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His vermeil sides in dreadful pride display,
And light his colors at the orb of day:
Now let the hurricane impetuous bear
The uplifted sand amidst the darkened air ;
Roused by the sweeping storm, let tigers fell
And keen hyenas join the dismal yell,
Or the proud lion, in his awful roar,
Through echoing woods his lordly fury pour.

THE ARCTIC REGIONS. SNOW.HAIL.-SPLENDORS of ice.

Thence guide the Muse where earth's last confine lies, [rise, Where winter dwells, and where the north-winds And pour incessant from their stormy seat The fleecy snow-fall and the cutting sleet,

Or balls congealed that drive with rattling sound,
And fall on earth, and from the earth rebound.
The sky's cold horror let the Muse detail,
Till fancy shudder at the freezing tale.
Yet even here some savage grace appears,
Where Winter's god his icy palace rears;
Whose burnished sides, in richest colors bright,
Those prisms display, that dazzle on the sight,
In thousand changing hues reflected play,
And break the splendor of the solar ray;
Where from the rocks the icicles depend,
And moving lustres with the pine-tree bend;
Where glittering coats the trembling reeds surround,
And in one mass the azure waves are bound;
Dazzling expanse! upon whose desert wide
Their rapid car the sons of Lapland guide,
While gliding lightly, as the reindeers fly,
Their floating reins in loose disorder lie.

THE TEMPERATE ZONE PICTURED.

From these dread prospects let the Muse again Fly to that dearer spot, her native plain, Where winters mild and gentler suns arise, And temperate breezes blow along the skies; There let her sing our meadows, shrubs, and wood, The tuneful thicket and the murmuring flood; Our blushing fruits, that softer colors grace, Our humbler flocks, and Flora's modest race; And, poor of plumage, but of richest voice, Again let Philomel our woods rejoice.

MAN AND HIS ART GIVE INTEREST TO PICTURES OF NATURE.

Suffice it not to paint the scenes you view;

As well as paint them, you must interest too.
Oft be spectators in your pictures seen,
And frequent actors tread your sylvan scene.
Let man see man in every line you trace;
The world's chief honor is the human race.
Deprived of man, the first and best abode
Is a lone temple, that demands its God.
But life and culture, movement and delight,
Are born anew, and wanton in his sight.
In every picture man we still desire,
And Art, like Nature, shall his aid require.
On yonder slope, where golden vineyards shine,
Place then the rustic fair, who strip the vine;

Let dancing swains the flowery valley tread,
And bathing nymphs adorn the river's bed,
That trembling still, and filled with vain alarms,
Scarce to the wave will thrust their secret charms;
At every noise they start with wild affright,
Blush at themselves, and dread each other's sight.
Some Faun be near, that eyes the lucid tide,
And rashly draws the leafy fence aside.

ANIMALS SHOULD ENLIVEN LANDSCAPE DESCRIPTIONS.

FLOCKS; CATTLE; DEER; THE HORSE. Should man be wanting to thy rustic strain, Supply his absence with the bestial train; Whether through woods, in savage pride, they roam, Or, with mankind, prefer the peaceful home; Those that as generous friends or slaves attend, That rise rebellious, or submissive bend; That cowards live, or shine in hardy deed; Whose wool arrays us or whose milk may feed. If those which Berghem's laughing scenes disclose, Or from the tints of Wouverman arose, Can interest give; shall not the poet's lyre To equal warmth and equal skill aspire? Paint thou as well; since ready at thy voice, The sylvan natives, in exhaustless choice, But wait the touch of thy prolific hand, To spring to life, and animate the land. If chance the leaves should quiver in the breeze, Trembling like them, the starting roebuck flees, As lightning prompt, and quicker than the eye; In peaceful state the cattle grazing nigh, Swell the rich udder, pendent to the ground, While close beside their sportive offspring bound. But further on, if chance the echoing horn, Or female neigh, along the gale be borne, The impatient courser leaps the lofty mound, Whose thorny barrier skirts his pasture round; In all the pride of beauty and of blood, He seeks the coolness of the well-known flood; Or, gay and wanton, leaves the plain behind, And snuffs the females in the passing wind; Scarce do his feet the tender herbage graze ; His mane, uplifted, undulating plays; Love, youth, and pride, each graceful movement fill; His beating steps resound to Fancy still!

HOW ΤΟ MAKE ANIMALS MOST INTERESTING. BUFFON's ANECDOTES. THE WAR-HORSE. THE DOG OF ULYSSES.

