No park, no ring-no afternoon gentility-- No warmth, no cheerfulness, no healthful ease, T. HOOD. SONNET. NOVEMBER, 1792. There is strange music in the stirring wind If in such shades, beneath their murmuring, Or eve thou'st shared, to distant scenes shall stray. O spring, return! return, auspicious May! Who from these shades is gone, gone far away! SONG. DECEMBER. I. REV. WILLIAM L. BOWLES. A spirit haunts the year's last hours, For at eventide, listening earnestly, At his work you may hear him sob and sigh, In the walks; Earthward he boweth the heavy stalks of the moldering flowers; Heavily hangs the broad sun-flower O'er its grave, the earth so chilly; Heavily hangs the hollyhock, Heavily hangs the tiger-lily. II. The air is damp, and hushed, and close, As a rich man's room, where he taketh repose My very heart faints, and my whole soul grieves At the moist, rich smell of the rotting leaves, And the breath Of the fading edges of box beneath, and the year's last rose. Heavily hangs the broad sun-flower Over its grave, the earth so chilly; Heavily hangs the hollyhock, Heavily hangs the tiger-lily. ALFRED TENNYSON. XIX. The Schoolmistress. NE does not often meet with Shenstone's "Schoolmistress" ONE now-a-days, and as every year makes her more of a rarity, we have given her a place in our rustic group. There appears to be no doubt that Shenstone, who learned to read from the old dame who taught the village school at HalesOwen, his native hamlet, sketched from life, when he drew the old "Schoolmistress," her blue apron, her single hen, and the noisy little troop about her. To us, however, in these very different days, the simple rustic sketch assumes something of the dignity of an historical picture. The little thatched cottage of the dame is still to be seen near Hales-Owen, as well as the gabled roof of the Leasowes, under which the poet was born. The old homes of England, whether cot or castle, are seldom leveled by the hand of man, and they long remain as links between successive generations. A few of the stanzas have been omitted, in order to bring the poem within the limits of this volume. THE SCHOOLMISTRESS. In every village mark'd with little spire, A matron old, whom we Schoolmistress name, For unkempt hair, or task unconn'd, are sorely shent. Which Learning near her little dome did stowe, Though now so wide its waving branches flow, For not a wind might curl the leaves that blew, So doth it wanton birds of peace bereave, Of sport, of song, of pleasure, of repast; Near to this dome is found a patch so green, Lest weakly wights of smaller size should stray, The noises intermix'd, which thence resound, Do Learning's little tenement betray; Where sits the dame, disguis'd in look profound, And eyes her fairy throng, and turns her wheel around. Her cap, far whiter than the driven snow, |