t^§^HE>^ ^oddard THE RIQHTEST GEMS OF POETRY, PROSE and SONG CONTAINING The Best Productions of the Most Celebrated Authors OF ALL Ages and Countries INCLUDING THE GLORIES OF NATURE; HOME LIFE AND RURAL SCENES; FAMOUS BALLADS; national airs and love SONGS; CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH; PATRIOTS AND HEROES; TALES OF THE SEA; BRIGHTEST THOUGHTS OF THE WORLDS MASTER MINDS EMBRACING SCOTCH AND IRISH MELODIES; TRAGEDY AND SORROW; SACRED POEMS; WIT AND WISDOM; CYCLOPEDIA OF POETICAL QUOTATIONS; BIOGRAPHIES OF AUTHORS, ETC., ETC. THE WHOLE FORMING A COMPLETE LIBRARY OF POETRY, PROSE AND SONG COMPILED AND EDITED ^/ By henry davenport f^ioRTHROP Author of "Peerlebs Reciter," "Crown Jewels." Etc.. Etc. MAGNIFICENTLY EMBELLISHED WITH 250 SUPERB PHOTOTYPE ENGRAVINGS AND ILLUSTRATIONS ON WOOD NATIONAL PUBLISHING CO.. 239, 241 AND 243 AMERICAN ST.. PHILADELPHIA, PA. L. Tlfl^fftlHIlllWWED ^ i y \\1 «t> 2775 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1S9S, by J. R. JONES, In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C. All Rights Reserved. PREFACE MAC AULA Y, in his brilliant essay on John Milton, says: "We hold that the most wonderful and splendid proof of genius is a great poem produced in a civilized age." Adopting such a standard, this new and peerless volume is a magnificent repository of the gems of genius, gathered from the most celebrated authors of all countries and ages. Its delightful pages are enriched by the most beautiful and entrancing selections of Poetry, Prose and Song. These are all classified and arranged under their appropriate tides. ' Home, Sweet Home comprises gems for the fireside, picturing in glowing colors the delights of the home circle, the beauty of domestic life and the sweet memories that cluster around the old homestead. The Charms of Nature contain the most graphic pen-pictures of Natural Scenery, including the Picturesque, the Beautiful and the Sublime. This is the natural field of poetry; "Here valleys bloom and mountains rise, And landscapes smile beneath the skies." The earth, the sea, and the vaulted heavens are portrayed to the reader's wonder- ing eye. The Poetry gf the Year forms another part and contains the most charming descriptions of the Seasons, their Flowers, Birds and Pleasant Pastimes. Descriptions and Tales of the Sea furnish a striking panorama of the World of Waters. The white-winged ships, the bounding billows, the bold sailor, the floral beauties cf the vasty deep are all vividly depicted. Who does not love nature ? What a elow of health comes from the fresh breezes of the sea and from hillside and valley. "God made the country and man made the town." The Album of Love. — This part contains the most exquisite and beautiful selections, in delightful variety, gathered from every source. Here are the sweet- est and most entrancing productions of Burns, Byron, Longfellow, Bryant, Moore, Emerson, Hood, Tennyson, Shakespeare, Saxe, Irving, Scott, Swinburne, Thacke- ray, Browning and scores of others who have woven the charms of their brightest genius around the one great master passion. ii PREFACE. Narratives in Verse comprise a captivating collection of Tales of Adventure and Romance, beginning with the " Massacre at Fort Dearborn, Chicago, in 1812." In this part famous historic incidents are related in verse by renowned authors, such as Austin Dobson, Frederick Von Schiller, Longfellow and Whittier, Baxen- dale and Tennyson, Bryant, Helen Hunt Jackson and many others. The most thrilling events are celebrated and are given undying fame by the poetic genius of the brilliant authors who narrate them. The next part includes Ballads and National Airs. These rivet the attention of the reader and in imagination he beholds the scenes they depict as living realities. Our most celebrated National Songs are found in this part, including "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," "The Star Spangled Banner," "My Maryland," "The German's Fatherland," etc. Hope and Memory, or Glimpses of the Past and Future, embrace a delightful collection of poems which carry the reader back to the scenes of long-ago, the memories of childhood, the joys of other days, and draw aside the veil of the future, through which are seen the blossoms of immortal hope. Next we have Patriots and Heroes, commemorating their noble sacrifices and valiant deeds. Great men who live in history, who rose in their might, and with undaunted heroism purchased the liberties which are the world's proudest possession, are celebrated in immortal song. There is an irresistible fascination about these time-honored heroes, whose grand lineaments are here photographed for universal admiration. Among other productions, we have that thrilling lyric, entitled "The Cuban Crisis." " Red is the setting sun, Redder the Cuban sod ; Maceo's valiant fight is done For freedom and for God. The long-leaved pine and the stately palm Bend lowly in grief to-night, And through the hush of the tropic calm There rolls from the sea a mournful psalm, A requiem over the right." The Sword and the Plow is another part of this superb volume, which describes the victories of war and of peace. The most renowned writers have celebrated the sentiment which is taking deeper root every day, that "Peace hath her victories no less renowned than war," a saying of Milton, the truth of which no one will deny. The war-cloud lifts from the torn battle-field ; the thunder of guns is hushed; armies are disbanded, and where the sod was red with blood, peaceful harvests wave in their golden glory. PREFACE. iii Rural Scenes portray the lights and shadows of country life. Here the pages are fragrant with the floral breath of summer fields and woods. "The whistling plow-boy drives his team afield," and the scythes of the mowers glint in the sun- shine. The old farmhouse stands embosomed in cool shadows. "The busy housewife plies her evening care," and, in the winter, sleigh-bells jingle, skaters skim the mirrored lake, and the glow of health beams in the faces of happy country boys and girls. Nothing could be more inviting than these Rural Scenes. Then comes a wide-awake collection of poems, entitled The World's Work- ers, in which the nobility of labor is eulogized. Here we learn " How Cyrus laid the Cable," how "you have but to take one step and then another, and the longest walk is ended;" how to win in the batde of life, and with what happy expressions the poet Whittier wrote of the ship-builders, the shoe-makers and the lumbermen. Here, too, are the songs of buskers, the plowmen and the whole vast army of the sons of toil. The next part embraces the Beauty and Grandeur of the Alps, containing brilliant descriptions of Swiss Scenery. Here Byron appears in the grand march of his lofty imagery. Snow-capped mountains veil their heads in the sky ; cascades dash from towering summits and rivers of ice move majestically toward the deep valleys. Above me are the Alps, The palaces of nature, whose vast walls Have pinnacled in clouds their snowy scalps, And throned eternity in icy halls Of cold sublimity, where forms and falls The avalanche — the thunderbolt of snow ! All that expands the spirit, yet appalls. Gathers around the summits, as to show How earth may soar to heaven, yet leave vain man below. — Lord Byron. Let it not be supposed that the little people are forgotten. The part on Childhood and Youth contains captivating selections for the young. All the innocence of childhood, the sports of the little folks as well as the pathos of their merry laughter hushed in death, are depicted with a master hand. Our literature is rich in tales and lessons for the young, the brightest and best of which adorn these pages. The Crown of Genius, containing tributes to celebrated persons, sings the praises of those whose names have become historic, while the part entitled Thought and Sentiment embraces the choicest productions from master minds on a great variety of topics. A vast collection of the finest poems ever written. iv PREFACE. Tragedy and Sorrow comprises pathetic selections from the most distinguished authors. This part has a pecuHar charm and beauty of its own. The Gates of Pearl appeal to the religious sentiment and give full expression to the soul's loftiest aspirations. Here are glowing tributes to faith and hope ; pithy descrip- tions of the practical virtues ; tender words of comfort for the bereaved and grand descriptions of the heavenly world. Wit and Wisdom, comprising sparkling gems from the world's humorists> contains the brightest and most fascinating collection of witty pieces. There is wholesome mirth on every page. This part is followed by a large Cyclopedia of Poetical Quotations, the subjects being arranged alphabetically. There is need of Vocal and Instrumental Music in every family, and often little opportunity to obtain it. This volume contains a choice collection of music from composers of world-wide fame. Thus it is a complete and charming house- hold book. It contains something of special interest to all classes of intelligent persons. The refining and elevating influence of one such book in the home is beyond the power of any one to estimate. The work also contains Biographies of Celebrated Authors, whose produc- tions appear in this volume. Here are given the main facts in the lives of those gifted men and women who have charmed all readers with their delightful effu- sions. The publishers are firmly convinced that nothing has been omitted to render this work complete. It has been made from the very best materials and is o-olden throuo-hout. HOME, SWEET HOME. I'AGE The Light of Home . . . Sarali J. Hale 17 My Child J.R.Lozvcll 18 A Mother's Love Emily Taylor 19 By the Fire '. . 