Still greater interest would thy efforts show? Let every beast with human passions glow; Give them our hopes, our pleasure, and our pain, And one link nearer draw the social chain. In vain would Buffon, jealous of their fame, Still inconsistent, bear the aspiring claim; Would vainly see them, as a fair machine, Whose grosser life is moved by springs unseen; For in his page, that Nature's sons inspire, Each gains a portion of Promethean fire. What fond attachment in the dog he shows! What docile patience on the ox bestows! While roused to glory, proud of what he bears,

The steed with man the pride of conquest shares,
Each beast by him in native rights enthroned,
Its separate law and separate manner owned.
Did not the muse, that sung in earliest age,
Leave rich examples for the future sage
?
She who of old, through all her pictured plan,
To gods raised mortals, and the beast to man.
See generous chiefs, in Homer's deathless song,
Harangue their coursers in th' embattled throng;
Once more Ulysses' dog his master eyes,
And, moving sight! he licks his feet and dies.

INTEREST GIVEN TO ANIMALS BY LUCRETIUS AND VIRGIL.-
THE COMPANIONLESS STEER. THE TWO BULLS.

Too eloquent Lucretius, how thy song,
And thine, O Virgil, lead the mind along!
How, when ye celebrate the bestial train,
Ye bid it yield to pleasure or to pain!
Now with the hind soft pity's tear I shed,

And loose the steer, that weeps his comrade dead :
Two chiefs, whose rule the circling herds obey,
Now rush with fury to the dreadful fray;
No more like bulls appearing to the sight,
But haughty kings, whom rival views excite,
Armed for their Helen and imperial state,
Urged by ambition, and inflamed with hate.
Their foreheads stern with direful fury clash,
And the full dewlaps on each other lash;
While mingled notes of love and vengeance pour,
Heaven's concave echoes with the sullen roar;
The gazing herds in awful silence stay,
Till conquest tell them which they must obey.

THE COW IN SEARCH OF HER BUTCHERED CALF.

Turn from this view of warfare and affright, Where softer scenes to softer thoughts invite. Yon mournful heifer scarce has learned to boast A mother's fondness, ere her offspring's lost. Through all the mazes of the darksome grove Her voice demands this early pledge of love; Her plaintive cries from hill and rock rebound; He only utters no responsive sound. No more the cooling shade or waters sped, In soothing murmurs, o'er their pebbled bed; No more the shrub, embathed in morning rain, Or freshened grass, where dewdrops still remain, Can tempt her now; her footsteps still explore The well-known fold, or trace the forest o'er ; Again o'er each she strays with plaintive moan, Again returns, despairing and alone. Where beats the heart so hardened as to view Her tender sorrow, and not feel it too?

HINTS TO THE POET OF NATURE; LET HIM GIVE LIFE AND SENTIMENT TO INANIMATE THINGS.

Even to the tree, the water, and the flower, The poet's art, in self-created power, A feigned existence, fancied soul, may give, Where all concurs to make th' illusion live. See round the sod those waters fondly twine, Those boughs embrace, and yonder circling vine Its amorous folds around the elm-tree coil,

And shun the contact of a hostile soil.
Let the fond instinct of the plant or tide
To flights sublime your hardy fictions guide :
Let the young bud the tepid zephyr woo,
And dread the season when the north-winds blow;
Yon thirsty lily, ere its foliage shrink, [drink;
Poured by thy hand, the wished-for stream should
To yonder tree its right direction give,
While yet its docile boughs the bent receive;
Or let the trunk admire a grafted fruit
And borrowed umbrage, o'er its native root;
Yon tender shoot redundant foliage bears;
Yet check the knife in pity to his years.
Thanks to your skill, surveyed in Fancy's eye,
In every tree an equal I descry;

Its good or ill my feeling bosom tries;

E'en for a plant my sorrows learn to rise!

INTEREST GIVEN TO SCENES BY THE ASSOCIATIONS OF CHILD

HOOD, ETC.

Sometimes these scenes, in native beauty bright, From fond remembrance gather new delight. Rich through your strains each happy spot appears: Yet shouldst thou add, 'There rose my infant years; There broke the light upon my early view; There first my beating heart to pleasure flew ;' How does my soul the recollection prize! Back to the distant time my fancy flies, When, twenty years in tedious absence passed, Again saw my native fields at last.

THE AUTHOR'S FEELINGS ON REVISITING HIS NATIVE LIMAGNA.

