Oh welcome, bat and owlet gray, Thus winging low your airy way! And welcome, moth and drowsy fly, That to mine ear come humming by! And welcome, shadows dim and deep, 5 And stars that through the pale sky peep! O welcome all! to me ye say, My woodland Love is on her way. Upon the soft wind floats her hair; Her breath is in the dewy air; 10 Her steps are in the whispered sound, That steals along the stilly ground. O dawn of day, in rosy bower, What art thou to this witching hour? O noon of day, in sunshine bright, 15 What art thou to the fall of night? _Joanna Baillie._ CLXXXVIII _THE LONELY._ She was a queen of noble Nature’s crowning, A smile of her’s was like an act of grace; She had no winsome looks, no pretty frowning, Like daily beauties of the vulgar race; But if she smiled, a light was on her face, 5 A clear, cool kindliness, a lunar beam Of peaceful radiance, silvering o’er the stream Of human thought with unabiding glory; Not quite a waking truth, not quite a dream, A visitation, bright and transitory. 10 But she is changed,--hath felt the touch of sorrow; No love hath she, no understanding friend; Oh grief! when heaven is forced of earth to borrow What the poor niggard earth has not to lend; But when the stalk is snapt, the rose must bend. 15 The tallest flower that skyward rears its head, Grows from the common ground, and there must shed Its delicate petals. Cruel fate, too surely, That they should find so base a bridal bed, Who lived in virgin pride, so sweet and purely! 20 She had a brother, and a tender father; And she was loved, but not as others are, From whom we ask return of love,--but rather As one might love a dream; a phantom-fair Of something exquisitely strange and rare, 25 Which all were glad to look on, men and maids, Yet no one claimed--as oft, in dewy glades The peering primrose, like a sudden gladness, Gleams on the soul, yet unregarded fades;-- The joy is ours, but all its own the sadness. 30 ’Tis vain to say--her worst of grief is only The common lot, which all the world have known; To her ’tis more, because her heart is lonely, And yet she hath no strength to stand alone;-- Once she had playmates, fancies of her own, 35 And she did love them. They are past away, As fairies vanish at the break of day; And like a spectre of an age departed, Or unsphered angel wofully astray, She glides along--the solitary-hearted. _Hartley Coleridge._ CLXXXIX _PROUD MAISIE._