19 The Little Arm-Chair 19 An Old Sweetheart of Mine . /. W. Riley 21 Alone in the House . . Mary T. Willard 22 The Old Friends . . . . 0. W. Holmes 22 Charity Bishop Ken 23 That Circle of Gold . . W. D. Ellwattgcr 23 Old Christmas 24 Two Pictures 24 Dearest Love ! Believe Me . Thos. Pringle 24 Twilight Corriiic M. Rocktvcll 24 A Wife's Appeal to Her Husband ... 25 Grandmother's Work . Mrs. C. E. Hewitt 25 An Idyl of the Kitchen . /. A. Eraser, Jr. 20 The Open Window . H. W. Longfclloiu 2(3 Where there's One to Love, Clias. Swain 26 The Proudest Lady . . Thomas Wcslzi'o •:/ 27 The Home-coming Lord Byrjii 27 The First Smile '. . 28 The Two Gates 29 The Empty House 29 The Joys of Home .... John Bozvring 29 She Grew in Sun and Siiower William Wordsworth 30 True Contentment H. S. Kent 30 Our First-born Gerald Massey 31 The Mortgage on the F"arm 32 Love in a Cottage N. P. Willis 33 Grandfather's House. . . Mary McGuire 33 Happy Love . . , . Charles Afackay 34 The Old Barn . . . . T. Buchanan Read 34 Good-night Song 35 Page 35 One of the Sleepy Kind All, No ! I cannot .say " Farewell " Alexander Rodger Bertha in the Lane, Elizabeth B. Browning Absence Fanny K. Butler The Happy Lot .... Ebenezer Elliott The Baby C. G. Rogers .Scenes of my Youth . . Robert Hillhousc The Three Dearest Words Mary J. Muckle The Mother Charles Swain The Old Farmhouse . H. W. Longfelloiu The Cricket on the Hearth, W. C. Bennett My Own Fireside '\. A. Watts The Window D. F. McCarthy The Lost Little One Gathering Apples 43 Home — a Duet .... Barry Cornwall 43 If Thou hast Lost a Friend, Charles Szvain I Think on Thee T. K. Hervey Unconscious Influence Domestic Love George Croly Not L"st, but Gone Before, Caroline A^orton Aunt Jemima's Quilt The Old Oaken Bucket, 5(iw.'. Woodivorth Bereft r W. Riley I Come to Thee, My Wife ir>u. Brunton 35 36 36 37 37 38 38 39 40 40 41 42 42 The Happy Husband . . S. T. Coleridge 43 44 44 44 45 45 47 47 48 49 Just What I Wanted 49 Come Home . . . F-.liciaD. Hemans 50 Farewell . Lord Ryron 50 Near Thee Charles Szvain -50 Her Feeble Steps . . . . /. R. Eastwood 51 Failed ' 52 Everv Inch a Man 52 VI CONTENTS. THE CHARMS OF NATURE. After Sunset E. Mathcson A Moonlight Night . . . Jane Sedgzvick The Rose Sir Walter Scott Spring Alfred Tennyson The Use of Flowers. . . . Mary Howitt Song of the Summer Winds, Geo. Darley Only Promises Robert Herrick The Rocky Mountains . . . Albert Pike The Falls of Niagara The Vale of Cashmere . . Thomas Moore The Nightingale .... Matthezv Arnold To the Daisy . . . William Wordsivorth The Brook H. W. Longfelloiv Hark ! Hark ! the Lark, Win. Shakespeare Winter Song C. T Brooks Cape-Cottage at Sunset . . W. B. Glazier The Bobolink Thomas Hill Perseverance R. S. S. Andros The Stormy Petrel . . . Barry Cormvall The Pelican .... James Montgomery Casco Bay J- G. Whitticr Lilacs Henry Davenport Flowers H W. Longfelloiv A Scene on the Hudson . W. C. Bryant Pack Clouds Away .... 7". Hey wood Our Great Plains .... Joaquin Miller A Dream of Summer . . . J. G. Whitticr A Song to Ma\' Lord Thtirhnv The Wood Madison Cawcm Osme's Song George Darley The Rivulet W. C. Bryant The Nightingale John Boivriug The Swallow Charlotte Smith The Early Primrose . . . . H. K. White The Father of Waters . . Sarah J. Hale Butterfly Beau T. H. Bayly The Old Man of the Mountain J. T. Trowbridge After Summer P. B. Marston The Dainty Rose .... Thomas Hood Snowdrops Rodcn Noel The Moss Rose . . . F. W. Krummacher Folding the Flocks, Beaumont & Fletcher Page 53 53 53 54 54 56 56 56 57 57 58 58 60 60 61 61 62 62 63 63 64 64 66 67 67 67 68 69 69 70 71 72 72 72 73 73 73 74 74 76 77 77 Page Butterfly Life T. H. Bayly 77 The Songsters fames Tliomson 78 The Sparrow J. Von Linden 79 Indian Summer 79 To a Mouse Robert Burns 80 Summer Woods John Clare 80 The West Wind W.C. Bryant 81 The Foolish Harebell, George J\Iacdonald 81 To the Daisy . . . William Wordsivorth 81 To the Skylark . . William Wordsivorth 82 The Pine Forest by the Sea, P. B. Shelley 83 One Swallow M. E. Blaine 83 The Flower Alfred Tennyson 85 New England in Winter . /. G. Whitticr 85 To the Fringed Gentian . W. C. Biyant 85 TheThrush 86 Spring Horace Smith 87 The Comet B. F. Taylor 87 Lake Mahopac . . . Caroline M. Sawyer 88 The Bugle Alfred Tennyson 88 Roses Red and White. . William Cowan 89 The Nightingale . . . . S. T. Coleridge 89 The North Star W. C. Bryant 89 Harvest Ellen M. Hutchinson 90 Song of the Brook . . . Alfred Tennyson 90 Midsummer J- F. Trowbridge 91 Trailing Arbutus . . . Rose Terry Cooke 92 Little Streams Mary Howitt 92 The Buried Flower .... W. E. Aytoun 93 The Sand-piper Celia Thaxter 94 Elegy — Written in Spring, 3Tichael Bruce 94 American Skies W. C. Bryant 95 Hampton Beach J- G. Whitticr 96 The Changed Song . . . R. W. Emerson 96 The Garden Andrew Marvell 97 To the River Arve .... W. C. Bryant 97 View Across the Roman Campagna Elizabeth B. Browning 98 The Birch-tree J. R. Lowell 98 The Glory of Motion . R. S.J. Tyrwhitt 99 The Windy Night T B. Read 100 The Owl 100 POETRY OF THE YEAR. The Year's Twelve Children 101 Joy of Spring Leigh Hunt 101 March— Chaffinch 102 Spring Felicia D. Hcmans 102 March William Wordsworth 102 April— Lark 104 Day ; A Pastoral . . . John Cunningham 104 The Grasshopper . . . Abraham Cowley 104 April William Shakespeare 105 A Walk by the Water . Charlotte Smith 105 Bud and Bloom .... Alfred Tennyson 105 The Open Day Henry Alford 105 CONTENTS. vu Page May — Nightingale 106 The Primrose John Clare \0Q A Tribute to May . . . William Roscoe 106 The Woodland in Spring William Ccnvpcr 107 Breathings of Spring . Felicia D. Henians 107 Corinna's Gone A-Maying, Robert Herrick 108 On May Morning John Milton 109 Summer Eve H. K. White 109 Children in Spring John Clare \\^ The Rose Edninnd Waller 110 Morning in Summer . . James Thomson 112 A June Day William Howitt 112 June — Dove 112 July — Cuckoo 113 Repose in Summer. . . Aljred Tennyson 113 Sonnet on Country Life . . .John Keats 113 The Blackbird .... Alfred Tennjson 113 August — Wren 114 Summer Reverie John Keats 114 Shepherd and Flock . . James Thomson 114 A Winter Sketch Ralph Hoyt ll'i To Meadows Robert Herriek 115 A Song for the Seasons . Barry Cornwall 116 Summer's Haunts . . Felicia D. Hematis 116 The Last Rose of Summer, Thotnas Moore 116 Page Fair Summer Willis G. Clark 116 A Day in Autumn . . . Robert Soiithey 116 September — Curlew 117 A Song for September . . T.W. Parsons 1 1 7 Serenity of Autumn . .James Thomson 117 Autumn Thomas Hood 118 Autumn Flowers . . Caroline B. Southey 118 October — Swallow 119 October 119 Beauties of Autumn . . . Carlos Wilcox 120 November — Sea-gull 121 A Still Day in Autumn, Sarah H. Whitman 121 Verses in Praise of Angling Sir Henry Wotton 121 December — Robin 123 Autumn— A Dirge . . . . P. B. Shelley 123 The First Snowfall . . . . f. R. Lozvell 124 Old-time Winter 124 Blow, Blow, Thou Winter Wind William Sliakespeai'e 125 Dirge for the Year . . . . P. B. Shelley 125 January — Owl 125 The Last Snow of Winter, Saj'ah Dondney 126 Skating William Wordsworth 126 February — Sparrow 126 Withered Flowers .... John Bethnne 128 DESCRIPTIONS AND TALES OF THE SEA. The Life Brigade .... Minnie Mackay 129 The Landsman's Song . Barry Cornwall 130 My Brigantine . . . J Fenimore Cooper ViO Is my Lover on the Sea, Barry Cornwall 132 The Lighthouse . . . H. W. Longfelloiv 133 The Minute Gun R. S. Sharpe 134 I Loved the Ocean Eliza Cook 134 The White Squall . . . W. M. Thackeray 135 The Boatmen's Song. . Henry Davenport 135 Tacking Ship off Shore . Walter Mitchell 136 The Solitude of the Sea . . Lord Byron 136 The Ocean James Montgomery 1 38 The Gray Swan Alice Cary 138 Sailor's Song Charles Dibdin 139 The Sea in Calm .... Barry Cornwall 139 The Lost Atlantic . . . John Talman, Jr. 140 Twilight H.W. Longfellow 141 Mary's Dream Jolm Loive 141 Drifting T.B.ReadWI The Launching of the Ship, //. /■/^^ Ztf«/f//o2<:/ 143 Mariner's Hymn . . Caroline B. Southey 144 TheReturnof the Admiral, i>rf;'r!/d9;'«7£'«//145 Life's Troubled Sea 145 The Sailor's Journal . . Charles Dibdin 146 A Song of the Sea . . Catherine Warfield 147 The Sound of the Sea, Felicia D. Hemans 148 The Mermaid Alfred Tennyson 149 The Shipwreck Lord Byron 160 The Secret of the Sea . //. W. Longfellow 151 Drifting out to Sea 152 The Voyage Alfred Tennyson 153 By the Sea 153 The Sea-Fairies .... Alfred Tennyson 154 An Old-fashioned Sea-fight, Walt Whitman 155 The Sailor-Boy .... Alfred Tennyson 155 The Gallant Sail-boat . Henry Davenport 156 ALBUM OF LOVE. A Cuban Love Song . . . Daisy Deaiie 157 I Won't Be Your Dearie Any More Rose Reilly. 