Scarce o'er Limagna's plain had Mont-d'or's height

In the dim back-ground gleamed upon my sight,
My heart beat quick no more my eye surveyed
The verdant upland or the lowly glade;
My soul impatient, that outstripped his speed,
Accused the slowness of the rapid steed,
And, onward flying, called the dearer spot
Near to my heart, and ne'er to be forgot:
At length arrived, wherever roved my eyes,
Some fond remembrance still would love to rise.
There stood the tree, that zephyrs gently fanned,
And swept my castles traced upon the sand;
Here, too, the stone my infant fingers threw, [anew.
Skimmed o'er the lake, and leaped and skimmed
What raptured bliss throughout my bosom glowed,
When first embracing, while my tears o'erflowed,
The hoary swain that staid my early tread,
The nurse whose milk my infant lips had fed,
And the sage pastor that my childhood led!
Oft, too, I cried, Ye scenes, in beauty dressed,
Where my first years my first desires expressed,
That saw me born, that marked me as I grew,
Ah! where the pleasures which my childhood knew?'

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CONTRAST AS A HEIGHTENER OF INTEREST.

Let not the pleasing theme engross my strain! Come, then, ye painters of the varied plain, Present those scenes that claim your fondest love, And through them all let gay existence move.

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Or black Self-murder, maddening through the soul,
Sharpen the steel, or mix the poisoned bowl:
Here, too, in lawless bands, the harlot train,
The shame of Chastity, and Hymen's bane,
In living tombs, where plaintive sickness lies,
That cruel Charity has taught to rise,
'Midst crowded walls, that reek with tainted breath,
Incessant swells the mournful list of death :
Here hireling robbers watch th' accomplice band,
And public peace on public vice must stand:
In darksome dens of sunk and haggard eye,
The desperate gamester throws the fatal die :
What wretched infants, in the cradle left,
Of mother's love, and father's smile bereft!
What secret woes are there! what hidden guilt!
What tears are shed! alas! what blood is spilt !'
THE COUNTRY CONTRASTED WITH PARIS. — ROUSSEAU'S APOS-
TROPHE,

From these sad scenes, that shuddering Nature
Let sylvan views relax the sorrowing eyes. [flies,
From powerful contrast more inviting grows
The shade and stream; more soft the zephyr blows;
The heart, that shrunk, by city-woes oppressed,
Once more expands itself on Nature's breast!
Thus when to Rousseau, in his much-loved shade,
In distant view proud Paris stood displayed:
'City of mire, of smoke, and noisy pain,
Where Vice and Virtue undistinguished reign;
How blessed the man, who, from thy tumults free,
Thy noxious vapors and thy crimes may flee!'
Then sudden turned, his favorite walks he sought,
Nor broke the silence of his pensive thought.

THE AUTHOR LONGS FOR RURAL RETIREMENT.

Ah, when, alas! shall he whose rural strains Teach how t' inhabit and adorn the plains, Enjoy those scenes where most he would delight?

O! fields beloved, when will ye bless my sight?
When may I now my peaceful slumbers take;
Now with choice books amuse me as I wake;
Now deck with simple grace my rustic bowers,
And idly pass away the listless hours;
Drink sweet oblivion of life's careful lot,
Unknown to man, and man by me forgot?

SOUND SHOULD ECHO THE SENSE. AN IMITATION OF POPE AND HORACE.

Let countless figures shine throughout your song;
Mix gay with sad, the gentle with the strong;
Still let your tone its several objects tell;
For sound and sense together still should dwell.
In airy lines let zephyr lightly blow;

If smooth the stream, smooth let thy numbers flow;
Hear'st thou the torrent roaring from its rock!
Let the loud verse resound the thundering shock;
When the slow oxen labor o'er the plain,
At every word should drag the weighty strain;
When the fleet roebuck flies and cuts the air,
The verse should follow like the lightning's glare.
Thus let your song, that runs in measured note,
Express each movement, and each thought denote.

THE STYLE OF THE RURAL POET SHOULD SUPPLY THE DEFECTS OF HIS SUBJECT.

Too blessed thy Muse, if verdant wood or mead, Or sunny day, shall animate her reed; For, when her lay some sylvan rule imparts, Then should she practise her poetic arts; If bare the precept, she must grace supply; If sad, enliven; vulgar, dignify.

USE OF EPISODES RECOMMENDED.— HOMER'S OX.

