I loved my trees in order to dispose;

I numbered peaches, looked how stocks arose;
Told the same story oft-in short, began to prose.

Song of the Crazed Maiden.-From the same.

Let me not have this gloomy view
About my room, about my bed;
But morning roses, wet with dew,

To cool my burning brow instead ;
As flowers that once-in Eden grew,
Let them their fragrant spirits shed,
And every day their sweets renew,
Till I, a fading flower, am dead.

O let the herbs I loved to rear

Give to my sense their perfumed
breath!

Let them be placed about my bier,
And grace the gloomy house of death.
I'll have my grave beneath a hill.

Where only Lucy's self shall know,
Where runs the pure pellucid rill

Upon its gravelly bed below; There violets on the borders blow,

And insects their soft light display, Till, as the morning sunbeams glow, The cold phosphoric fires decay.

That is the grave to Lncy shewn;

The soil a pure and silver sand: The green cold moss above it grown, Unplucked of all but maiden hand. In virgin earth, till then unturned,

There let my maiden form be laid;
Nor let my changed clay be spurned,
Nor for new guest that bed be made.

There will the lark, the lamb, in sport,
In air, on earth, securely play;

And Lucy to my grave resort,

As innocent, but not so gay.

I will not have the churchyard ground
With bones all black and ugly grown,
To press my shivering body round,

Or on my wasted limbs be thrown.

With ribs and skulls I will not sleep,
In clammy beds of cold blue clay,
Through which the ringed earth-worms
creep,

And on the shrouded bosom prey.
I will not have the bell proclaim

When those sad marriage rites begin,
And boys, without regard or shame,
Press the vile mouldering masses in.

Say not, it is beneath my care-
I cannot these cold truths allow;
These thoughts may not afflict me there,
But oh they vex and tease me now!
Raise not a turf. nor set a stone,
That man a maiden's grave may trace,
But thou, my Lucy, come alone,

And let affection find the place.

Oh! take me from a world I hate,

Men cruel, selfish, sensual, cold;
And, in some pure and blessed state,
Let me my sister minds behold:
From gross and sordid views refined,
Our heaven of spotless love to share,
For only generous souls designed,
And not a man to meet us there.

Sketches of Autumn.-From the same.

It was a fair and mild autumnal sky,
And earth's ripe treasures met the admiring eye,
As a rich beauty when the bloom is lost,
Appears with more magnificence and cost:
The wet and heavy grass, where feet had strayed,
Not yet erect, the wanderer's way betrayed;
Showers of the night had swelled the deepening rill,
The morning breeze had urged the quickening mill;
Assembled rooks had winged their seaward flight,
By the same passage to return at night,
While proudly o'er them hung the steady kite,
Then turned them back, and left the noisy throng,
Nor deigned to know them as he sailed along.
Long yellow leaves, from osiers, strewed around,
Choked the dull stream, and hushed its feeble sound,
While the dead foliage dropt from loftier trees,
Our squire beheld not with his wonted ease;
But to his own reflections made reply,

And said aloud: Yes; doubtless we must die.'.

'We must,' said Richard; and we would not live
To feel what dotage and decay will give;
But we yet taste whatever we behold;
The morn is lovely, though the air is cold:
There is delicious quiet in this scene,
At once so rich, so varied, so serene;
Sounds, too, delight us-each discordant tone
Thus mingled please, that fail to please alone;
This hollow wind, this rustling of the brook,
The farm-yard noise, the woodman at yon oak-
See, the axe falls!-now listen to the stroke:
That gun itself, that murders all this peace,
Adds to the charm, because it soon must cease.'

Cold grew the foggy morn. the day was brief,
Loose on the cherry hung the crimson leaf:
The dew dwelt ever on the herb; the woods

Roared with strong blasts, with mighty showers the floods:

All green was vanished save of pine and yew,

That still displayed their melancholy hue;

Save the green holly with its berries red,

And the green moss that o'er the gravel spread.

SAMUEL ROGERS.

