be Than scenes more new and nigh, For youth's warm records, they are stamped With memory's deepest die: Again I see that far-off land, And hear the city's din, And her, the gentle fair-hair'd girl, Again in thought I win. Our heritage was youth and love, And hope with fairy wand, (Ah! princes oft would change for these But time, which beauty makes or mars, And dimm'd her eye, yet still I read Where, then, primeval forests stood, The giant hills, which only heard Now echo back on every side, The language Britons speak! There's something glorious in such thoughts Which banishes regret, Howe'er it chance that memory now Forbids me to forget. And here these aged limbs shall rest 206 SUNSET'S FLEETING TRAIN. The founder of a vigorous race Needs no mausoleum! "Twill soothe that hour to know I leave A happy prosperous band; My blessing rest upon the soil That is their Father-land! CAMILLA TOULMIN. SUNSET'S FLEETING TRAIN. Now to his palace in the west Nor when, too bright for mortal eyes, No more the dancing hours are seen; Through heaven's wide champaign slopes its downward flight: |