LINES TO A SKYLARK.

Wanderer through the wilds of air!  Freely as an angel fair Thou dost leave the solid earth, Man is bound to from his birth Scarce a cubit from the grass Springs the foot of lightest lass—­ Thou upon a cloud can’st leap, And o’er broadest rivers sweep, Climb up heaven’s steepest height, Fluttering, twinkling, in the light, Soaring, singing, till, sweet bird, Thou art neither seen nor heard, Lost in azure fields afar Like a distance hidden star, That alone for angels bright Breathes its music, sheds its light

    Warbler of the morning’s mirth! 
    When the gray mists rise from earth,
    And the round dews on each spray
    Glitter in the golden ray,
    And thy wild notes, sweet though high,
    Fill the wide cerulean, sky,
    Is there human heart or brain
    Can resist thy merry strain?

    But not always soaring high,
    Making man up turn his eye
    Just to learn what shape of love,
    Raineth music from above,—­
    All the sunny cloudlets fair
    Floating on the azure air,
    All the glories of the sky
    Thou leavest unreluctantly,
    Silently with happy breast
    To drop into thy lowly nest.

    Though the frame of man must be
    Bound to earth, the soul is free,
    But that freedom oft doth bring
    Discontent and sorrowing. 
    Oh! that from each waking vision,
    Gorgeous vista, gleam Elysian,
    From ambition’s dizzy height,
    And from hope’s illusive light,
    Man, like thee, glad lark, could brook
    Upon a low green spot to look,
    And with home affections blest
    Sink into as calm a nest!  D.L.R.

I brought from England to India two English skylarks.  I thought they would help to remind me of English meadows and keep alive many agreeable home-associations.  In crossing the desert they were carefully lashed on the top of one of the vans, and in spite of the dreadful jolting and the heat of the sun they sang the whole way until night-fall.  It was pleasant to hear English larks from rich clover fields singing so joyously in the sandy waste.  In crossing some fields between Cairo and the Pyramids I was surprized and delighted with the songs of Egyptian skylarks.  Their notes were much the same as those of the English lark.  The lark of Bengal is about the size of a sparrow and has a poor weak note.  At this moment a lark from Caubul (larger than an English lark) is doing his best to cheer me with his music.  This noble bird, though so far from his native fields, and shut up in his narrow prison, pours forth his rapturous melody in an almost unbroken stream from dawn to sunset.  He allows no change of season to abate his minstrelsy, to any observable degree, and seems equally happy and musical all the year round.  I have had him nearly two years, and though of course he must moult his feathers yearly, I have not observed the change of plumage, nor have I noticed that he has sung less at one period of the year than another.  One of my two English larks was stolen the very day I landed in India, and the other soon died.  The loss of an English lark is not to be replaced in Calcutta, though almost every week, canaries, linnets, gold-finches and bull-finches are sold at public auctions here.