The harsher tone of precept to unbend, Take space for breathing, and thy course suspend; To cheer thy reader on his weary road, Join to thy rules some well-timed episode. When Homer sings the labor of the fields, A sweet example for this rule he yields; Oft as the ox achieves the furrowed line, Drenched, by his master's hand, with purest wine, His goaded sides forget the smarting pain; Gayly he turns to rustic toils again. Thus let thy muse with sweet digression stray, And smooth, with softened note, her rougher lay; This done, pursue thy course with eager bent, And trace thy subject to its last extent.

VIRGIL A MODEL FOR THE RURAL POET.HIS PICTURES VOCAL AS WELL AS ALIVE.

But why these lengthened counsels shouldst thou Receive one general lesson in their stead; [need? Read Virgil's song! With what harmonious grace He calls to sylvan toil th' Ausonian race! Where'er the rustic scene his pencil tries, True as the fields themselves his pictures rise; 'Tis nature still; not yonder limpid stream, Where the pale shepherd sees his image gleam, More truly gives us, from its azure breast, The blossomed flowers in which its sides are dressed.

Sings he the swains, their concert or their loves,
The Golden Age through every couplet moves.
Read Virgil, then; blessed if the strain you love!
How wretched he whom Virgil cannot move!
When in soft sounds, to which the bosom yields,
He cries, 'O happy sire! that kept thy fields:’
My soul partakes the hoary shepherd's lot,
The close he planted, and his native cot;
With him I hear the murmurs of the dove,
And the wild-pigeon cooing forth his love;
The bee, that buzzes o'er the florid plain,
And mountain, vocal with the woodman's strain,
And grove and stream; for ne'er in truer dress
Did painter yet fair Nature's form express.
But what soft accents on my ears are borne?
'Tis Gallus' strains, his Lycoris that mourn,
His absent Lycoris! his notes entreat
The piercing ice to spare her tender feet!

APOSTROPHIC EULOGY OF VIRGIL.

Virgil! my guide, and god of pastoral lays,

NOTE. The allusion to the Princess Czartorinska, in Canto I. of the preceding poem, is best explained by the following extracts from the elegant epistles which passed between the princess and poet.

To M. l'Abbé Delille: Forgive me, sir, if I break in upon your leisure: you must lay the fault upon your reputation and works, that a whole society should address itself to you for the completion of an object they have in view. Assembled together in a small hamlet where we principally reside, friendship, inclination, consanguinity, and a conformity of manners, bind us together; everything concurs to give us a hope that we shall never be separated.

'It is natural that we should desire to embellish our retreat; [your] poem of "The Garden" has discovered to us the means. Sensibility, remembrance, and gratitude, guide us in the attempt; and the whole hamlet is at this moment employed in raising a monument in honor of those authors who have so often instructed, interested, and amused us. They will be marked, according to their rank, upon four faces of a marble pyramid: on one side, Pope, Milton, Young, Sterne, Shakspeare, Racine, and Rousseau; on the other, Petrarch, Anacreon, Metastasio, Tasso, and La Fontaine; on the third, Madame de Sevigné, Madame Riccoboni, Madame de la Fayette, Madame des Houliéres, and Sappho; and on the fourth, Virgil, Gesner, Gresset, and the Abbé Delille. Each side will be accompanied with trees, shrubs, and flowers.

The rose, the jasmin, and the lily, with beds of violets and pansies, will be on the female side; Petrarch, Anacreon, and Metastasio, will have the myrtle; and Tasso, the laurel. The weeping willow, the mournful cypress, and the yew, will accompany Shakspeare, Young, and Racine: as for the fourth side, the society will choose for it whatever may appear most agreeable in their orchards, woods, and meadows; and each inhabitant will plant some tree or shrub to perpetuate the memory of those authors who have given them a taste for rural life, and thereby contributed to their happi

ness.

They only want a suitable inscription to give force to their idea, and transmit it to posterity; it is to be engraved at the foot of the monument, and the whole hamlet, with one voice, has fixed upon you as its author. We request it as well from your heart as your ingenuity. This homage,

When first my muse aspired to Nature's praise,
With strictest care my ravished eye pursued
Her changing scenes through mountain, mead, or
Back to thy page my rapt attention came, [wood:
And saw that thou and Nature were the same!
Forgive my muse, if emulous to raise
Some scattered foliage, dropping from thy bays,
Thy song she imitates with hardy zeal,
And fail to paint what Fancy well can feel!
Thy numbers first inspired her carliest flight ;
They gave no glory, but they gave delight.

CONCLUSION; THE POET'S WISH.