There is a poetry of taste as well as of the passions, which can only be relished by the intellectual classes, but is capable of imparting exquisite pleasure to those who have the key to its hidden mysteries. It is somewhat akin to that delicate appreciation of the fine arts, or of music, which in some men amount to almost a new sense. SAMUEL ROGERS, author of the Pleasures of Memory,' was a votary of this school of refinement. We have everywhere in his works a classic and graceful beauty; no slovenly or obscure lines; fine cabinet pictures of soft and mellow lustre; and occasionally trains of thought and association that awaken or recall tender and heroic feelings. His diction is clear and polished-finished with great care and scrupulous nicety. On the other hand, it must be admitted that he has no forcible or original invention, no deep pathos that thrills the soul, and no kindling energy that fires the imagination. In his shadowy poem of Columbus,' he seems often to verge on the sublime, but does not attain it. His late works are his best. Parts of 'Human Life' possess deeper feeling than are to be found in the 'Pleasures of Memory;' and in the easy half-conversational sketches of his Italy,' there are delightful glimpses of Italian life, and scenery, and old traditions. The poet was an accomplished traveller, a lover of the fair and good, and a worshipper of the classic glories of the past. Samuel Rogers was born at Stoke Newington, one of the suburbs of London, on the 30th July 1763. His father was a banker in the City, and the poet, after a careful private education, was introduced into the banking establishment, of which he continued a partner up to the time of his death. He appeared as an author in 1786, the same year that witnessed the advent of Burns. The production of Rogers was a thin quarto of a few pages, an ́ ́Ode to`su

perstition, with some other Poems.' In 1792, he produced the 'Pleasures of Memory;' in 1798, his Epistle to a Friend, with other Poems; in 1812, Columbus; and in 1814, Jacqueline,' a tale, published in conjunction with Byron's 'Lara'

Like morning brought by night.

In 1819, appeared 'Human Life,' and in 1822, the first part of 'Italy,' a descriptive poem in blank verse. Rogers was a careful and fastidious writer. In his Table Talk,' published by Mr. Dyce, the poet is represented as saying: 'I was engaged on the "Pleasures of Memory" for nine years; on Human Life" for nearly the same space of time; and "Italy" was not completed in less than sixteen years.' The collected works of Mr. Rogers have been published in various forms-one of them containing vignette engravings from designs by Stothard and Turner, and forming no inconsiderable trophy of British art. The poet was enabled to cultivate his favourite tastes, to enrich his house in St. James's Place with some of the finest and rarest pictures, busts, books, gems, and other articles of virtu, and to entertain his friends with a generous and unostentatious hospitality. His conversation was rich and various, abounding in critical remarks, shrewd observation, and personal anecdote. It is gratifying to add that his bounty soothed and relieved the death-bed of Sheri dan, and was exerted to a large extent annually in behalf of suffering or unfriended talent. 'Genius languishing for want of patronage,' says Mr. Dyce, was sure to find in Mr. Rogers a generous patron. His purse was ever open to the distressed: of the prompt assistance which he rendered in the hour of need to various wellknown individuals, there is ample record; but of his many acts of kindness and charity to the wholly obscure, there is no memorial-at least on earth. The taste of Mr. Rogers had been cultivated to the utmost refinement; and, till the failure of his mental powers, a short time previous to his death, he retained that love of the beautiful which was in him a passion: when more than ninety, and a close prisoner to his chair, he still delighted to watch the changing colours of the evening sky-to repeat passages of his favourite poets, or to dwell on the merits of the great painters whose works adorned his walls. By slow decay, and without any suffering, he died in St. James's Place, 18th December 1855.' The poet bequeathed three of his pictures-a Titian, a Guido, and a Giorgione-to the National Gallery. The Titian he considered the most valuable in his possession. It had been in the Orleans Gallery, and when that princely collection was broken up, it was sold for four hundred guineas. Mr. Rogers, however, gave more than double that sum for it in 1828.

It was as a man of taste and letters, as a patron of artists and authors, and as the friend of almost every illustrious man that has graced our annals for the last half-century and more, that Mr. Rogers chiefly engaged the public attention. At his celebrated breakfast-parties,

persons of almost all classes and pursuits were found. He made the morning meal famous as a literary rallying point; and during the London season there was scarcely a day in which from four to six persons were not assembled at the hospitable board in St. James's Place. There, discussion as to books or pictures, anecdotes of the great of old, some racy saying of Sheridan, Erskine, or Horne Tooke, some social trait of Fox, some apt quotation or fine passage read aloud, some incident of foreign travel recounted-all flowed on without restraint, and charmed the hours till mid-day. A certain quaint shrewdness and sarcasm, though rarely taking an offensive form, also characterized Rogers's conversation. Many of his sayings circulated in society and got into print. Some one said that Gally Knight was getting deaf: It is from want of practice,' remarked Rogers, Mr. Knight being a great speaker and bad listener. The late Lord Dudley (Ward) had been free in his criticisms on the poet, who retaliated with that epigrammatic couplet, which has never been surpassed

Ward has no heart, they say; but I deny it;

He has a heart-he gets his speeches by it.