157 My Ideal S. M. Peck \h% The First Kiss .... Thomas Campbell 159 Quakerdom C. G. Hal pine 159 Marion Moore J. G. Clark 159 Speak it Once More, Elisabeth B. Browning 160 Her Bright Eyes Told Me Yes T. L. Sappington 160 CONTENTS. Page The Chess Board . . . R. Bulwer Lytton 160 Woo the Fair One . . . . W. C. Byya^it \^ Of life IS fading fast dwdy ' Wlh ^srdteful heart he dwells upon The gracious time, forever 6one, The hours she Wdtched and tended him ' And now her eyes dre Orowino dim. And strength is failing, he will guide Her feeble steps with lender pride, // Counting her love of higher vjarth any prixe he ^ms on earth 51 52 HOME, SWEET HOME. FAILED. YES, I'm a ruined man, Kate — everything gone at last; Nothing to show for the trouble and toil of the weary years that are past ; Houses and lands and money have taken wings and fled ; This very morning I signed away the loof from over my head. I shouldn't care for myself, Kate ; I'm used to the world's rough ways ; Tve dug and delved and plodded along through all my manhood days ; But I think of you and the children, and it al- most breaks my heart ; For I thought so surely to give my boys and girls a splendid start. So many )ears on the ladder, I thought I was near the top — Only a lew days longer, and then I expected to stop, And ijut the boys in my place, Kate, with an easier life ahead ; But now I must give the prospect up ; that com- forting dream is dead. " I am worth more than my gold, eh?" You're good to look at it so ; But a man isn't worth very much, Kate, when his hair is turning to snow. Mv poor little girls, with their soft white hands, and their innocent eyes of blue, Turned adrift in the heartless world — what can and what will they do ? " An honest failure ?" Indeed it was ; dollar for dollar was paid ; Never a creditor suffered, whatever people have said. Better are rags and a conscience clear than a palace and flush of shame. One thing I shall leave to my children, Kate ; and that is an honest name. What's that ? " The boys are not troubled, they are ready now to begin And gain us another fortune, and work through thick and thin?" The noble fellows ! already I feel I haven't so much to bear ; Their courage has lightened my heavy load of misery and despair. " And the girls are so glad it was honest ; they'd rather not dress .sv. fine. And think they did it with money that wasn't honesth' mine?" They'ie ready to show what they're made of — quick to earn and to save — My blessed, good little daughters ! so generous and so brave ! And you think we needn't fret, Kate, while we have each other left, No matter of what possessions our lives may be bereft ? You are right. With a quiet conscience, and a wife so good and true, I'll put my hand to the plow again ; and I know that we'll pull through. EVERY INCH A MAN. SHE sat on the porch in the sunshine As I went down the street — A woman whose hair was silver, But whose face was blossom sweet, Making me think of a garden. When in spite of the frost and snow Of bleak November weather. Late, fragile lilies grow. I heard a footstep behind me. And the sound of a merry laugh. And I knew the heart it came from Would be like a comforting staff In the time and the hour of trouble, Hopeful and brave and strong ; One of the hearts to lean on. When we think all things go wrong. I turned at the click of the gate latch. And met his manly look ; A face like his gives me pleasure, Like the page of a pleasant book. It told of a steadfast purpose, Of a brave and daring will ; A face with a promise in it That, God grant, the years fulfill. He went up the pathway singing, I saw the woman's eyes Grow bright with a wordless welcome. As sunshine warms the skies. "Back again, sweetheart mother," He cried, and bent to kiss The loving face that was uplifted For what some mothers miss. That boy will do to depend on ; I hold that this is true — • From lads in love with their mothers Our bravest heroes grew. Earth's grandest hearts have been loving hearts Since time and earth began ; And the boy who kisses his mother Is every inch a man ! CHARLES DICKENS. RALPH WALDO EMERSON. THE CHARMS OF NATURE: CONTAINING GRAPHIC DESCRIPTIONS OF NATURAL SCENERY, INCLUDING THE PICTURESQUE, THE BEAUTIFUL, AND THE SUBLIME. AFTER SUNSET. NE tremulous star above the deepening west; The splash of waves upon a quiet berxh ; A sleepy twitter from some hidden nest Amidst the clustered ivy, out of reach. The sheep-bell's tinkle from the daisied leas; The rhythmic fall of homeward-wending fee ; A wind that croons amongst the leafy trees, And dies away in whispers faint and sweef. A pale young moon, whose slender silver boT Creeps slowly up beyond the purple hill; And seems to absorb the golden afterglow Within the far horizon lingering still. A.i open lattice and the scent of musk ; Then, through the slumbrous hush of earth and sky, A tender mother-voice that in the dusk Sings to a babe some Old-World lullaby. E. Matheson. T A MOONLIGHT NIGHT. HE stars that stand about the moon, Their shining faces veil as soon As at her full, in splendor bright. She floods the earth with silver light. And through green boughs of apple trees Cool comes the rustling of the breeze, While from the quivering leaves down flows A stream of sleep and soft repose. Jane Sedgwick. THE ROSE. ( i 'T^HE rose is fairest when 'tis budding new, I And hope is brightest when it dawns ■*• from fears ; The rose is sweetest washed with morning dew, And love is loveliest when embalmed in tears. O wilding rose, whom fancy thus endears, I bid your blossoms in my bonnet wave, Emblem'of hope and love through future years!" Thus spoke young Norman, heir of .\rmandave, What time the sun arose on Vennacb.ar's broad wave. Sir Walter Scott. r>?. 64 THE CHARMS OF NATURE. SPRING. DIP down upon the northern shore, O sweet new-year, delaying long : Thou doest expectant nature wrong ; Delaying long, delay no more. What stays thee from the clouded noons, Thy sweetness from its proper place? Can trouble live with April days. Or sadness in the summer moons ? Bring orchis, bring the foxglove spire, The little speedwell's darling blue. The happy birds, that change their sky To build and brood, that live their lives From land to land ; and in my breast Spring wakens too ; and my regret Becomes an April violet, And buds and blossoms like the rest. Alfred Tennyson. G ^■&?^ THE USE OF FLOWERS. OD might have made the earth bring forth, Enough for great and small. The oak-tree and the cedar-tree, cx,^^^< Deep tulips dashed with fiery dew. Laburnums, dropping-wells of fire. O thou, new-year, delaying long, Delayest the sorrow in my blood, That longs to burst a frozen bud. And flood a fresher throat with song. Now fades the last long streak of snow ; Now bourgeons every maze of quick About the flowering squares, and thick By ashen roots the violets blow. Now rings the woodland loud and long. The distance takes a lovelier hue. And drowned in yonder living blue The lark becomes a sightless song. Now dance the lights on lawn and lea, . The flocks are whiter down the vale, .\nd milkier every milky sail On winding stream or distant sea; AVhere now the seamew pipes, or dives In yonder greening gleam, and fly Without a flower at all. We might have had enough, enough For every want of ours. For luxury, medicine, and toil, And yet have had no flowers. Then wherefore, wherefore were they made, All dyed with rainbow-light, All fashioned with supremest grace Upspringing day and night : — Springing in valleys green and low. And on the mountains high. And in the silent wilderness Where no man passes by ? Our outward life requires them not, — Then wherefore had they birth ? — To minister delight to man, To beautify the earth ; To comfort man, — to whisper hope. Whene'er his faith is dim, For who so careth for the flowers Will care much more for him ! Mary Howitt. THE FIRST FLOWERS OF THE SEASON. 55 56 THE CHARMS OF NATURE. SONG OF THE SUMMER WINDS. u P the dale and down the bourne, O'er the meadows swift we fly ; Now we sing, and now we mourn, Now we whistle, now we sigh. By the grassy-fringed river, Through the murmuring reeds we sweep ; Mid the lily-leaves we quiver, To their very hearts we creep. Now the maiden rose vs. blushing At the frolic things we say, While aside her check we're rushing, Like some truant bees at play. Through the blooming groves we rustle, Kissing every bud we pass, — As we did it in the bustle. Scarcely knowing how it was. Down the glen, across the mountain. O'er the yellow heath we roam, Whirling round about the fountain, Till its little breakers foam. Bending down the weeping willows, While our vesper hymn we sigh ; Then unto our rosy pillows On our weary wings we hie. There of idlenesses dreaming, Scarce from waking we refrain. Moments long as ages deeming Till we're at our play again. George Darley. ONLY PROMISES. FAIR pledges of a fruitful tree. Why do ye fall so fast? Your date is not so past But you may stay yet here awhile To blush and gently smile, And go at last. • What ! were ye born to be An hour or half's delight. And so to bid good night? 'Tis pity nature brought ye forth Merely to show your wort! And lose you quite. But you are lovely leaves, where we May read how soon things have Their end, though ne'er so brave; And after they have shown their uride Like you awhile, they glide Into the grave. Robert Herrick. TrIE ROCKY MOUNTAINS. On the eastern border of the Colorado plateau the summits attain llieir greatest elevation, and here are more than two hundred peaks that rise to an altitude of thirteen or fourteen thousand feet above the level of the sea. THESE mountains, piercing the blue sky With their eternal cones of ice — The torrents dashing from on high. O'er rock and crag and precipice — Change not, but still remain as ever, Unwasting, deathless, and sublime, iVnd will remain while lightnings quiver. Or stars the hoary summits climb. Or rolls tiie thunder-chariot of eternal time. Albert Pike. THE CHARMS OF NATURE. THE FALLS OF NIAGARA. The following selection vividly depicts the overwhelming impres- sions of sublimity and infinite power, which the first view of the great cataract is so well calculated to pro- duce upon the beholder. I STOOD within a vision's spell ; I saw, I heard. The liquid thunder Went p o u r i n g t o its foaming hell, And it fell Ever, ever fell Into the invisible abyss opened under. I stood upon a speck of ground ; Before me fell a stormy ocean. I was like a captive bound ; And around A universe of sound Troubled the heavens with ever-quivering motion. Down, down forever — down, down forever. Something falling, falling, falling, Up, up forever — up, up for- ever. Resting never, Boiling up forever. Steam-clouds shot up with thunder-bursts appalling. A tone that since the birth of man Was never for a moment broken, A word that since the world began , And waters ran. Hath spoken still to man, — Of God and of Eternity hath sjoken. THE VALE OF CASHMERE. WHO has not heard of the Vale of Cash- mere, With its roses the brightest that earth ever gave, Its temples, and grottoes, and fountains as clear As the love-lighted eyes that hang over their wave? O, to see it at sunset — when warm o'er the lake Its splendor at parting a summer eve throws, Like a bride, full of blushes, when lingering to take A last look of her mirror at night ere she goes ! — When the shrines through the foliage are gleaming half shown, And each hallows the hour by some rites of its own. Here the music of prayer from a minaret swells. Here the Magian his urn full of perfume is swinging. 