Rymes and Roundelayes (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE PRlSlROSE. ON READING THAT SOME SETTLER HAD TRANSPORTED THIS FLOWER TO NEW SOUTH WALES. No vulgar soul was thine, who didst convey The primrose first to that new hemisphere, With tender thoughts thine exile to endear Of sweet home-scenes, o'er ocean far away, 'Midst which thy feet in childhood loved to stray, Or through the copse, or by the brooklet clear, With heart rejoicing in the vernal year, And doing homage to the bloomy May :? The tear will often gather at the sight Of that poor flower beneath a foreign sky; But it may show thee by its aspect bright, Thou art no alien from a Father's eye;? That still on thee his blessings He will shower, Who fails not in his favours to a flower. HOME-EARNINGS. HEBER IN INDIA. " So rich a shade, so'green a sod Our English fairies never trod! Yet who in Indian bower has stood, But thought on England's ( good greenwood,' And bless'd, beneath the palmy shade, Her hazel and her hawthorn glade, And breathed a prayer,?how oft in vain !? To gaze upon her oaks again ? " Alas ! poor Heber never more Beheld his dear-loved native shore, And ne'er again delighted stray'd In hazel, or in hawthorn glade, Nor gazed,?his fervent prayers were vain,? On Albion's gnarled oaks again ! Yet wherefore should we sigh for thee, O Heber! and thy destiny, Although it bade the world-wide deep Between thee and " dear Hodnet" sweep ? These lines occur in a little poem of Bishop Heber's, describing " An PIvening Walk in Bengal." On India's soil an eye above Watch'd o'er the labours of thy love, No less than if they still had sown With flowers the land thou call'dst thine own; Where'er thou wert beneath the dome Of heaven, thy meekness made a home ; However wild and lone thy way, Thou didst not ...