Was naught around but images of rest : Sleep-soothing groves, and quiet lawns between;

And flowery beds that slumberous influence kest,

From poppies breathed; and beds of pleasant green,

Where never yet was creeping crea

ture seen.

Joined to the prattle of the purling rills,

Were heard the lowing herds along the

vale,

And flocks loud bleating from the dis

tant hills,

and th calm pleasures, always hovered nigh;

But whate'er smacked of noyance or

Meantime unnumbered glittering streamlets played,

unrest

And hurled everywhere their waters Was far, far off expelled from this delisheen;

cious nest.

That, as they bickered through the sunny glade,

Though restless still themselves, a lulling murmur made.

And vacant shepherds piping in the
dale;
And now and then sweet Philomel
would wail,

Or stock-doves plain amid the forest
deep,

That drowsy rustled to the sighing gale; And still a coil the grasshopper did keep; Yet all these sounds yblent inclinéd all to sleep.

Full in the passage of the vale above,
A sable, silent, solemn forest stood,
Where naught but shadowy forms was
seen to move,

As Idlesse fancied in her dreamy mood:
And up the hills, on either side, a

wood

Of blackening pines, aye waving to
and fro,
Sent forth a sleepy horror through the
blood;

And where this valley winded out be-
low,
The murmuring main was heard, and
scarcely heard, to flow.

And of gay castles in the clouds that

pass,

A pleasing land of drowsy-head it was, Of dreams that wave before the halfshut eye:

Forever flushing round a summer sky: There eke the soft delights, that witchingly

Instil a wanton sweetness through the breast,

A HYMN.

THESE, as they change, Almighty Father, these

Are

but the varied God. The rolling

year

Is full of thee.
spring

Forth in the pleasing

Thy beauty walks, thy tenderness and

love.

Wide flush the fields; the softening air is balm;

Echo the mountains round; the forest

smiles;

Then comes thy glory in the summer
And every sense, and every heart, is joy.

months,