58 THE CHARMS OF NATURE. And here, at the altar, a zone of sweet bells Round the waist of some fair Indian dancer is ringing. Or to see it by moonlight — when mellowly shines The light o'er its palaces, gardens, and shrines ; When the waterfalls gleam like a quick fall of , stars. And the nightingale's hymn from the Isle of Chenars Is broken by laughs and light echoes of feet From the cool shining walks where the young people meet. Or at morn, when the magic of daylight awakes A new wonder each minute as slowly it breaks, Hills, cupolas, fountains, called forth every one Out of darkness, as they were just born of the sun. When the spirit of fragrance is up with the day, From his harem of night-flowers stealing away; And the wind, full of wantonness, woos like a lover The young aspen-trees till they tremble all over. When the east is as warm as the light of first hopes. And the day, with its banner of radiance unfurled, Shines in through the mountainous portal that opes Sublime, from that valley of bliss to the world ! Thomas Moore. THE NIGHTINGALE. j ARK ! ah, the nightingale ! The tawny-throated ! Hark ! from that moonlit cedar what a burst ! What triumph ! hark — what pain ! O wanderer from a Grecian shore. Still — after many years, in dis- tant lands — Still nourisliing in thy be- wildered brain That wild, unquenchcd, deep- sunken. Old World pain — Say, will it never heal ? And can this fragrant lawn, With its cool trees, and night, And the sweet, tranquil Thames, And moonshine, and the dew. To thy racked heart and brain Afford no balm ? Dost thou to-night behold, Here, through the moonlight on this English grass, The unfriendly palace in the Thracian wild? Dost thou again peruse, With hot cheeks and seared eyes. The too clear web, and thy dumb sister's shame? Dost thou once more essay Thy llight ; and feel come over thee, • Poor fugitive ! the feathery change ; Once more ; and once more make resound, /With love and hate, triumph and agony, Lone Daulis, and the high Cephisian vale? Listen, Eugenia — How thick the bursts come crowding through the leaves ! Again — thou hearest ! Eternal passion ! Eternal pain ! Matthew Arnold. TO THE DAISY. IN youth from rock to rock I went. From hill to hill, in discontent. Of pleasure high and turbulent. Most pleased when most uneasy ; But now my own delights I make, — My thirst at every rill can slake. And gladly nature's love partake Of thee, sweet daisy ! When soothed a while by milder airs. Thee winter in the garland wears That thinly shades his few grey hairs ; Spring cannot shun thee ; Whole summer fields are thine by right : And autumn, melancholy wight ! Doth in thy crimson head delight When rains are on thee. In shoals and bands, a dancing train. Thou greet'st the traveler in the lane ; If welcomed once thou countest it gain; Thou art not daunted. Nor carest i f thou be set at naught : And oft alone in nooks remote We meet thee, like a pleasant thought. When such are wanted. Be violets in their secret news The flowers the wanton zephyrs choose ; Proud be the rose, with rains and dews Her head impearling ; Thou liv'st with less ambitious aim. Yet hast not gone without thy fame ; Thou art indeed, by many a claim. The poet's darling ! William Wordsworth. aAKK: llIE NIGUTl.NGALE. 59 60 THE CHARMS OF NATURE. LAUGH of the mountain ! lyreofbird and tree! Pomp of the meadow ! mirror of the morn ! The soul of April, unto whom are born The rose and jessamine, leaps wild in thee! THE BROOK. FROM THE SPANISH. How without guile thy bosom, all transparent As the pure crystal, lets the curious eye Thy secrets scan, thy smooth, round pebbles count 5 How, without malice murmuring, glides thy current 1 Although, where'er thy devious current strays. The lap of earth with gold and silver teems, To me thy clear proceeding brighter seems Than golden sands that charm each shepherd'sgaze. H HARK, HARK! ARK, hark ! the lark at heaven's gate sings, And Phcebus 'gins arise. His steeds to water at those springs On chaliced flowers that lies ; And winking Mary-buds begin O sweet simplicitay cf dys gone by! Thou shun'st the haunts of man, to dwell in lim- pid fount ! H. W. Longfellow. THE LARK. To ope their golden eyes ; With everything that pretty bin, My lady sweet, arise ; Arise, arise ! William Shakespeare. FRIEDRICH VOX vSCHILLER. JOHANX VON GOETHE. THE CHARMS OF NATURE. 61 \^iiy^h. ,/f /'■'■'^ S WINTER SONG. FROM THE GERMAN. UMMER joys are o'er; Flowerets bloom no more, Wintry winds are sw-eeping ; Through the snow-drifts peeping Cheerful evergreen Rarely now is seen. Now no plumed throng Charms the wood with song ; Ice-bound trees are glittering; Merry snow-birds, twittering, Fondly strive to cheer Scenes so cold and drear. Winter, still I see Many charms in thee, — Love thy chilly greeting, Snow-storms fiercely beating, And the dear delights Of the long, long nights. Charles T. Brooks. CAPE-COTTAGE AT SUNSET. E stood upon the ragged rocks, When the long day was nearly done; The waves had ceased their sullen shocks. And lapped our feet with murmuring tone. And o'er the bay in streaming locks Blew the red tresses of the sun. Along the west the golden bars Still to a deeper glory grew ; Above our heads the faint, few stars Looked out from the unfathomed blue ; And the fair city's clamorous jars Seem melted in that evening hue. sunset sky ! O purple tide ! O friends' to friends that closer pressed ! Those glories have in darkness died, .A.nd ye have left my longing breast. 1 could not keep you by my side, Nor fix that radiance in the west. W. B. Glazier. 62 THE CHARMS OF NATURE. THE BOBOLINK. I OROLINK ! that in the meadow, Or beneath the orchard's shadow, Keepest up a constant rattle Joyous as my cliildren's prattle, Welcome to the north again ! Welcome to mine ear thy strain, Welcome to mine eye the sight Of thy buff, thy black and white. Brighter plumes may greet the sun, By the banks of Amazon ; Sweeter tones may weave the spell Of enchanting Philomel; But the tropic bird would fail, A And the English nightingale. If we should compare their worth With thine endless, gushing mirth. When the ides of May are past, June and siunmer nearing fast, While from depths of blue above Comes the mighty breath of love. Calling out each bud and flower With resistless, secret power — ^Vaking hope and fond desire, Kindling the erotic lire — Filling youths' and maidens' dreams With mysterious, pleasing themts; Then, amid the sunlight clear Floating in the fragrant air, Thou dost fill each heart with pleasure By thy glad ecstatic measure. A single note, so sweet and low, Like a full heart's overflow, Forms the prelude; but the strain Gives no such tone again. For the wild and .saucy song Leap.j and skips the notes among, With such quick and sportive jilay, Ne'er was madder, merrier lay. Gayest songster of the spring ! Thy melodies before me bring Visions of some dream-built land. Where, by constant zephyrs fanned, I might walk the livelong da_\', Embosomed in pcrjietual May. Nor care nor fear thy bosom knows; For thee a tempest never blows ; But when our northern summer's o'er. By Delaware's or Schuylkill's shore The wild rice lifts its airy head. And royal feasts for thee are spread. And when the winter threatens there. Thy tireless wings yet own no fear, But bear thee to more southern coasts, Far beyond the reach of frosts. Bobolink! still may thy gladness Take from me all taints of sadness; Fill my soul with trust unshaken In that Being who has taken Care for every living thing, In summer, winter, fall and spring. Thomas Hill. PERSEVERANCE. SWALLOW in tlie spring Came to our granary, and 'neath the eaves Essayed to make a nest, and there did bring Wet earth and straw and leaves. Day after day she toiled With patient art, but ere her work was crowned. THE CHARMS OF NATURE. C3 Some sad mishap the tiny fabric spoiled, And dashed it to the ground. She found the ruin wrought, But not cast down, forth from the place she flew, And with her mate from fresh earth and grasses brought And built her nest anew. But scarcely had she placed The last soft feather on its ample floor, When wicked hand, or chance, again laid waste And wrought the ruin o'er. But still her lieart she kept, And toiled again — and la^t night, hearing calls, I looked — and lo ! three little swallows slept AVithin the earth-made walls. What truth is here, O man ! Hath hope been smitten in its early dawn ^ Have clouds o'ercast thy purpose, trust, or plan? Have faith, and struggle on ! R. S. S. Andros. THE STORMY PETREL. from THOUSAND miks land are we. Tossing about on the stormy sea — From billow to bounding billow cast, Lilk fleecy snow on the stormy blast. The sails are scattered abroad like weeds ; The strong masts shake like quivering reeds; The mighty cables and iron chains, The hull, which all earthly strength disdains — They strain and they crack : and hearts 1 ke stone Their natural. hard, proud strength disown. Up and down ! — up and down ! From the base of the wave to the billow's crown. And amidst the flashing and feathery foam The stormy petrel finds a home — A home, if