The poet, it is said, on one occasion tried to extort a confession from his neighbour, Sir Philip Francis, that he was the author of Junius, but Francis gave a surly rebuff, and Rogers remarked that if he was not Junius,' he was at least Brutus.' We may remark that the poet's recipe for long life was, 'temperance, the bath and flesh brush, and don't fret.' The felicity of his own lot he has thus gracefully alluded to:

From the 'Pleasures of Memory.'

Twilight's soft dews steal o'er the village green,
With magic tints to harmonise the scene.
Still is the hum that through the hamlet broke,
When round the ruins of their ancient oak
The peasants flocked to hear the minstrel play,
And games and carols closed the busy day.
Her wheel at rest, the matron thrills no more
With treasured tales and legendary lore.
All, all are fled; nor mirth nor music flows
To chase the dreams of innocent repose.
All, all are fled; yet still I linger here!
What secret charms this silent spot endear?

Mark von old mansion frowning through the trees,
Whose hollow turret woos the whistling breeze.
That casement, arched with ivy's brownest shade.,
. First to these eyes the light of heaven conveyed.

The mouldering gateway strews the grass-grown court,
Once the calm scene of many a simple sport;
When nature pleased, for life itself was new,
And the heart promised what the fancy drew.
Childhood's loved group revisits every scene,
The tangled wood-walk and the tufted green!
Indulgent Memory wakes, and lo, they live!
Clothed with far softer hues than light can give.
Thou first, best friend that Heaven assigns below,
To soothe and sweeten all the cares we know;
Whose glad suggestions still each vain alarm,
When nature fades and life forgets to charm;
Thee would the Muse invoke 1-to thee belong
The sage's precept and the poet's song.
What softened views thy magic glass reveals,
When o'er the landscape Time's meek twilight steals!
As when in ocean sinks the orb of day,

Long on the wave reflected lustres play;
Thy tempered gleams of happiness resigned,
'Glance on the darkened mirror of the mind.

The school's lone porch, with reverend mosses gray,
Just tells the pensive pilgrim where it lay.
Mute is the bell that rung at peep of dawn,
Quickening my truant feet across the lawn;
Unheard the shout that rent the noontide air
When the slow dial gave a pause to care.
Up springs, at every step, to claim a tear,
Some little friendship formed and cherished here;
And not the lightest leaf, but trembling teems
With golden visions and romantic dreams.

Down by yon hazel copse, at evening, blazed
The gipsy's fagot-there we stood and gazed;
Gazed on her sunburnt face with silent awe,
Her tattered inantle and her hood of straw;
Her moving lips, her caldron brimming o'er;
The drowsy brood that on her back she bore,
Imps in the barn with mousing owlets bred,"
From rifled roost at nightly revel fed;

Whose dark eyes flashed through lock of blackest shade, When in the breeze the distant watch-dog bayed:

And heroes fled the Sibyl's muttered call,

Whose elfin prowess scaled the orchard wall.

As o'er my palm the silver piece she drew,

And traced the line of life with searching view,

How throbbed my fluttering pulse with hopes and fears,

To learn the colour of my future years!

Ah, then, what honest triumph flushed my breast; This truth once known-to bless is to be blest!

We led the bending beggar on his way

Bare were his feet, his tresses silver-gray-
Soothed the keen pangs his aged spirit felt,
And on his tale with mute attention dwelt;
As in his scrip we dropt our little store,
And sighed to think that little was no more,

He breathed his prayer, Long may such goodness live!' "Twas all he gave-twas all he had to give..

The adventurous boy that asks his little share,

And hies from home with many a gossip's prayer,
Turns on the neighbouring hill, once more to see
The dear abode of peace and privacy;

And as he turns, the thatch among the trees,

The smoke's blue wreaths ascending with the breeze,