Nor haunt the crowd, nor tempt`the main, For splendid care and guilty gain!

When morning's twilight-tinctured beam
Strikes their low thatch with slanting gleam,
They rove abroad in ether blue,
To dip the scythe in fragrant dew;
The sheaf to bind, the beech to fell,
That nodding shades a craggy dell.

'Midst gloomy glades, in warbles clear,
Wild Nature's sweetest notes they hear :
On green untrodden banks they view
The hyacinth's neglected hue;

In their lone haunts, and woodland rounds,
They spy the squirrel's airy bounds;
And startle from her ashen spray,
Across the glen, the screaming jay:
Each native charm their steps explore
Of solitude's sequester'd store.

For them the moon with cloudless ray
Mounts, to illume their homeward way:

Their weary spirits to relieve,

The meadows incense breathe at eve.

No riot mars the simple fare,

That o'er a glimmering hearth they share:

But when the curfew's measured roar

Duly, the darkening valleys o'er,
Has echoed from the distant town,
They wish no beds of cygnet-down,
No trophied canopies, to close
Their drooping eyes in quick repose.

Their little sons, who spread the bloom
Of health around the clay-built room,

Or through the primrosed coppice stray,
Or gambol in the new-mown hay;
Or quaintly braid the cowslip-twine,
Or drive afield the tardy kine ;

Or hasten from the sultry hill,

To loiter at the shady rill;

Or climb the tall pine's gloomy crest,
To rob the raven's ancient nest.

Their humble porch with honey'd flowers
The curling woodbine's shade embowers;
From the small garden's thymy mound
Their bees in busy swarms resound;
Nor fell Disease, before his time,
Hastes to consume life's golden prime.
But when their temples long have wore
The silver crown of tresses hoar,

As studious still calm peace to keep,
Beneath a flowery turf they sleep.

A RURAL SCENE.

Warton.

HROUGH a beech wood the path

A wild rude copse road-winds beneath the light

And feathery stems of the young trees, so

fresh

In their new delicate green, and so contrast

ing,

With their slim flexile forms, that almost seem

To bend as the wind passes, with the firm

Deep-rooted vigour of those older trees
And nobler,-those grey giants of the woods,
That stir not at the tempest. Oh, that path
Is pleasant, with its beds of richest moss,
And tufts of fairest flowers; fragrant woodroof

So silver white; wood-sorrel elegant,

Or light anemone. A pleasant path

Is that, and such a sense of freshness round us,

Of cool and lovely light, the very air

Has the hue of the young leaves; downward the road
Winds till beneath a beech, whose slender stem
Seems toss'd across the path; all suddenly
The close wood ceases, and a steep descent
Leads to a valley, whose opposing side

Is crown'd with answering woods; a narrow valley
Of richest meadow land, which creeps half up
The opposite hill, and in the midst a farm
With its old ample orchard, now one flush
Of fragrant bloom, and just beneath the wood,
Close by the house a rude deserted chalk-pit,
Half full of rank and creeping plants, with briars
And pendent roots of trees half cover'd o'er,
Like some wild shaggy ruin. Beautiful
To me is that low farm.

There is a peace,

A deep repose, a silent harmony,

Of nature and of man. The circling woods
Shut out all human eyes; and the gay orchard

Spreads its sweet world of blossoms, all unseen,
Save by the smiling sky. That were a spot
To live and die in.

Mitford.