such a place may be For her who lives on the wide, wide sea, On the craggy ice, in the frozen air, And only seeketh her rocky lair To warm her young, and to te.ich them to spring At once o'er the waves on their stormy wing! O'er the deep! — o'er the deep I Where the whale and the shark and the swordfish slee]5 — Outflying the blast and the driving rain. The petrel telleth her tale— in vain; For the mariner curseth the warning bird Which bringeth him news of the storm unheard ! Ah ! thus does the prophet of good or ill Meet hate from the creatures he serveth still; Yet he ne'er falters — so, petrel, spring Once more e'er the waves on, thy stormy wirg ! Barry Cornwall. THE PELICAN. ERELONG the thriving brood outgrew their cradle, Ran through the grass, and dabbled in the pools ; No sooner denizens of earth than made Free both of air and water ; day by day, New lessons, exercises, and amusements Employed the old to teach, the young to learn. Now floating on the blue lagoon beholding them ; The sire and dam in swan-like beauty steering. Their cygnets following through the foamy wake. Picking the leaves of plants, pursuing insects. Or catching at the bubbles as they broke : Till on some minor fry, in reedy shallow s. With flapping pinions and unsparing beaks The well-taught scholars plied their double art. To fish in troubled waters, and secure The petty captives in their maiden pouches; Then hurried with their banquet to the shore. With feet, wings, breast, half swimming and half flying. But when their pens grew strong to fight the storm. And buffet with the breakers on the reef, The parents put them to severe reproof; On beetling rocks the little ones were mar- shalled ; There, by endearments, stripes, example, urged To try the void convexity of heaven. And plough the ocean's horizontal field. Timorous at first they fluttered round the verge. Balanced and furled their hesitating wings. Then put them forth again with steadier aim ; Now, gaining courage as they felt the wind Dilate their feathers', till their airy frames With buoyancy that bore them from their feet, They yielded all their burdens to the breeze, And sailed and soared where'er their guardians led; Ascending, hovering, wheeling, or alighting. They searched the deep in quest of nobler game Than yet their inexperience had encountered ; With these thev battled in that element. Where wings or fins were equally at home. Till, conquerors in many a desperate strife. They dragged their spoils to land, and gorged at leisure. James Montgomery. 64 THE CHARMS OF NATURE. CASCO BAY. OWHERE, fairer, sweeter, rarer, Does the golden-locked fruit-bearer, Through his painted woodlands stray, Than where hill-side oaks and beeches Overlook the long blue reaches, Silver coves and pebbled beaches And green isles of Casco Bay ; Nowhere day, for delay. With a tenderer look beseeches, " Let me with my charmed earth stay." On the grainlands of the mainlands Stands the serried corn like train-bands. Plume and pennon rustling gay ; Out at sea, the islands wooded, Silver birches, golden-hooded. Set with maples, crimson-blooded. White sea-foam and sand-hills gray, Stretch away, far away, Dim and dreary, over-brooded By the hazy autumn day. Gayly chattering to the clattering Of the brown nuts downward pattering, Leap the squirrels red and gray. On the grass-land, on the fallow, Drfip the apples, red and yellow. Drop the russet i)ears and mellow. Drop the red leaves all the day, — And away, swift away. Sun and cloud, o'er hill and hollow Chasing, weave their web of play. John G. Whittier. LILACS. F.\IR, purple children of the sun, I pet your blossoms one by one, Glance looks of love into your eyes, Your perfume breathe, your beauty prize. Hold your sweet clusters to my view, Cool my warm blushes with your dew, .^nd evening, morning, and at noon, Mourn that your tints are gone so soon. Henry Davenport. BLOSSOMS AND PERFUME. 65 66 THE CHARMS OF NATURE. FLOWERS. SPAKE full well, in language quaint and olden, One who dwelleth by the castled Rhine, When he called the flowers, so blue and golden, Stars, that in earth's firmament do shine. Not alone in spring's armorial bearing, And in summer's green-emblazoned field. But in arms of brave old autumn's wearing. In the centre of his brazen shield; Hf%')0'' Stars they are, wherein we read our history, As astrologers and seers of eld ; Yet not wrapped about with awful mystery, Like the burning stars, which they beheld. Wondrous truths, and manifold as wondrous, God hath written in those stars above; But not less in the bright flowerets under us Stands the revelation of his love. Everywhere about us they are glowing. Some like stars, to tell us spring is born; Others, their blue eyes with tears o'erflowing, Stand like Ruth amid the golden corn ; Not alone in meadows and green alleys, On the mountain-top, and by the brink Of sequestered pools in woodland valleys. Where the slaves of nature stoop to drink ; Not alone in her vast dome of glory. Not on graves of bird and beast alone, But in old cathedrals high and hoary, On the tombs of heroes, carved in stone; In the cottage of the rudest peasant, In ancestral homes, whose crumbling towers. Speaking of the past unto the present, Tell us of the ancient games of flowers. THE CHARMS OF NATURE. 67 In all places, then, and in all seasons, Flowers expand their light and soul-like wings, Teaching us, by most jiersuasive reasons. How akin they are to human things. And with childlike, credulous affection We behold their tender buds expand ; Emblems of our own great resurrection, Emblems of the bright and better land. H. W. Longfellow. c A SCENE ON THE HUDSON. OOL shades and dews are round my way, And silence of the early day; Mid the dark rocks that watch his bed, Glitters the mighty Hudson spread, Unrippled, save by drops that fall From shrubs that fringe his mountain wall; And o'er the clear, still waters swells The music of the Sabbath bells. All, save this little nook of land Circled with trees, on which I stand ; All, save that line of hills which lie Suspended in the mimic sky — Seems a blue void, above, below. Through which the white clouds come and go, And from the green world's farthest steep I gaze into the airy deep. Loveliest of lovely things are they, On earth, that soonest pass away. The rose that lives its little hour Is prized beyond the sculptured flower. Even love, long tried and cherished long, Becomes more tender and more strong, .^.t thought of that insatiate grave From which its yearnings cannot save. River! in this still hour thou hast Too much of heaven on earth to last; Nor long may thy still waters lie, An image of the glorious sky. Thy fate and mine are not repose, And ere another evening close, Thou to thy tides shalt turn again. And I to seek the crowd of men. W. C. Bryant. P PACK CLOUDS AWAY. ACK clouds away, and welcome day. With night we banish sorrow ; Sweet air, blow soft; mount, lark, aloft. To give my love good morrow. Wings from the wind to please her mind, Notes from the lark I'll borrow: Bird, prune thy wing; nightingale, sing. To give my love good morrow. To give my love good morrow. Notes from them all I'll borrow. Wake from thy nest, robin redbreast. Sing, birds, in every furrow; And from each hill let music shrill Give my fair love good morrow. Blackbird and thrush in every bush, Stare, linnet, and cock-sparrow. You pretty elves, amongst yourselves. Sing my fair love good morrow. To give my love good morrow. Sing birds in every furrow. T. Heywood. OUR GREAT PLAINS. THESE plains are made up, to a great extent, of rolling prairies, seemingly as bovmdless as the sea, over which millions of buffalo once roamed wild and fearless, but which are fast dwindling to timid, watchful, wary herds, ever scenting danger, and taking flight at the approach of man. Room ! Room to turn round in, to breathe and be free. And to grow to be giant, to sail as at sea With the speed of the wind on a steed with his mane To the wind, without pathway or route or a rein. Room ! Room to be free where the white-bordered sea Blows a kiss to a brother as boundless as he ; And to east and to west, to the north and the sun, Blue skies and brown grasses are welded as one. And the buffalo come like a cloud on the plain. Pouring on like the tide of a storm-driven main. And the lodge of the hunter, to friend or to foe Offers rest ; and unquestioned you come or you go. Vast plains of America! Seas of wild lands! I turn to you, lean to you, lift up my hands. Joaquin Miller. €S THE CHARMS OF NATURE. B A DREAM OF SUMMER. LAND as the morning breath of June The southwest breezes play ; And, through its haze, the winter noon Seems warm as summer's day. The snow-plumed angel of the North Has dropped his icy spear ; Again the mossy earth looks forth, Again the streams gush clear. The fox his hill-side cell forsakes, The muskrat leaves his nook. The bluebird in the meadow brakes Is singing with the brook. Bear up, oh mother nature !" cry Bird, breeze, and streamlet free; Our winter voices prophesy Of summer days to thee!" So, in those winters of the soul, By bitter blasts and drear O'erswept from memory's frozen pole. Will sunny days appear. Reviving hope and faith, they show The soul its living powers. And how, beneath the winter's snow, Lie germs of summer flowers ! The night is mother of the day, The winter of the spring, And ever upon old decay The greenest mosses cling. Behind the cloud the starlight lurks. Through showers the sunbeams fall; For God, who loveth all his works, Has left his hope with all ! John G. Whittier. THE GREAT HORSE-SHOE CURVE. A BRIEF stop is made at Altoona Station, and then, with all steam on, the giant locomotive at the head of your train begms the ascent of the heaviest grade on the line. The valley beside you sinks lower and lower, until it becomes a vast gorge, the bot- tom of which is hidden by impenetrable gloom. Far in the depths cottages appear for a moment, only to disappear in the darkness, and then, jubt as night is falling, you begin the circuit of the world-famous Horse-shoe Curve, the most stupendous piece of engineering ever accomplished ; the wonder and admiration of travelers from the four corners of the globe ; the one feature of American railroad construction that you have been told required the utmost courage to attempt, and the most miraculous skill to achieve. And now, as the enormous bend, sweeping first north, then curving westward, and still curving away to the south again, presents itself to your view, you confess that you did not begin to esti- mate its grandeur. An eagle soars majestically away from some crag above your head, and floats with extended wings over the gulch that makes your brain reel as you glance downward, so deep is it. The clouds into which you are climbing bend low and hide the rugged top of the mountain to whose beetling side you are clinging, forming a whitish-gray canopy that extends half-way across the dizzy chasm. It is all so large, so grand, so majestic, that you admit that your imagination has been unequal to the task of picturing it. THE CHARMS OF NATURE. 