A Garden.

HE finished garden to

the view

Its vistas opens, and its valleys green

Snatched through the verdant

maze, the hurried eye Distracted wanders: now the

bowery walk

Of covert close, where scarce

a speck of day

Falls on the lengthened gloom, protracted sweeps;

Now meets the bended sky; the river now

Dimpling along, the breezy ruffled lake,

The forest darkening round, the glittering spire,

Th' ethereal mountain, and

the distant main.

But why so far excursive? when at hand,

Along these blushing borders,

bright with dew,

And in yon mingled wilderness of flowers,

Fair-handed Spring unbosoms

every grace;

Throws out the snow-drop and the crocus first;
The daisy, primrose; violet, darkly blue;
And polyanthus, of unnumbered dyes;

The yellow wall-flower, stained with iron brown,

And lavish stock, that scents the garden round;
From the soft wing of vernal breezes shed,
Anemones; auriculas, enriched

With shining meal o'er all their velvet leaves;
And full ranunculus, of glowing red.

Then comes the tulip race, where Beauty plays
Her idle freaks; from family diffused

To family, as flies the father dust,

The varied colours run, and while they break
On the charmed eye, th' exulting florist marks,
With secret pride, the wonders of his hand.
No gradual bloom is wanting from the bud,
First-born of Spring, to Summer's musky tribes :
Nor hyacinths, of purest virgin white,
Low-bent, and blushing inward; nor jonquils,
Of potent fragrance; nor Narcissus fair,
As o'er the fabled fountain hanging still;

Nor broad carnations, nor gay spotted pinks;

Nor, showered from every bush, the damask rose.
Infinite numbers, delicacies, smells,

With hues on hues expression cannot paint,

The breath of Nature, and her endless bloom.

Beauties of the Evening.

I WALK, unseen,

On the dry smooth-shaven green,
To behold the wandering moon
Riding near her highest noon;
And oft as if her head she bow'd,
Stooping through a fleecy cloud.

Oft on a plat of rising ground
I hear the far-off curfew sound,
Over some wide-water'd shore,
Swinging slow with solemn roar.
Or if the air will not permit,

Some still removèd place will fit,
Where glowing embers through the room
Teach light to counterfeit a gloom;
Far from all resort of mirth,

Save the cricket on the hearth,

Or the bellman's drowsy charm,

To bless the doors from nightly harm;

Or let my lamp at midnight hour

Be seen, in some high lonely tower,

Exploring Plato, to unfold

What worlds, or what vast regions, hold

Th' immortal mind that had forsook

Her mansion in this fleshy nook,

[JOHN MILTON was born in London, in 1608, and died in 1674. His magnificent poetry has been well described as a compound of the majesty of Homer and the sweetness of Virgil, for it was of him that the apt and oft-quoted lines were written:

"Three poets, in three distant ages born,
Greece, Italy, and England did adorn;
The first in majesty of thought surpassed,
The next in sweetness, and in both the last.
The force of Nature could no further go,

To make a third, she joined the other two."

Sold for a pittance of fifteen pounds, neglected by the vitiated taste of a licentious age, and only recommended to notice long after the mighty hand that penned it had crumbled into dust, Milton's "Paradise Lost" has at length been enshrined as the greatest epic poem in the English language, and its writer

I

Wronged and wrong-doer, each with meeken'd face,
And cold hands folded over a still heart,

Pass the green threshold of our common grave,
Whither all footsteps tend, whence none depart,
Awed for myself, and pitying my race,

Our common sorrow, like a mighty wave,

Swept all my pride away, and trembling I forgave!

WHITTIER.

as our great national poet. His second great epic, "Paradise Regained," was written at the suggestion of Elwood, the Quaker, who remarked to Milton, "Thou hast said a great deal upon Paradise lost; what hast thou to say upon Paradise found?" The minor poems of Milton-"Comus," "Lycidas," "L'Allegro," "Il Penseroso," and the magnificent "Samson Agonistes," are now being generally read and appreciated, after two centuries of neglect and oblivion.]

Of large extent, hard by a castle huge,
Which the great lord inhabits not; and so
This grove is wild with tangling underwood,
And the trim walks are broken up, and grass,
Thin grass, and king-cups grow within the paths.
But never elsewhere in one place I knew
So many nightingales; and far and near,