A butterfly's light back bestriding,
Queen-bees to honey-suckles guiding,
Or in a swinging hare bell riding,
Free from care?

Before Aurora's car you amble
High in air;

At noon, when Neptune's sea nymphs gambol,
Braid their hair;

When on the tumbling billows rolling,
Or on the smooth sands idly strolling,
Or in cool grottoes they lie lolling,
You sport there.

To chase the moon-beams up the mountains
You prepare ;

Or dance with elves on brinks of fountains, Mirth to share ;

Now seen with love-lorn lillies weeping, Now with a blushing rose-bud sleeping, While fays from forth their chambers peeping, Cry, O rare!

ODE ON TIME.

By Miss Seward.

O'ER him, by health and fortune crowned,

Time steals with step so light,

Scarce are his faint impressions found
On the gay forehead's open round,

Or shining orb of sight.

Smooth as the young Camilla, borne
With printless step and fleet,

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O'er plenteous fields of ripened corn,
Whose bending stalks the gales of morn
Bow on the passing feet.

But o'er the dim Form, pressed by woes,
He treads with heavy pace,

Sweeps his broad scythe, and as he goes, Down falls the summer pride, and shows Worn Nature's furrowed face.

TO HOPE.

Aн, woe is me! from day to day
I drag a life of pain and sorrow;
Yet still, sweet Hope, I hear thee say

'Be calm, thine ills will end tomorrow.”

The morrow comes, but brings to me
No charm disease or grief relieving!
And am I ever doomed to see,

Sweet Hope, thy promises deceiving !
Yet false and cruel as thou art,
Thy dear delusions will I cherish ;
I cannot, dare not with thee part,
Since I, alas! with thee must perish.

THE DRAMA.

THEATRICAL

RETROSPECT,

For February, 1807,

BOSTON THEATRE.

FEB. 3.-Venice Preserved and Patie and Peggy.

Of Mr. Cooper's Jaffier we cannot speak otherwise than in terms of the highest appro bation; for of all the characters he has personated on our stage we do not remember one which has so unexceptionable a claim to criti cal applause. Mrs. Stanley's Belvidera, too, was truly excellent; and in the several scenes with Jaffier displayed uncommon powers to harrow up the soul.'

With fluttering pulse,

With eye bedewed, and sorrow-troubled breast, a house, overflowing in every part, testifiedtheir approbation.

Pierre was performed by Mr. Morse, a gentleman of Massachusetts who has been for a few weeks under the tuition of Mr. Cooper. He was well received and excepting a few instances of misplaced emphasis, he acquitted himself respectably. With such a man as Mr. C. for his tutor, he cannot fail of attaining superiour excellence and high professional rank.

Feb. 4.-Rule a Wife and have a Wife and The Turnpike Gate, for the benefit of Mr. Cooper. We believe this the only play of Beaumont and Fletcher that has ever visited the American stage. Mrs. Inchbald has prefixed to her edition of it the following remarks

"The fifty-three plays which are published as the joint works of Beaumont and Fletcher, do not give them more reputation as poets, than their steady friendship confers honour upon them as men.

"To the querulous and the vain it must be a subject of astonishment, how two persons could derive fame so directly from the same source, as writing plays together, without contending which had the strongest claim to that general admiration, which their productions excited. To female authors, of all others, this long mental union must be matter of a mazement! With them such a conjunction of efforts had been intolerable as soon as praise became the reward; each would then have demanded the largest share, prompted by the conscientious scruples of justice.

"There is one failing, notwithstanding their stable friendship, which likens these poets to the female sex-they did not write, perfect grammar. It was the fashion of the times to be incorrect; and ease is the parent of genius. Shakespeare, who wrote at the same time, might have been restrained in many of his sublimest flights, by the dread of a modern Re

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"These allied dramatists wanted, however, neither learning nor the most refined society of the period in which they wrote, to qualify them for the task they fulfilled. They were both educated at Cambridge; and the father of Beaumont was one of the judges of the Court of Common Pleas, whilst Fletcher was son to the Bishop of London.

"Rule a Wife and have a Wife, as altered by Garrick, ranks foremost among the selected plays of these united authors, that are now performed; and though it has an unpleasing fable, with female characters perfectly detestable, yet is constituted with parts so ably writ, ten, so forcible in sentiment and humour, that actors of a certain class of excellence must ever give it powerful effect in the exhibition. But to preserve its fame on the stage, no common performers can be entrusted with the charge.",

Mr. Cooper's Leon is a masterpiece of act ing throughout the whole play; but if any scene can be selected as superiour to the rest, it is that at the close of the third act, where he is so wonderfully metamorphosed from an idiot to a polished gentleman. He gives the following passage with remarkable spirit and energy

I stand upon the ground of mine own honour,
And will maintain it; you shall know me now
To be an understanding, feeling man,
And sensible of what a woman aims at.