69 SONQ TO MAY. In the green bowers ? AY, queen of blossoms, And fulfilling flowers, With what pretty music. Shall we charm the hours ? Wilt thou have pipe and reed. Blown in the open mead ? Or to the lute give heed. THE WOOD. "\ X TTTCH-HAZEL, dogwood, and the maple And there the oak and hickory ; Linn, poplar, and the beech tree, far and near As the eased eye can see. Wild ginger, wahoo, with its roan balloons ; And brakes of briers of a twilight green ; And fox grapes plumed with summer ; and strung moons Of mandrake flower between. r" -j«»ifc>t^ Thou hast no need of us, Or pipe or wire ; Thou hast the golden bee Ripened with fire; And many thousand more Songsters, that thee adore, Filling earth's grassy floor With new desire. Thou hast thy mighty herds. Tame, and free-livers; Doubt not, thy music too In the deep rivers ; And the whole plumy flight Warbling the day and night — Up at the gates of light, See, the lark quivers ! Edward, Lord Thurlow. Deep gold-green ferns, and mosses red and gray • Mats for what naked myth's white feet? And cool and calm, a cascade far away. With ever-falling beat Old logs made sweet with death ; rough bits of bark: And tangled twig and knotted root ; And sunshine splashes, and great pools of dark; And many a wild bird's flute. Here let me sit until the Indian dusk With copper-colored feet comes down ; Sowing the wildwood with star-fire and musk. And shadows blue and brown. Then side by side with some magician dream To take the owlet-haunted lane. Half-roofed with vines ; led by a firefly gleam. That brings me home again. Madison Cawein. 70 THE CHARMS OF NATURE. OSME'S SONG. HITHER ! hither ! O come hither ! Lads and lasses come and see ! Trip it neatly, Foot it featly, O'er the grassy turf to me ! Odorous blossoms For sweet bosoms, Garlands green to bind the hair ; Crowns and kirtles Weft of myrtles, You may choose, and beauty wear ! Here are bowers Hung with flowers. Richly curtained halls for you ! Meads for rovers, Shades for lovers, Violet beds, and pillows too ! Purple heather You may gather, Sandal-deep in seas of bloom ! Pale-faced lily. Proud Sweet-Willy, Gorgeous rose, and golden broom ! Brightsome glasses For bright faces Shine in ev'ry rill that flows; Every minute You look in it Still more bright your beauty grows I Hither ! hither ! O come hither ! Lads and lasses come and see ! Trip it neatly. Foot it featly. O'er the grassy turf to me ! George Darley. THE CHARMS OF NATURE. 71 THE RIVULET. \HIS little rill that from the springs Of yonder grove its current brings, Plays on the slope a while, and then Goes prattling into groves again, Oft to its warbling waters drew My little feet, when life was new. When woods in early green were dressed, And from the chambers of the west The warmer breezes, travelling out, Breathed the new scent of flowers about, My truant steps from home would stray, Upon its grassy side to play, List the brown thrasher's vernal hymn. And crop the violet on its brim. With blooming cheek and open brow. As young and gay, sweet rill, as thou. And when the days of boyhood came. And I had grown in love with fame. Duly I sought thy banks, and tried My first rude numbers by thy side. Words cannot tell how bright and gay The scenes of life before me lay. Then glorious hopes, that now to speak Would bring the blood into my cheek. Passed o'er me ; and I wrote on high, A name I deemed should never die. Years change thee not. Upon yon hill The tall old maples, verdant still, Yet tell, in grandeur of decay. How swift the years have passed away, Since first, a child, and half afraid, I wandered in the forest shade. Thou ever joyous rivulet. Dost dimple, leap, and prattle yet ; And sporting with the sands that pave The windings of thy silver wave. And dancing to thy own wild chime, Thou laughest at the lapse of time. The same sweet sounds are in my ear. My early childhood loved to hear; As pure thy limpid waters run. As bright they sparkle to the sun ; As fresh and thick the bending ranks Of herbs that line thy oozy banks ; The violet there, in soft May dew. Comes up, as modest and as blue ; As green amid thy current's stress. Floats the scarce-rooted water-cress : And the brown ground-bird, in thy glen. Still chirps as merrily as then. Thou changest not — but I am changed, Since first thy pleasant banks I ranged ; And the grave stranger, come to see The play-place of his infancy. Has scarce a single trace of him Who sported once upon thy brim. The visions of my youth are past — Too bright, too beautiful to last. And I shall sleep — and on thy side, As ages after ages glide. Children their early sports shall try. And pass to hoary age and die. But thou, unchanged from year to year, Gayly shalt play and glitter here ; Amid young flowers and tender grass Thy endless infancy shalt pass; And, singing down thy narrow glen, Shalt mock the fading race of men. W. C. Bryant. 72 THE CHARMS OF NATURE. V THE NIGHTINGALE. kRIZE thou the nightingale, Who soothes thee with his tale, And wakes the woods around ; A singing feather he— a winged and wandering sound; Whose tender carolling Sets all ears listening Unto that living lyre, Whence flow the airy notes his ecstasies inspire ; Whose shrill, capricious song Breathes like a flute along, With many a careless tone — Come, summer visitant, attach To my reed-roof your nest of clay, And let my ear your music catch. Low twittering underneath the thatch. At the gray dawn of day. As fables tell, an Indian sage. The Hindustani woods among. Could in his desert hermitage. As if 'twere marked in written page, Translate the wild bird's song. I wish I did his power possess. That I might learn, fleet bird, from thee. What our vain systems only guess. Music of thousand tongues, formed by one tongue alone. O charming creature rare ! Can aught with thee compare ? Thou art all song — thy breast Thrills for one month o' the year— is tranquil all the rest. Thee wondrous we may call — Most wondrous this of all. That such a tiny throat Should wake so loud a sound, and pour so loud a note. John Bowring. T THE SWALLOW. HE gorse is yellow on the heath, The banks with speedwell flowers are gay, The oaks are budding ; and beneath, The hawthorn soon will bear the wreath, The silver wreath of May. The welcome guest of settled spring. The swallow, too, is come at last ; Just at sunset, when thrushes sing, I saw her dash with rapid wing, And hailed her as she passed. And know from what wild wilderness You came across the sea. Charlotte Smith, THE EARLY PRIMROSE. MILD offspring of a dark and sullen sire ! Whose modest form, so delicately fine. Was nursed in whirling storms And cradled in the winds. Thee, when young spring first questioned winter's sway. And dared the sturdy blusterer to the fight,, Thee on this bank he threw To mark his victory. In this low vale the promise of the year. Serene, thou openest to the nipping gale. Unnoticed and alone, Thy tender elegance. So virtue blooms, brought forth amid the storms; Of chill adversity ; in some lone walk Of life she rears her head. Obscure and unobserved ; While every bleaching breeze that on her blows Chastens her spotless purity of breast. And hardens her to bear Serene the ills of life. Henrv Kirke White, THE CHARMS OF NATURE. 