This fairest creature from earliest spring
Thus moved through the garden ministering
All the sweet season of summer tide,

And ere the first leaf look'd brown-she died!

From The Sensitive Plant.

MUTABILITY.

We are as clouds that veil the midnight moon;
How restlessly they speed, and gleam, and quiver,
Streaking the darkness radiantly!-yet soon
Night closes round, and they are lost for ever:

Or like forgotten lyres, whose dissonant strings
Give various response to each varying blast,
To whose frail frame no second motion brings
One mood or modulation like the last.

We rest-a dream has power to poison sleep;

We rise-one wandering thought pollutes the day; We feel, conceive, or reason, laugh or weep; Embrace fond woe, or cast our cares away:

It is the same!-For, be it joy or sorrow,
The path of its departure still is free:
Man's yesterday may ne'er be like his morrow;
Nought may endure but Mutability.

THE WORLD'S WANDERERS.

Tell me, thou star, whose wings of light
Speed thee in thy fiery flight,

In what cavern of the night

Will thy pinions close now?

Tell me, moon, thou pale and grey
Pilgrim of heaven's homeless way,
In what depth of night or day
Seekest thou repose now?

Weary wind, who wanderest
Like the world's rejected guest,
Hast thou still some secret nest
On the tree or billow?

THIS poet, like Bloomfield, whom he most nearly resembles, was born to an inheritance of poverty and hardship; and without the benefits of education, was obliged to struggle into notice, amidst difficulties under which multitudes pos. sessed of equal natural capacities are never heard of-except, perhaps, as "village Hampdens," or mute inglorious Miltons." Clare was born at Helpstone, near Peterborough, Northamptonshire, in 1793; and in early age he learned to read by exhausting his strength in extra tasks, to procure the necessary pittance for the schoolmaster. After this, a carefully hoarded shilling procured him a copy of Thomson's Seasons, and such was the inspiration he derived from the perusal of this work, that he composed verses without being able to purchase paper to transcribe them. In this manner he struggled onward in a career of humble and laborious toil, which was cheered by the visitations of the Muse, until his poems were published in a volume, which was received with such acceptance, that it went through several editions. Encouraged by the success of this attempt, several other volumes succeeded at intervals; but the nine days' wonder had ceased, and the public no longer felt interested in the lowly peasant of Northamptonshire, so that these works scarcely paid the expenses of publication. And yet, while his productions in their intrinsic merits are worthy of a high place in every collection of British Poetry, they are truly wonderful when we consider the circumstances under which they originated. Clare still continues in his original poverty, as a tiller of the ground, notwithstanding all that he has so worthily accomplished for a better destiny.

WINTER EVENING IN THE COUNTRY.

The sun is creeping out of sight
Behind the woods-whilst running night
Hastens to shut the day's dull eye,
And grizzle o'er the chilly sky.
Now maidens, fresh as summer roses,
Journeying from the distant closes,
Haste home with yokes and swinging pail:
The thresher, too, sets by his flail,
And leaves the mice at peace again
To fill their holes with stolen grain;
Whilst owlets, glad his toils are o'er,
Swoop by him as he shuts the door.

Bearing his hook beneath his arm,
The shepherd seeks the cottage warm;
And, weary in the cold to roam,
Scenting the track that leads him home,
His dog goes swifter o'er the mead,
Barking to urge his master's speed;
Then turns, and looks him in the face,
And trots before with mending pace,
Till, out of whistle from the swain,
He sits him down and barks again,
Anxious to greet the open'd door,
And meet the cottage-fire once more.

The shutter closed, the lamp alight,
The faggot chopt and blazing bright-
The shepherd now, from labour free,
Dances his children on his knee;
While, underneath his master's seat,
The tired dog lies in slumber sweet,
Starting and whimpering in his sleep,
Chasing still the straying sheep.
The cat's roll'd round in vacant chair,
Or leaping children's knees to lair—
Or purring on the warmer hearth
Sweet chorus to the cricket's mirth.

From January-Shepherd's Calendar.

