New Monthly Magazine.

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THE VOICE OF NATURE.

  I heard a bird on the linden tree,
    From which November leaves were falling,
  Sweet were its notes, and wild their tone;
  And pensive there as I paused alone,
  They spake with a mystical voice to me,
    The sunlight of vanish’d years recalling
  From out the mazy past.

  I turned to the cloud-bedappled sky,
    To bare-shorn field and gleaming water;
  To frost-night herbage, and perishing flower;
  While the Robin haunted the yellow bower;
  With his faery plumage and jet-black eye,
    Like an unlaid ghost some scene of slaughter: 
  All mournful was the sight.

  Then I thought of seasons, when, long ago,
    Ere Hope’s clear sky was dimm’d by sorrow,
  How bright seem’d the flowers, and the trees how green,
  How lengthen’d the blue summer days had been;
  And what pure delight the young spirit’s glow,
    From the bosom of earth and air, could borrow
  Out of all lovely things.

  Then my heart leapt to days, when, a careless boy,
    ’Mid scenes of ambrosial Autumn roaming,
  The diamond gem of the Evening Star,
  Twinkling amid the pure South afar,
  Was gazed on with gushes of holy joy,
    As the cherub spirit that ruled the gloaming
  With glittering, golden eye.

  And oh! with what rapture of silent bliss. 
    With what breathless deep devotion,
  Have I watch’d, like spectre from swathing shroud,
  The white moon peer o’er the shadowy cloud,
  Illumine the mantled Earth, and kiss
    The meekly murmuring lips of Ocean,
  As a mother doth her child.

  But now I can feel how Time hath changed
    My thoughts within, the prospect round us—­
  How boyish companions have thinn’d away;
  How the sun hath grown cloudier, ray by ray;
  How loved scenes of childhood are now estranged;
    And the chilling tempests of Care have bound us
  Within their icy folds.

  ’Tis no vain dream of moody mind,
    That lists a dirge i’ the blackbird’s singing;
  That in gusts hears Nature’s own voice complain,
  And beholds her tears in the gushing rain;
  When low clouds congregate blank and blind,
    And Winter’s snow-muffled arms are clinging
  Round Autumn’s faded urn.

DELTA.

Blackwood’s Magazine.

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CALAIS