73 THE FATHER OF WATERS. Not only in the extent of fertile territory diamed, but in ] The fount of fable and the source of SOng ; The rushing Rhone, in whose cerulean depths the vast flood of waters which it carries down to the Gulf, the Mississippi has no equal among the rivers of Europe, AY, gather Europe's royal rivers all — The snow-swelled Neva, with an empire's weight On her broad breast, she yet may overwhelm ; Dark Danube, hurrying, as by foe pursued. Through shaggy forests and from jjalace walls, To hide its terrors in a sea of gloom ; The castled Rhine, whose vine-crowned waters flow. The loving sky seeins wedded with the wave; The yellow Tiber, choked with Roman spoils, A dying miser shrinking 'neath his gold ; And Seine, where fashion glasses fairest forms; And Thames, that bears the riches of the world ; Gather their waters in one ocean mass — Our Mississippi, rolling proudly on. Would sweep them from its path, or swallow up, Like Aaron's rod, these streams of fame and song, Sarah J. Hale. BUTTERFLY BEAU. I'M a volatile thing, with an exquisite wing, Sprinkled o'er with the tints of the rainbow ; All the Butterflies swarm to behold my sweet form, Though the Grubs may all vote me a vain beau. I my toilet go through, with my rose-water dew. And each blossom contributes its essence ; Then all fragrance and grace, not a plume out of place, I adorn the gay world with my presence — In short, you must know, I'm the Butterfly Beau. At first I enchant a fair Sensitive plant. Then I flirt with the Pink of perfection; Then I seek a Sweet Pea, and I whisper, "For thee I have long felt a fond predilection." A Lily I kiss, and exult in my bliss. But I very soon search for a new lip ; And I pause in my flight to exclaim with delight, " Oh! how dearly I love you, my Tulip !" In short, you must know, I'm the Butterfly Beau. Thus for ever I rove, and the honey of love From each delicate blossom I pilfer ; But though many I see pale and pining for me, I know none that are worth growing ill for ; And though I must own, there are some that I've known. Whose external attractions are splendid ; On myself I most doat, for in my pretty coat All the tints of the garden are blended — In short, you must know, I'm the Butterfly Beau. T. Havnes Bayly, THE OLD MAN OF THE MOUNTAIN. On Mount Cannon, or Profile Mountain, opposite Lafay- ette, west of the Notch, in the White Mountains, and 1,500 feet above the road, are three projecting rocl_- -i^ii- '. .'.■w'_i:'c£l>.-f.*_y;;i=::::35^5^. And are a token from below From our dear dead ; As in their turf ye softly shine Of innocent white lives they lead, With healing influence divine For souls who on their memory feed. World-worn like mine. RoDEN Noel. PLEASURE DERIVED FROM NATURE. WERE all the interesting diversities of color and form to disappear, how unsightly, dull and wearisome would be the aspect of the world ! The pleasures conveyed to us by the endless varieties with which these sources of beauty are presented to the eye, are so much things of course, and exist so much without intermission, that we scarcely think either of their nature, their number or the great proportion which they constitute in the whole mass of our enjoy- ment. But were an inhabitant of this country to be re- moved from its delightful scenery to the midst of an Arabian desert, a boundless expanse of sand, a waste spread with uniform desolation, enlivened by the murmur of no stream and cheered by the beauty of no verdure, although he might live in a palace and riot in splendor and luxury, he would, I think, find life a dull, wearisome, melancholy round of existence, and amid all his gratifications would sigh for the hills and valleys of his native land, the brooks and rivers, the living lustre of the spring, and the rich glories of the autumn. of pleasure gratuitously supermduced upon the general nature of the objects themselves, and in this light as a testimony of the divine goodness peculiarly affecting. Timothy Dwight. AN ITALIAN SUNSET. IT was one of those evenings never to be forgot- ten by a painter — but one too which must come upon him in misery as a gorgeous mock- ery. The sun was yet up, and resting on the highest peak of a ridge of mountain-shaped clouds, that seemed to make a part of the distance ; sud- denly he disappeared, and the landscape was over- spread with a cold, lurid hue; then, as if molten in a furnace, the fictitious mountains began to glow; in a moment more they tumbled asunder ; in another he was seen again, piercing their frag- ments, and darting his shafts to the remotest east, till, reaching the horizon, he appeared to recall them, and with a parting flash to wrap the whole heavens in flame. Washington Allston. VALLEY OF THE HUDSON. AND how changed is the scene from that on which Hudson gazed ! The earth glows with the colors of civilization ; the banks of the streams are enamelled with richest grasses ; woodlands and cultivated fields are har- moniously blended ; the birds of spring find their delight in orchards and trim gardens, variegated with choicest plants from every temperate zone ; while the brilliant flowers of the tropics bloom li;i.je».-«ES. THE CHARMS OF NATURE, 77 from the windows of the greenhouse and the saloon. The yeoman, living like a good neighbor near the fields he cultivated, glories in the fruitfulness of the valleys, and counts with honest exultation the flocks and herds that browse in safety on the hills. The thorn has given way to the rosebush ; the cultivated vine clambers over rocks where the brood of serpents used to nestle ; while industry smiles at the changes she has wrought, and inhales the bland air which now has health on its wings. George Bancroft. Therefore from such danger lock Every one his loved flock; And let your dogs lie loose without, Lest the wolf come as a scout From the mountain, and ere day. Bear a lamb or kid away ; Or the crafty, thievish fox. Break upon your simple flocks. To secure yourself from these, Be not too secure in ease; So shall you good shepherds prove. And deserve your master's love. THE MOSS ROSE. THE angel of the flowers, one day. Beneath a rose-tree sleeping lay — That spirit to whose charge 't is given To bathe young buds in dews of heaven. Awaking from his light re- pose, The angel whispered to the rose: "O fondest object of my care, Still fairest found, where all are fair: For the sweet shade thou giv'st to me Ask what thou wilt, 't is granted thee." " Then," said the rose, with deepened glow, " On me another grace bestow." The spirit paused, in silent thought — What grace was there that flower had not ? 'T was but a moment — o'er the rose A veil of moss the angel throws. And, robed in nature's simjilest weed. Could there a flower that rose exceed ? F. W. Krummacher. FOLDING THE FLOCKS. SHEPHERDS all, and maidens fair, Fold your flocks up ; for the air 'Gins to thicken, and the sun Already his great course hath run. See the deudrops, how they kiss Every little flower that is ; Hanging on their velvet heads. Like a string of crystal beads. See the heavy clouds low falling And bright Hesperus down calling The dead night from underground j At whose rising, mists unsound. Damps and vapors, fly apace, And hover o'er the smiling face Of these pastures ; where thev come, Striking dead both bud and bloom. Now, good-night ! may sweetest slumbers And soft silence fall in numbers On your eyelids. So farewell : Thus I end my evening knell. Beaumont and Fletcher. BUTTERFLY LIFE. WHAT, though you tell me each gay little rover Shrinks from the breath of the first autumn day ! Surely 'tis better, when summer is over. To die when all fair things are fading away. Some in life's winter may toil to discover Means of procuring a weary delay — I' be a butterfly ; living, a rover, Dying when fair things are fiding aw.nv ! T. H.vNF'; Favlv. 78 THE CHARMS OF NATURE. THE VERNAL SEASON. THANK Providence for spring ! The earth— and man himself, by sympathy with his birthplace — would be far other than we find them, if life toiled wearily onward, without this periodical infusion of the primal spirit. Will the time sprightliness ! From such a soul the world must hope no reformation of its evil — no sympathy with the lofty faith and gallant struggles of those who contend in its behalf Summer works in the present, and thinks not of the future; autumn is a rich conservcitive ; winter has utterly lost its faith, and clings tremulously to the remembrance of what has been ; but spring, with its outgushing life, is the true type of the movement. Nathaniel Hawthorne. THE SONGSTERS. U" world ever be so decayed that spring may not re- new its greenness ? Can man be so dismally age- stricken that no faintest sunshine of his youth may revisit him once a year ? It is impossible. The moss on our time-worn mansion brightens into beauty ; the good old pastor, who once dwelt here, renewed his prime, regained his boyhood, in the genial breezes of his ninetieth spring. Alas for the worn and heavy soul, if, whether in youth or age, it have outlived its privilege of spring- P SPRINGS the lark, Shrill-voiced and loud, the messenger of morn; Ere yet the shadows fly, he mounted sings Amid the dawning clouds, and from their haunts Calls up the tuneful nations. Every copse Deep-tangled, tree irregular, and bush Bending with dewy moisture, o'er the heads Of the coy quiristers that lodge within, Are prodigal of harmony. The thrush And woodlark, o'er the kind- contending throng Superior heard, run through the sweets st length Of notes ; when listening Phil- omelia deigns To let tliem joy, and purposes, in thought Elate, to make f.er night excel their day. The blackbird whistles from the thorny brake ; The mellow bullfinch answers from the gro\e ; Nor are the linnets, o'er the flowering furze ^r^" " Poured out profusely, silsrt : joined to tluse Innumerous songsters, in the freshening shade Of new-sprung leaves, their modulations nnv. Mellifluous. The jay, the rook, the daw, And each harsh pipe, discordant heard alone, Aid the full concert ; while the stockdove breathes A melancholy murmur through the whole. 'Tis love creates their melody, and all This waste of music is the voice of love ; That even to birds and beasts the tender arts Of pleasing teaches. James Thomson. THE CHARMS OF NATURE. 