Page:Landon in Literary Gazette 1823.pdf/80

79 Literary Gazette, 5th July 1823, Page 427-428

ORIGINAL POETRY. A TALE FOUNDED ON FACT.

is a little Vale, made beautiful By its blue gliding river, and its fields Of tall green grass, wherein the lark has built Her little ones a nest; its orchards hung With crimson fruit, cherries like Beauty's lip. And apples like her cheek; and more than all, Its lowly cottages, with their thatched roofs No higher than the wilding rose can reach:— There seems so much of quiet happiness In the white walls o'er which the honeysuckle Has wandered in its sweetness, and above The door has formed a porch, mixing its white And pink veined bunches with the scarlet flowers And broad leaves of the bean! A little raised From the ascending ground, is one that stands Close to the rest, yet different from them all,— For it is desolate!—the honeysuckle Darkens the broken lattices with boughs Heavy with unpruned leaves; the summer stock In the small garden of the flowers and fruit, Is trodden down and wasted, and the weeds Are many, like the evils of this world; The stool, where yet the straw hive stands, is left, Deserted by the bees, for the bindweed Has choked the entrance with its matted leaves And cold pale blossoms. - - - It is Autumn now, And all the trees are loaded; saving one, Which stands with neither foliage, fruit, nor flowers, Leafless and lifeless. And beside its trunk