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ENCHANTER'S NIGHTSHADE.

The Nightshade strews, to work him ill.

DRAYTON.

HAUGHTY daughter of the sun,
Wherefore is thy name bestow'd
On this humble, lowly one;

Who, in shelter'd close abode,
Seems his burning eye to shun?

Thou wert, like thy father, bright;
Glorious in thy golden hair!
Never stream'd his parent light
On a brow more proudly fair,
Most unlike this simple wight.

Ah! not thine alone the spell ;
Others, too, can drug the bowl!
Like this flower of woodland dell,
Oft the Circe of the soul
Dwells retired in secret cell.

There is peril everywhere!

In the shadiest walks of life,
As beneath its sun's broad glare;
Earth is with temptations rife,—
Therefore let thy breath be prayer.

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LET not the idle and the ignorant scoff at him who devotes an unemployed hour, no calling left, no duty broke," to investigate a moss, a lichen, a beetle, or a shell, in “ ways of pleasantness and in paths of peace." They are all the formation of Supreme Intelligence, for a wise and worthy end, and may lead us by gentle steps and degrees to a faint notion of the powers of Infinite Wisdom.

KNAPP.

Он! how canst thou renounce the boundless

store

Of charms, which Nature to her votary yields !
The warbling woodlands, the resounding shore,
The pomp of groves, the garniture of fields;
All that the genial ray of morning gilds,
And all that echoes to the song of even-

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Oh, how canst thou renounce, and hope to be

forgiven?

BEATTIE.

RAGGED HOARY EVERNIA. (LICHEN.)

SOME are reddish, some brown, some grey, and some black,

And they're pucker'd, edged, button'd, or fringed front and back;

Some are lying like leather, close under your feet, Some waving from trees, in the forest you'll meet. MISS TWAMLEY.

As in the wood, where leathery lichens weave
Their wintry web among the sallow leaves,
Which through cold months in whirling eddies
blown,

Decay beneath the branches once their own.
From the brown shelter of their foliage sere,
Spring the young blooms that lead the floral year;-
So views the wonderer, with delighted eyes,
Reviving hopes from black despondence rise;
And as delicious dreams enchant his mind,
Forgets his sorrows past, and gives them to the
wind.

MRS. C. SMITH.

In the vegetable world, as in all other parts of creation, ample scope is found for the exercise of the reasoning faculties, and abundant sources are supplied of intellectual enjoyment. To discriminate the different characters of plants, amidst the infinite diversity of shape, of colour, and of structure which they offer to our observation, is the fascinating occupation of the botanist.

ROGET.

LET us seek in grove and field,

What food for wonder, what for use they yield; Some just remark from Nature's people bring, And some new source of homage for her King.

CRABBE.

In this wide field of wonders, can you find
No art discover'd, and no end design'd?

SIR R. BLACKMORE. 1712,

RED POPPY.

FULL-BLOWN Poppies overcharged with rain,
Decline the head, and drooping kiss the plain.

POFE.

PLEASURES are like poppies spread,-
You seize the flower, the bloom is shed;
Or like the snow falls in the river,

A moment white-then melts for ever!

BURNS.

SLEEP is a god too proud to wait in palaces,
And yet so humble too, as not to scorn
The meanest country cottages;

His Poppy grows among the corn.

AND thou, by pain and sorrow blest,
Papaver, that an opiate dew

Conceal'st beneath thy scarlet vest,

Contrasting with the cornflower blue;

COWLEY.

Autumnal months behold thy gauzy leaves

Bend in the rustling gale amid the tawny sheaves.

MRS. C. SMITH.

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