* * * * * SUMMER MORNING LANDSCAPE.--DELTA. The eyelids of the morning are awake; The dews are disappearing from the grass; The sun is o'er the mountains; and the trees, Moveless, are stretching through the blue of heaven, Exuberantly green. All noiseless The shadows of the twilight fleet away, And draw their misty legion to the west, Seen for awhile, 'mid the salubrious air, Suspended in the silent atmosphere, As in Medina's mosque Mahomet's tomb,-- Up from the coppice, on exulting wing, Mounts, mounts the skylark through the clouds of dawn,-- The clouds, whose snow-white canopy is spread Athwart, yet hiding not, at intervals, The azure beauty of the summer sky; And, at far distance heard, a bodiless note Pours down, as if from cherub stray'd from Heaven! Maternal Nature! all thy sights and sounds Now breathe repose, and peace, and harmony. The lake's unruffled bosom, cold and clear, Expands beneath me, like a silver veil Thrown o'er the level of subjacent fields, Revealing, on its conscious countenance, The shadows of the clouds that float above:-- Upon its central stone the heron sits Stirless,--as in the wave its counterpart,-- Looking, with quiet eye, towards the shore Of dark-green copse-wood, dark, save, here and there, Where spangled with the broom's bright aureate flowers.-- The blue-winged sea-gull, sailing placidly Above his landward haunts, dips down alert His plumage in the waters, and, anon, With quicken'd wing, in silence re-ascends.-- Whence comest thou, lone pilgrim of the wild? Whence wanderest thou, lone Arab of the air? Where makest thou thy dwelling-place? Afar, O'er inland pastures, from the herbless rock, Amid the weltering ocean, thou dost hold, At early sunrise, thy unguided way,-- The visitants of Nature's varied realms,-- The habitant of Ocean, Earth, and Air,-- Sailing with sportive breast, mid wind and wave, And, when the sober evening draws around Her curtains, clasp'd together by her Star, Returning to the sea-rock's breezy peak.