THE TREE.

Fair Tree! for thy delightful shade
'Tis just that some return be made;
Sure some return is due from me
To thy cool shadows, and to thee.
When thou to birds dost shelter give
Thou music dost from them receive;
If travellers beneath thee stay
Till storms have worn themselves away,
That time in praising thee they spend,
And thy protecting power commend;
The shepherd here, from scorching freed,
Tunes to thy dancing leaves his reed,
Whilst his loved nymph in thanks bestows
Her flowery chaplets on thy boughs.
Shall I then only silent be,
And no return be made by me?

No! let this wish upon me wait,

And still to flourish be thy fate,
To future ages mayst thou stand
Untouched by the rash workman's hand,
Till that large stock of sap is spent,
Which gives thy summer's ornament;
Till the fierce winds, that vainly strive
To shock thy greatness whilst alive,
Shall on thy lifeless hour attend,
Prevent the axe and grace thy end,
Their scattered strength together call,
And to the clouds proclaim thy fall,
Who then their evening dews may spare,
When thou no longer art their care,
But shalt, like ancient heroes, burn
And some bright hearth be made thy urn.

A NOCTURNAL REVERIE.

In such a night, when every louder wind
Is to its distant cavern safe confined,
And only gentle Zephyr fans his wings,
And lonely Philomel, still waking, sings,
Or from some tree, framed for the owl's delight,
She, hollowing clear, directs the wanderer right,—
In such a night, when passing clouds give place,
Or thinly veil the heaven's mysterious face,
When in some river, overhung with green,
The waving moon and trembling leaves are seen,
When freshened grass now bears itself upright,
And makes cool banks to pleasing rest invite,
Whence spring the woodbind and the bramble-rose,
And where the sleepy cowslip sheltered grows,
Whilst now a paler hue the foxglove takes,
Yet chequers still with red the dusky brakes,
Where scattered glowworms,-but in twilight fine,--
Shew trivial beauties, watch their hour to shine,
While Salisbury stands the test of every light,
In perfect charms and perfect beauty bright;
When odours, which declined repelling day,
Through temperate air uninterrupted stray;
When darkened groves their softest shadows wear,
And falling waters we distinctly hear;

When through the glooin more venerable shows
Some ancient fabric awful in repose;

While sunburned hills their swarthy looks conceal,
And swelling haycocks thicken up the vale ;
When the loosed horse now, as his pasture leads,
Comes slowly grazing thro' the adjoining meads,
Whose stealing pace and lengthened shade we fear,
Till torn-up forage in his teeth we hear;
When nibbling sheep at large pursue their food,
And unmolested kine rechew the cud:

When curlews cry beneath the village-walls,
And to her straggling brood the partridge calls;
Their short-lived jubilee the creatures keep,
Which but endures, whilst tyrant Man doth sleep;
When a sedate content the spirit feels,

And no fierce light disturbs, whilst it reveals;
But silent musings urge the mind to seek
Something too high for syllables to speak;
Till the free soul to a composedness charmed,
Finding the elements of rage disarmed,
O'er all below a solemn quiet grown,

Joys in the inferior world, and thinks it like her own:
In such a night let me abroad remain,

Till morning breaks and all's confused again;
Our cares, our toils, our clamours are renewed,
Our pleasures, seldom reached, again pursued.

FROM AN ODE TO THE SPLEEN.

Falsely the mortal part we blame
Of our depressed and ponderous frame,
Which, till the first degrading sin
Let thee, its dull attendant, in,
Still with the other did comply,

Nor clogged the active soul, disposed to fly
And range the mansions of its native sky.
Nor, whilst in his own heaven he dwelt,
Whilst Man his paradise possessed,
His fertile garden in the fragrant East,
And all united odours felt,

No armèd sweets, until thy reign,
Could shock the sense, or in the face
A flushed, unhandsome colour place;
But now a jonquil daunts the feeble brain,
We faint beneath the aromatic pain,

Till some offensive scent thy powers appease,
And pleasure we resign for short and nauseous ease.

VOL. III.

Disarmed with so genteel an air,

The contest I give o'er,
Yet, Alexander, have a care,

And shock the sex no more.

We rule the world our life's whole race,
Men but assume that right,
First slaves to every tempting face,
Then martyrs to our spite.

You of one Orpheus sure have read,
Who would like you have writ,
Had he in London town been bred,
And polished, too, his wit;

But he, poor soul, thought all was well,
And great should be his fame,
When he had left his wife in hell,
And birds and beasts could tame.
Yet venturing then with scoffing rhymes
The women to incense,
Resenting heroines of those times

Soon punished his offence;

And as the Hebrus rolled his skull,

And harp besmeared with blood,
They, clashing as the waves grew full,
Still harmonised the flood.

But you our follies gently treat,
And spin so fine the thread,

You need not fear his awkward fate
The Lock won't cost the Head.

Our admiration you command

For all that's gone before,

What next we look for at your hand
Can only raise it more.

Yet soothe the ladies, I advise,—
As me, too, pride has wrought,—
We're born to wit, but to be wise
By admonitions taught

D

JONATHAN SWIFT.

JONATHAN SWIFT was born in Hoey's court, Dublin, on the 30th of November 1667. Belonging to a Yorkshire family and directly descended from a vicar in Herefordshire, one of whose younger sons, the poet's father, married a Leicestershire lady, he was of unmixed English blood. A posthumous child, left in indigent circumstances, he was sent to school at Kilkenny, and then to Trinity College, Dublin, by the charity of his uncle Godwin, who died in 1688. Swift seems to have neglected the studies requisite to his degree, and having been plucked at his first examination only obtained it, on a second trial, Feb. 1686, 'speciali gratia.' On the outbreak of the war, 1688, he fled to England, and found his way from Chester on foot to his mother's residence. She obtained for him the patronage of Sir William Temple, to whose wife she was related, and he remained at Moor Park for eleven years in the capacity of secretary to that accomplished statesman, at a salary of £20 a year. This residence, interrupted by a short absence during which he held an Irish country living in the diocese of Connor, brought him into the frequent society of Hester Johnson (Stella), an inmate of the same house, and reputed daughter of Sir William's steward. In 1692 Swift went to Oxford, and was admitted there to a Master's degree. On occasion of this visit he produced his first verses--an indifferent rendering of Horace (Odes ii. 18), followed a little later by his Pindaric Odes. A more substantial result of his studies in his master's library was The Battle of the Books. In 1694 he took Deacon's, and in 1695 Priest's orders. Ere his death in 1699 Sir William had from the king a promise of promotion for his client-a promise afterwards forgotten. In 1700 Swift accompanied Lord Berkeley to Ireland as chaplain, and obtained the living of Laracor in the county of Meath, at an income of £200 a year, which by the addition of the Prebend of Dunlavin was increased to £350. Initiated into the intrigues of party, he first came before the public as a champion of the Whigs, in his pamphlet entitled A Discourse on the contests and dissensions of Athens and Rome (1701). In 1704 appeared the Tale of a Tub, perhaps the wittiest of controversial works, and in 1708 the papers ridiculing the astrologer Partridge, under the signature of Isaac Bickerstaff. In 1710, with a change of opinion, quickened by chagrin at patronage deferred, Swift passed to the side of the Tories and became their most effective literary champion. His Conduct of the Allies