The morning mist is clear’d away,
Yet still the face of heaven is gray,
Nor yet th’ autumnal breeze has stirr’d the grove,
Faded, yet full, a paler green
Skirts soberly the tranquil scene,
The red-breast warbles round this leafy cove.
Sweet messenger of calm decay,
Saluting sorrow as you may,
As one still bent to make, or find the best,
In thee, and in this quiet mead
The lesson of sweet peace I read,
Rather in all to be resign’d than blest.
’Tis a low chant, according well
With the soft solitary knell,
As homeward from some grave belov’d we turn,
Or by some holy death-bed dear,
Most welcome to the chasten’d ear
Of her whom Heaven is teaching how to mourn.
O cheerful, tender strain! the heart
That duly bears with you its part,
Singing so thankful to the dreary blast,
Though gone and spent its joyous prime,
And on the world’s autumnal time
'Mid withered hues, and sere, its lot be cast,
That is the heart for thoughtful seer,
Watching, in trance nor dark nor clear,
Th’ appalling Future as it nearer draws;
His spirit calm’d the storm to meet,
Feeling the Rock beneath his feet,
And tracing through the cloud th’ eternal Cause.
JOHN KEBLE.
[Illustration: [Pastoral Scene]]
XIV.
=The Butterfly.=
The “Fate of the Butterfly” is one of the most charming of Spenser’s
lesser poems; and as it is seldom met with on American bookshelves, it
has been inserted entire, or at least with the exception of a verse or
two, in the present volume.
Familiar as we are with them, we seldom bear in mind how much the more
pleasing varieties of the insect race add to the beauty and interest of
the earth. Setting aside the important question of their different uses,
and the appropriate tasks allotted to each—forgetting for the moment
what we owe to the bee, and the silkworm, and the coral insect, with
others of the same class—we are very apt to underrate them even as
regards the pleasure and gratification they afford us. The utter absence
of insect life is one of the most striking characteristics of our
Northern American winters. Let us suppose for a moment that something of
the same kind were
to mark one single summer of our lives—that the hum of the bee, the
drone of the beetle, the chirrup of cricket, locust, and katydid, the
noiseless flight of gnat, moth, and butterfly, and the flash of the
firefly, were suddenly to cease from the days and nights of June—suppose
a magic sleep to fall upon them all; let their tiny but wonderful forms
vanish from their usual haunts; let their ceaseless, cheery chant of day
and night be hushed, should we not be oppressed with the strange
stillness? Should we not look wistfully about for more than one familiar
creature? The gardens and the meadows would in very sooth scarce seem
themselves without this lesser world of insect life, moving in busy,
gay, unobtrusive variety among the plants they love; and we may well
believe that we should gladly welcome back the lowliest of the beetles,
and the most humble of the moths which have so often crossed our path.