There was a poet whose untimely tomb No human hands with pious reverence reared, But the charmed eddies of autumnal winds Built o’er his mouldering bones a pyramid Of mouldering leaves in the waste wilderness; A lovely youth!--no mourning maiden decked With weeping flowers, or votive cypress wreath, The lone couch of his everlasting sleep: Gentle and brave, and generous, no lorn bard Breathed o’er his dark fate one melodious sigh: He lived, he died, he sang, in solitude. Strangers have wept to hear his passionate notes, And virgins, as unknown he past, have sighed And wasted for fond love of his wild eyes. The fire of those soft orbs has ceased to burn, And Silence, too, enamoured of that voice, Locks its mute music in her rugged cell. _Shelley._ * * * * * How blest the Solitary’s lot, Who, all-forgetting, all-forgot, Within his humble cell, The cavern wild with tangling roots, Sits o’er his newly-gathered fruits, Beside his crystal well! Or, haply, to his evening thought, By unfrequented stream, The ways of men are distant brought, A faint collected dream: While praising, and raising His thoughts to heaven on high, As wand’ring, meand’ring, He views the solemn sky. Than I, no lonely hermit placed Where never human footstep traced, Less fit to play the part; The lucky moment to improve, And just to stop, and just to move, With self-respecting art: But ah! those pleasures, loves, and joys Which I too keenly taste, The Solitary can despise, Can want, and yet be blest! He needs not, he heeds not, Or human love or hate, Whilst I here must cry here, At perfidy ingrate! _Burns._ DEATH OF THE FLOWERS.