Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers; And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep Steady thy laden head across a brook;

Or by a cider-press, with patient look,

Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.
Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music, too,
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft

Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft,
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

ON FIRST READING CHAPMAN'S HOMER.
MUCH have I traveled in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round many Western Islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told

That deep-browed Homer ruled as his demesne:
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swings into his ken;

Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes He stared at the Pacific - and all his men Looked at each other with a wild surmiseSilent, upon a peak in Darien.

LINES ON THE MERMAID TAVERN.

SOULS of Poets dead and gone,

What Elysium have ye known,

Happy field or mossy cavern,

Choicer than the Mermaid Tavern?
Have ye tippled drink more fine
Than mine host's Canary wine?
Or are fruits of Paradise

No! those days are gone away, And their hours are old and gray, And their minutes buried all Under the down-trodden pall Of the leaves of many years: Many times have winter's shears, Frozen North, and chilling East, Sounded tempests to the feast Of the forest's whispering fleeces, Since men knew nor rent nor leases.

No, the bugle sounds no more,
And the twanging bow no more;
Silent is the ivory shrill

Past the heath and up the hill;
There is no mid-forest laugh,
Where lone Echo gives the half
To some wight, amaz'd to hear
Jesting, deep in forest drear.

On the fairest time of June
You may go, with sun or moon,

Or the seven stars to light you,
Or the polar ray to right you;
But you never may behold
Little John, or Robin bold;
Never one, of all the clan,
Thrumming on an empty can
Some old hunting ditty, while
He doth his green way beguile
To fair hostess Merriment,
Down beside the pasture Trent;
For he left the merry tale
Messenger for spicy ale.

Gone, the merry morris din;
Gone, the song of Gamelyn;
Gone, the tough-belted outlaw
Idling in the "grenè shawe";
All are gone away and past!
And if Robin should be cast
Sudden from his turfed grave,
And if Marian should have
Once again her forest days,

She would weep, and he would craze:
He would swear, for all his oaks,
Fall'n beneath the dockyard strokes,
Have rotted on the briny seas;
She would weep that her wild bees
Sang not to her-strange! that honey
Can't be got without hard money!

So it is yet let us sing,
Honor to the old bow-string!
Honor to the bugle-horn!
Honor to the woods unshorn!
Honor to the Lincoln green!
Honor to the archer keen!
Honor to tight little John,
And the horse he rode upon!
Honor to bold Robin Hood,
Sleeping in the underwood!

Honor to maid Marian,

And to all the Sherwood-clan!
Though their days have hurried by

Let us two a burden try.

JOHN KEBLE.

JOHN KEBLE, a famous English clergyman and poet, born at Fairford, Gloucestershire, April 25, 1792; died at Bournemouth, Hampshire, Marc' 27, 1866. He took his degree at Oriel College, Oxford, in 1810. He was ordained in 1815, and in 1823 resigned all his Oxford employments from a sense of duty and accepted three small curacies, the united emoluments of which were less than £100 a year. In 1824 he declined an archdeanery in the West Indies, worth £2,000 a year; and in 1825 accepted the curacy of Hursley, becoming Vicar of the parish in 1839. In 1832 he was made Professor of Poetry at Oxford. His "Prælectiones Academica," in Latin, were published in 1832-1840. His sermon, "The National Apostacy," preached at Oxford in 1833, is characterized as "the start of the religious movement" of that time. He was also the author of several of the famous "Tracts for the Times." He edited and annotated "The Complete W rks of Richard Hooker (4 vols., 1836); and in 1838, in conjunct on with Newman and Pusey, began the editing of the Library of the Fathers,' a collection extending to some forty volumes. His poetical works comprise "The Christian Year," upon which his reputation mainly rests, and of which more than 500,000 copies have been sold (1827); “The Child's Christian Year" (1841); The Psalter, in English Verse" (1839); "Lyra Innocentium" (1846); and a volume of "Posthumous Poems." The "Life of Kebie" has been written by Chief-Justice Sir John Taylor Coleridge (1868).

THIRD SUNDAY IN LENT.

(THE CHRISTIAN INHERITANCE.)

SEE Lucifer like lightning fall,
Dashed from his throne of pride;
While, answering Thy victorious call,
The Saints his spoils divide;

This world of Thine, by him usurped too long,

Now opening all her stores to heal Thy servants' wrong.

So when the first-born of Thy foes
Dead in the darkness lay,

When Thy redeemed at midnight rose

And cast their bonds away,

The rphaned realm threw wide her gates and told
Into freed Israel's lap her jewels and her gold.

And when their wondrous march was o'er,
And they had w n their homes,

Where Abraham fed his flocks of yore,

Among their fathers' tombs;

A land that drinks the rain of Heaven at will,

Whose waters kiss th feet

many a vine-clad hill:

Oft as they watched, at thoughtful eve,

A gale from bowers of balm

Sweep o'er the billowy corn, and heave

The tresses of the palm,

Just as the lingering Sun had touched with gold,
Far o'er the cedar shade, some tower of giants old.

It was a fearful joy, I ween,

To trace the Heathen's toil

The limpid wells, the orchards green,

Left ready for the spoil,

The household stores untouched, the roses bright
Wreathed o'er the cottage-walls in garlands of delight.

And now another Canaan yields

To Thine all-conquering Ark;

Fly from the "old poetic" fields,
Ye Paynim shadows dark!

Immortal Greece, dear land of glorious lays,

Lo! here the "unknown God" of thy unconscious praise!

The olive-wreath, the ivied wand,

"The sword in myrtles drest," Each legend of the shadowy strand Now wakes a vision blest;

As little children lisp, and tell of Heaven,

So thoughts beyond their thought to those high bards were

given.

And these are ours; Thy partial grace

The tempting treasure lends:

These relics of a guilty race

Are forfeit to Thy friends;