Thus, in the shelter of my lonely rock, [shock, While groaned the earth with Discord's dreadful I sang, with artless voice and unconfined, Nature and art, the country and mankind, O would the gods, propitious to the strain, Grant the sole recompense I wish to gain! In my loved fields some seasons yet to tell, And live for books, my friends, and self, as well.

simple and sincere, will be successfully paid by the author of "The Garden," the translator of "Virgil," and, above all, by a man of sensibility.

We beg you, sir, to give credit to the very distinguished sentiments with which we are,' etc.

Answer. Madame: The letter you have done me the honor to write to me reached me at Constantinople, whither I accompanied M. Le Comte de Choiseul-Gouthier, now ambassador from France.

*

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I am far from having any pretensions to the place you would kindly appropriate to me, so near to [Virgil], in the charming project of your pyramids. It is suflicient to have disfigured his poetry by my feeble translations, without derogating from the honors you mean to pay him. Several persons of distinguished rank, that have been pleased to admire my pastoral verses, have caused a tree to be planted in their gardens, and called it by my name. This is the sole monument that becomes the modesty of the sylvan muse. **

"Your society, united as it is by the ties of blood, by the love of the arts, and, above all, by friendship, is the most amiable assemblage that has yet been seen in Poland. That liberty which the heroes of your country and house so courageously sought at the point of the sword, you have found, without cost or danger, in the solitude and tranquillity of the country. *

*

In regard to the inscription, * * I think it will be sufficient to engrave on the pyramid,

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Rustic Ballads for August.

HOOD'S "RUTH."

SHE stood breast high amid the corn,
Clasped by the golden light of morn,
Like the sweetheart of the sun,
Who many a glowing kiss had won.
On her cheek an autumn flush
Deeply ripened; -- such a blush
In the midst of brown was born,
Like red poppies grown with corn.
Round her eyes her tresses fell,
Which were blackest none could tell ;
But long lashes veiled a light
That had else been all too bright.
And her hat, with shady brim,
Made her tressy forehead dim;
Thus she stood amid the stooks,
Praising God with sweetest looks :-
Sure, I said, Heaven did not mean
Where I reap thou shouldst but glean;
Lay thy sheaf adown and come —
Share my harvest and my home.

COLLINS'S "FIDELE'S TOMB."

To fair Fidele's grassy tomb

Soft maids and village hinds shall bring
Each opening sweet, of earliest bloom,
And rifle all the breathing Spring.
No wailing ghost shall dare appear,
To vex with shrieks this quiet grove,
But shepherd lads, assemble here,

And melting virgins, own their love.
No withered witch shall here be seen,

No goblins lead their nightly crew;
The female fays shall haunt the green,

And dress thy grave with pearly dew:
The red-breast oft at evening hours
Shall kindly lend his little aid,
With hoary moss, and gathered flowers,

To deck the ground where thou art laid. **
Each lonely scene shall thee restore,
For thee the tear be duly shed;
Beloved till life can charm no more;
And mourned, till pity's self be dead.

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And servants that fly when she's waited upon :
But what can she boast if she weds unbeloved?
Can she e'er feel the joy that one morning I proved,
When I put on my new gown and waited for John?

These fields, my dear Ellen, I knew them of yore,
Yet to me they ne'er looked so enchanting before;
The distant bells ringing,
The birds round us singing,

For pleasure is pure when affection is won:
They told me the troubles and cares of a wife;
But I loved him; and that was the pride of my life,
When I put on my new gown and waited for John.

He shouted and ran, as he leaped from the stile ;
And what in my bosom was passing the while?
For love knows the blessing

Of ardent caressing,

When virtue inspires us and doubts are all gone.
The sunshine of fortune you say is divine;
True love and the sunshine of nature were mine,
When I put on my new gown and waited for John.

COWPER'S "SHRUBBERY." O, HAPPY shades! to me unblest, Friendly to peace, but not to me, How ill the scene that offers rest,

And heart that cannot rest, agree! This glassy stream, that spreading pine,

Those alders quivering to the breeze, Might soothe a soul less hurt than mine, And please, if anything could please. But fixed, unalterable care

Foregoes not what she feels within,
Shows the same sadness everywhere,
And slights the season and the scene.
For all that pleased in wood or lawn,
While peace possessed these silent bowers,
Her animating smile withdrawn,

Has lost its beauties and its powers.
The saint or moralist should tread
This moss-grown alley, musing slow ;
They seek, like me, the secret shade,
But not, like me, to nourish woe.
Me fruitful scenes and prospects waste
Alike admonish not to roam;
These tell me of enjoyments past,
And those of sorrows yet to come.

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