278 SELECT POETRY

His wing on the wind, and his eye on the sun,

He swerves not a hair, but bears onward, right on.
Boy ! may the eagle’s flight ever be thine,
Onward and upward, true to the line.

What is that, mother ?
The swan, my love !
He is floating down from his native grove ;
No loved one, now, no nestling nigh,
He is floating down by himself to die ;
Death darkens his eye, and unplumes his wings,
Yet the sweetest song is the last he sings.!
Live so, my love, that when death shall come,
Swan-like and sweet, it may waft thee home.
G. W. Doane.

SABBATH MORNING.

How still the morning of the hallowed day !
Mute is the voice of rural labour, hushed

The ploughboy’s whistle and the milkmaid’s song;
The scythe lies glittering in the dewy wreath

Of tedded grass,? mingled with fading flowers,
That yestermorn bloomed waving in the breeze :
Sounds the most faint attract the ear—the hum
Of early bee, the rustling of the leaves,

The distant bleating, midway up the hill.

To him who wanders o’er the upland leas,

“aT

1 The notion of the swan singing before its death, and
indeed of its singing at all, must be reckoned amongst the
fictions of the poets.

® Tedded grass—newly-mown grass, laid in rows.

3 Lea—enclosed pasture land.