TO A BUTTERFLY IN A CROWDED STREET. 173

Tinted silks, like Autumn trees,
Waving brightly in the breeze?
Plume and wreath of varied dyes,
Rich as sunset's glowing skies?
Ruby, pearl, and emerald green
Basking in the diamond's sheen?
These are but my liveried pride,
Tints and tinsel magnified;
And where gaud and glare abound,
May not nature's belle be found?

Mark again the motley throng
By thy side that sweeps along,

With so gay and smiling guise
One might gaze with wondering eyes,
For some sphered Elysium near,

Whence such shapes had lighted here:
Born when fortune's starry cope

Cast its brightest horoscope,

Heirs of leisure, wealth, and will,

How should they their end fulfil,
But by idlesse, fancy, show,

As we rural minions do?

Whom they sometimes deign to visit,
And both rhyme and reason is it,
That we too should not contemn

In our turn to visit them,

Nor ourselves unwelcome see

Where our kith and kindred be!

Gold Fishes.

Hartley Coleridge.

RESTLESS forms of living light,

Quivering on your lucid wings,
Cheating still the curious sight
With a thousand shadowings,

Various as the tints of even,
Gorgeous as the hues of heaven,
Reflected on your native streams
In flitting, flashing, billowy gleams.
Harmless warriors clad in mail
Of silver breast-plate, golden scale;
Mail of Nature's own bestowing,

With peaceful radiance mildly glowing,
Keener than the Tartar's arrow,

Sport ye

in your sea so narrow,

Was the sun himself your sire?

Were ye born of vital fire!

Or of the shade of golden flowers,
Such as we fetch from Eastern bowers,
To mock this murky clime of ours?

It

As

gay, as gamesome, and as blit
As light, as loving, and as lithe,
As gladly earnest in your play,
As when ye gleamed in fair Cath
And yet, since on this hapless ea
There's small sincerity in mirth,
And laughter oft is but an art
To drown the outcry of the heart
may be that your ceaseless ga
Your wheelings, dartings, driving
Your restless rovings round and
The circuit of your crystal boun
Is but the task of weary pain,
An endless labor, dull and vain;
And while your forms are gayly
Your little lives are inly pining!
Nay! but still I fain would drea
That ye are happy as ye seem.

vers, bowers,

Durs?

Sonnet.

HE forward Violet thus did I chide ;—

Shakspeare.

Sweet thief, whence didst thou steal thy sweet that smell

not from my Love's breath? The purple pride
Which on thy soft cheek for complexion dwells,
my Love's veins thou hast too grossly dyed.
The Lily I condemnéd for thy hand,
nd beds of Marjoram had stolen thy hair:
The Roses fearfully on thorns did stand,
ne blushing shame, another white despair;
A third, nor red, nor white, had stolen of both,
nd to his robbery had annexed thy breath;
But for his theft, in pride of all his growth
vengeful canker ate him up to death.

More flowers I noted, yet I none could see,
But sweet or color it had stolen from thee.

Sabbath Evening.

George D. Prentice.

"TIS holy time.

The evening shade

Steals with a soft control

O'er nature, as a thought of heaven

Steals o'er the human soul.

And every ray from yonder blue,
And every drop of falling dew,
Seem to bring down to human woes
From Heaven a message of repose.

O'er yon tall rock, the shady trees
A solemn group incline,

Like gentle nuns in sorrow bowed
Around their holy shrine;

And o'er them now the night-winds blow

So calm and still, the music low,

Seems the mysterious voice of prayer

Soft echoed on the evening air.