Calm and grave as Socrates--
Where the sluggish buffaloe
Wallows in mud--and huge and slow,
Like massive cloud of sombre van,
Moves the land leviathan--[114]
Where beneath the jungle's screen
Close enwoven, lurks unseen
The couchant tiger--and the snake
His sly and sinuous way doth make
Through the rich mead's grassy net,
Like a miniature rivulet--
Where small white cattle, scattered wide,
Browse, from dawn to even tide--
Where the river watered soil
Scarce demands the ryot's toil--
And the rice field's emerald light
Out vies Italian meadows bright,--
Where leaves of every shape and dye,
And blossoms varied as the sky,
The fancy kindle,--fingers fair
That never closed on aught but air--
Hearts, that never heaved a sigh--
Wings, that never learned to fly--
Cups, that ne'er went table round--
Bells, that never rang with sound--
Golden crowns, of little worth--
Silver stars, that strew the earth--
Filagree fine and curious braid,
Breathed, not labored, grown, not made--
Tresses like the beams of morn
Without a thought of triumph worn--
Tongues that prate not--many an eye
Untaught midst hidden things to pry--
Brazen trumpets, long and bright,
That never summoned to the fight--
Shafts, that never pierced a side--
And plumes that never waved with pride;--
Scarcely Art a shape may know
But Nature here that shape can show.

Through this soft air, o'er this warm sod,
Stern deadly Winter never trod;
The woods their pride for centuries wear,
And not a living branch is bare;
Each field for ever boasts its bowers,
And every season brings its flowers.

D.L.R.

We all "uphold Adam's profession": we are all gardeners, either
practically or theoretically. The love of trees and flowers, and shrubs
and the green sward, with a summer sky above them, is an almost
universal sentiment. It may be smothered for a time by some one or other
of the innumerable chances and occupations of busy life; but a painting
in oils by Claude or Gainsborough, or a picture in words by Spenser or
Shakespeare that shall for ever

Live in description and look green in song,

or the sight of a few flowers on a window-sill in the city, can fill the
eye with tears of tenderness, or make the secret passion for nature
burst out again in sudden gusts of tumultuous pl