an fruits and flowers
That breathe, in foreign lands, of English bowers.

Thy gracious gift, dear lady, well recalls
Sweet scenes of home,--the white cot's trellised walls--
The trim red garden path--the rustic seat--
The jasmine-covered arbour, fit retreat
For hearts that love repose. Each spot displays
Some long-remembered charm. In sweet amaze
I feel as one who from a weary dream
Of exile wakes, and sees the morning beam
Illume the glorious clouds of every hue
That float o'er scenes his happy childhood knew.

How small a spark may kindle fancy's flame
And light up all the past! The very same
Glad sounds and sights that charmed my heart of old
Arrest me now--I hear them and behold.

Ah! yonder is the happy circle seated
Within, the favorite bower! I am greeted
With joyous shouts; my rosy boys have heard
A father's voice--their little hearts are stirred
With eager hope of some new toy or treat
And on they rush, with never-resting feet!

* * * * *

Gone is the sweet illusion--like a scene
Formed by the western vapors, when between
The dusky earth, and day's departing light
The curtain falls of India's sudden night.

D.L.R.

The verdant carpet embroidered with little stars of gold and silver--the
short-grown, smooth, and close-woven, but most delicate and elastic
fresh sward--so soothing to the dazzled eye, so welcome to the wearied
limbs--so suggestive of innocent and happy thoughts,--so refreshing to
the freed visitor, long pent up in the smoky city--is surely no where to
be seen in such exquisite perfection as on the broad meadows and
softly-swelling hills of England. And perhaps in no country in the world
could _pic-nic_ holiday-makers or playful children with more perfect
security of life and health stroll about or rest upon Earth's richly
enamelled floor from sunrise to sunset on a summer's day. No Englishman
would dare to stretch himself at full length and address himself to sleep
upon an Oriental meadow unless he were perfectly indifferent to life
itself and could see nothing terrible in the hostility of the deadliest
reptiles. When wading through the long grass and thick jungles of Bengal,
he is made to acknowledge the full force of the true and beautiful
expression--"_In the midst of life we are in death_." The British Indian
exile on his return home is delighted with