A CHURCH IN NORTH WALES.

MRS. HEMANS.

BLESSINGS be round it still!—that gleaming fane,
Low in its mountain-glen !-old mossy trees
Narrow the sunshine through the untinted pane,
And oft, borne in upon some fitful breeze,
The deep sound of the ever-pealing seas,

Filling the hollows with its anthem-tone,
There meets the voice of psalms ;-yet not alone
For mansions lulling to the heart as these,

I bless thee midst thy rocks, grey house of prayer!
But for their sakes that unto thee repair

From the hill-cabins and the ocean shore :

Oh may the fisher and the mountaineer

Words to sustain earth's toiling children hear,
Within thy lowly walls for evermore!

THE PARROT.

A DOMESTIC ANECDOTE.

THOMAS CAMPBELL. FROM THE "NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE."

THE deep affections of the breast,
That heaven to living things imparts,
Are not exclusively possess

By human hearts.

A parrot from the Spanish main,
Full young and early caged came o'er,
With bright wings to the bleak domain
Of Mulla's shore.

To spicy groves where he had won
His plumage of resplendent hue,

His native fruits, and skies, and sun,
He bade adieu !

For these he changed the smoke of turf

A heathery land and misty sky,

And turn'd on rocks and raging surf

His golden eye.

But petted in our climate cold
He lived and chatter'd many a day;
Until with age, from green and gold,
His wings grew grey.

At last, when blind and seeming dumb,
He scolded, laugh'd, and spoke no more,
A Spanish stranger chanced to come
To Mulla's shore.

He bail'd the bird in Spanish speech;
The bird in Spanish speech replied;

Flapp'd round his cage with joyous speech,
Dropp'd down and died.

This incident, so strongly illustrating the power of memory, of association in the lower animals, is not a fiction. The author heard a many years ago in the Island of Mull, from the family to whom the bird belonged.

STANZAS.

JOHN KEATS, BORN IN LONDON, OCTOBER 29, 1796, DIED

AT ROME, DECEMBER 27, 1820.

IN a drear-nighted December,
Too happy, happy tree,
Thy branches pe'er remember
Their green felicity:

The north cannot undo them,

With a sleety whistle through them;
Nor frozen thawings glue them
From budding at the prime.

In a drear-nighted December,
Too happy, happy brook,
Thy bubblings ne'er remember
Apollo's summer look;

But with a sweet forgetting,

They stay their crystal fretting,

Never, never petting

About the frozen time.

Ah! would 'twere so with many

A gentle boy and girl!

But where there ever any
Writhed not at passed joy?

To know the change and feel it,
When there is none to heal it,
Nor numbed sense to steel it,
Was never said in rhyme.

THE VOICE OF CHRISTMAS.

Written after hearing the church bells ring the Old Year's knell, and the New Year's welcome,

BY THE EDITOR.

WHAT music wakes the midnight air?
The voice of mirth-the tongue of prayer;
What mean those sounds so blithely given?
They speak of earth, remind of heaven.
They breathe the warning breathed of old
To thoughtless hearts now wrapp'd in mould;
The truth, forgot as soon as told,

That time with life resistless flies

Earth's meteor shooting to the skies!
They tell the tale that daunts the brave-
Another year salutes the grave;

And youth and age, and hope and fear,
Are crush'd, for death has triumph'd here.

Yet Joy laughs loudly o'er the bier,
And mocks the mourner and the tear:
"Why do ye droop, by grief dismay'd?
Come forth, the sun shall gild the shads