EXPLODED FICTIONS OF CHILDHOOD.

Oh! Spirit of the days gone by-
Sweet childhood's fearful ecstacy!
The witching spells of winter nights,
Where are they fled with their delights?
When listening on the corner seat,
The winter evening's length to cheat,
I heard my mother's memory tell
Tales Superstition loves so well:-
Things said or sung a thousand times,
In simple prose or simpler rhymes!
Ah! where is page of poesy

So sweet as this was wont to be?
The magic wonders that deceived,

When fictions were as truths believed;
The fairy feats that once prevail'd,

Told to delight, and never fail'd;

Where are they now, their fears and sighs,
And tears from founts of happy eyes?
I read in books, but find them not,

For poesy hath its youth forgot;
I hear them told to children still,

But fear numbs not my spirits chill:
I still see faces pale with dread,

While mine could laugh at what is said;
See tears imagined woes supply,
While mine with real cares are dry.

Where are they gone?-the joys and fears,
The links, the life, of other years?

I thought they twined around my heart
So close, that we could never part;
But Reason, like a winter's day,
Nipp'd childhood's visions all away,
Nor left behind one withering flower
To cherish in a lonely hour.

Memory may yet the themes repeat,
But childhood's heart hath ceased to beat
At tales, which Reason's sterner lore
Turns like weak gossips from her door:
The magic fountain, where the head
Rose up, just as the startled maid
Was stooping from the weedy brink
To dip her pitcher in to drink,
That did its half-hid mystery tell
To smooth its hair, and use it well;
Which, doing as it bade her do,
Turn'd to a king and lover too.
The tale of Cinderella, told

The winter through, and never old:
The pumpkin that, at her approach,
Was turn'd into a golden coach;
The rats that fairies' magic knew,
And instantly to horses grew;
The coachmen ready at her call,
To drive her to the prince's ball,
With fur-changed jackets silver lined,
And tails hung 'neath their hats behind;
The golden glove, with fingers small,
She lost while dancing in the hall,
That was on every finger tried,
And fitted hers, and none beside,
When Cinderella, soon as seen,

Was woo'd and won, and made a Queen.
The boy that did the giant slay,
And gave his mother's cows away
For magic mask, that day or night,
When on, would keep him out of sight.
The running bean-not such as weaves
Round poles the height of cottage eaves,
But magic one-that travell'd high
Some steeple's journey up the sky,
And reach'd a giant's dwelling there,
A cloud-built castle in the air:
Where, venturing up the fearful height,
That served him climbing half the night,

He search'd the giant's coffers o'er,
And never wanted riches more;
While, like a lion scenting food,
The giant roar'd, in hungry mood,
A storm of threats that might suffice
To freeze the hottest blood to ice.

I hear it now, nor dream of woes;
The storm is settled to repose.

Those fears are dead!-What will not die
In fading life's mortality?

Those truths have fled, and left behind
A real world and doubting mind.

From January—Shepherd's Calendar.

DEPARTURE OF WINTER.

Often, at early seasons, mild and fair
March bids farewell, with garlands in her hair
Of hazel tassels, woodbine's bushy sprout,
And sloe and wild-plum blossoms peeping out
In thick-set knots of flowers, preparing gay,
For April's reign, a mockery of May.

The old dame then oft stills her humming wheel-
When the bright sun-beams through the windows steal

And gleam upon her face, and dancing fall

In diamond shadows on the pictured wall;
While the white butterfly, as in amaze,
Will settle on the glossy glass to gaze-
And smiling, glad to see such things once more,
Up she will get and totter to the door,
And look upon the trees beneath the eaves-
Sweetbriar and lad's-love-swelling into leaves;
And, stooping down, cull from her garden beds
The early blossoms perking out their heads,
In flower-pots on the window-board to stand,
Where the old hour-glass spins its thread of sand.
And while the passing clown remarks, with pride,
Days lengthen in their visits a "cock's stride,"
She cleans her candlesticks and sets them by,
Glad of the make-shift light that eves supply!