79' THE SPARROW. OBIN 1 love, the blue-bird and the wren, The thrush, the lark and many, many more ; But, oh, above them all, that friend of men I love, the sparrow piping at my door. When summer flees, and winter blusters forth With roaring blasts that shake the naked trees, Still you may hear above the legioned North A merry note above the coppices. The sparrow still doth pipe his little lay As sweetly as he piped it in the spring ; No migrant he, that quickly flies away When summer winds no longer round him sing. A hardy comrade, when the storms arise He breasts their fury like some honest friend, That, when adversity besets our skies, Doth quit us not, but cheers us to the end. So, when I hear the choir of summer sing, I listen, pleased, but hear above the art Of gayer birds the sparrow's note, and cling To it as something dearer to my heart. JoRis Von Linden. INDIAN SUMMER. WHEN leaves grow sear all things take sombre hue ; The wild \Vinds waltz no more the wood- side through, And all the faded grass is wet with dew. A gauzy nebula films the pensive sky, The golden bee supinely buzzes by, In silent flocks the blue-birds southward fly. The forests' cheeks are crimsoned o'er with shame, The cynic frost enlaces every lane, The ground with scarlet blushes is aflame ! The one we love grows lustrous-eyed and sad, With sympathy too thoughtful to be glad. While all the colors round are running mad. The sunbeams kiss askant the sombre hill, The naked woodbine climbs the window-sill. The breaths that noon exhales are faint and chill. The ripened nuts drop downward day by day, Sounding the hollow tocsin of decay, And bandit squirrels smuggle them away. Vague sighs and scents pervade the atmosphere, Sounds of invisible stirrings hum the ear. The morning's lash reveals a frozen tear. The hermit mountains gird themselves with mail. Mocking the threshers with an echo flail. The while the afternoons grow crisp and pale. Inconstant summer to the tropics flees. And, as her rose-sails catch the amorous breeze, Lo ! bare, brown autumn trembles to her knees ! The stealthy nights encroach upon the days, The earth with sudden whiteness is ablaze. And all her paths are lost in crystal maze ! Tread lightly where the dainty violets blew. Where the spring winds their soft eyes open flew ; Safely they sleep the churlish winter through. Though all life's portals are indiced with woe, And frozen pearls are all the world can show. Feel! Nature's breath is warm beneath the snow. Lookup! dear mourners! Still the blue expanse. Serenely tender, bends to catch thy glance. Within thy tears sibyllic sunbeams dance ! With blooms full sapped again will smile the land.. The fall is but the folding of His hand, x\non with fuller glories to expand. The dumb heart hid beneath the pulseless tree Will throb again ; and then the torpid bee Upon the ear will drone his drowsy glee. So shall the truant blue-birds backward fly. And all loved things that vanish or that die Return to us in some sweet by-and-by. VENICE AT NIGHT. THE moon was at the height. Its rays fell in a flood on the swelling domes and massive roofs of Venice, while the margin of the town was brilliantly defined by the glittering bay. The natural and gorgeous setting was more than worthy of that picture of human magnificence ; for at that moment, rich as was the queen of the Adri- atic in ner works of art, the grandeur of her pub- lic monuments, the number and splendor of her palaces, and most else that the ingenuity and am- bition of man could attempt, she was but secondary in the glories of the hour. Above was the firmament gemmed with worlds, and sublime in immensity. Beneath lay the broad expanse of the Adriatic, endless to the eye, tran- quil as the vault it reflected, and luminous with its borrowed light. Here and there a low island, re- claimed from the sea by the patient toil of a thousand years, dotted the Lagunes, burdened by the group of some conventual dwellings, or pic- turesque with the modest roofs of a hamlet of the fishermen. Neither oar, nor song, nor laugh, nor flap of sail, nor jest of mariner disturbed the still- ness. All in the near view was clothed in mid- night loveliness, and all in the distance bespoke the solemnity of nature at peace. The city and the Lagunes, the gulf and the dreamy Alps, the interminable plain of Lombardy, and the blue void of heaven lay alike in a common and grand repose. James Fenimore Cooper. 80 THE CHARMS OF NATURE. TO A MOUSE. ON TURNING HER UP IN HER NEST WITH THE PLOUGH. WEE, sleekit, cow'rin', tim'rous beastie, O, what a panic's in thy breastie ! Thou need na start awa' sae hasty, Wi' bickering brattle ! I wad be laith to rin an' chase thee, Wi' murd'ring pattle ! I'm truly sorry man's dominion Has broken nature's social union, An' justifies that ill opinion Which makes thee startle At me, thy poor earth-born companion, An' fellow-mortal ! I doubt na, whyles, but thou may thieve ; What then ? poor beastie, thou maun live ! A daimen icker in a thrave 'S a sma' request ; I'll get a blessin' wi' the laive. And never miss 't I Thy wee bit housie, too, in ruin ! Its silly wa's the win's are strewin' I An naething now to big a new ane O' foggage green ! An' bleak December's winds ensuin', Baith snell and keen ! Thou saw the fields laid bare an' waste, An' weary winter comin' fast, An' cozie here, beneath the blast. Thou thought to dwell, Till, crash ! the cruel coulter past Out through thy cell. That wee bit heap o' leaves an' stibble Has cost thee mony a weary nibble ! Vow thou' s turned out for a' thy trouble. But house or hald, 1 1) thole the winter's sleety dribble, \n' cranreuch cauld ! r.ut, Mousie, thou art no thy lane. In proving foresight may be vain : I he best-laid schemes o' mice an' men Gang aft a-gley, An' lea'e us naught but grief and pain, For promised joy. Still thou art blest, compared wi' me ! The present only toucheth thee ; But, och! I backward cast my e'e On prospects drear ; An' forward, though I canna see, I guess an' fear. Robert Burns SUMMER WOODS. I LOVE at eventide to walk alone, Down narrow glens, o'erhung with dewy thorn. Where, from the long grass underneath, the snail. Jet black, creeps out, and sprouts his timid horn. I love to muse o'er meadows newly mown. Where withering grass perfumes the sultry air ; Where bees search round, with sad and weary drone. In vain, for flowers that bloomed bat newly there ; While in the juicy corn the hidden quail Cries, "Wet my foot;" and, hid as thoughts un- born. The fairy-like and seldom-seen land-rail Utters " Craik, craik," like voices underground, Right glad to meet the evening's dewy veil. And see the light fade into gloom around. John Clare. THE CHARMS OF NATURE. 81 B THE WEST WIND. ENEATH the forest's skirts I rest, Whose branching pines rise dark and high, And hear the breezes of the West Among the threaded foliage sigh. Sweet Zephyr ! why that sound of woe? Is not thy home among the flowers ? Do not the bright June roses blow, To meet thy kiss at morning hours? And lo ! thy glorious realm outspread — Von stretching valleys, green and gay, And yon free hill-tops, o'er whose head The loose white clouds are borne away. And there the full broad river runs. And many a fount wells fresh and sweet, To cool thee when the mid-day suns Have made thee faint beneath their heat. Thou wind of joy, and youth, and love; Spirit of the new-wakened year ! The sun in his blue realm above Smooths a bright path when thou art here. In lawns the murmuring bee is heard, The wooing ring-dove in the shade ; On thy soft breath, the new-fledged bird Takes wing, half happy, half afraid. Ah! thou art like our wayward race; — When not a shade of pain or ill Dims the bright smile of Nature's face. Thou lovest to sigh and murmur still. W. C. Bryant. A THE FOOLISH HAREBELL. HAREBELL hung its willful head : " I am so tired, so tired ! I wish I was dead." She hung her head in the mossy dell : If all were over, then all were well." The wind he heard, and was pitiful ; He waved her about to make her cool. Wind, you are rough," said the dainty bell; Leave me alone — I am not well." And the wind, at the voice of the drooping dame, Sank in his heart, and ceased for shame. I am hot, so hot !" she sighed and said ; I am withering up; I wish I was dead." Then the sun, he pitied her pitiful case. And drew a thick veil over his face. Cloud, go away, and don't be rude ; I am not — I don't see whv }'ou should." 6 The cloud withdrew, and the harebell cried, I am faint, so faint! and no water beside !" And the dew came down its million-fold path ; But she murmured, " I did not want a bath." A boy came by in the morning gray ; He plucked the harebell, and threw it away. The harebell shivered, and cried. '• Oh ! oh ! I am faint, so faint ! Come, dear wind, blow." The wind blew softly, and did not speak. She thanked him kindly, but grew more weak. Sun, dear sun, I am cold," she said. He rose ; but lower she drooped her head. O rain ! I am withering ; all the blue Is fading out of me; — come, please do." The rain came down as fast as it could, But for all its will it did her no good. She shuddered and shriveled, and moaning said ; Thank you all kindly;" and then she was dead. Let us hope, let us hope, when she comes next year. She'll be simple and sweet. But I fear, I fear. George Macdonald. w TO THE DAISY. ITH little here to do or see Of things that in the great world be. Sweet daisy ! oft I talk to thee. For thou art worthv. Thou unassuming commonplace Of nature, with that homely face. And yet with something of a grace Which love makes for thee ! I see thee glittering from afar, — And then thou art a pretty star, Not quite so fair as many are In heaven above thee ! Yet like a star, with glittering crest. Self-poised in air thou seem'st to rest; — May peace come never to his nest Who shall reprove thee ! Sweet flower ! for by that name at last, When all my reveries are past, I call thee, and to that cleave fast. Sweet, silent creature ! That breath'st with me in sun and air. Do thou, as thou are wont, repair My heart with gladness, and a share Of thy meek nature. William Wordsworth, 82 THE CHARMS OF NATURE. TO THE 5KYLARK. ETHEREAL minstrel ! pilgrim of the sky ! Dost thou despise the earth where cares abound ? Or, while the wings aspire, are heart and eye Both with thy nest upon the dewy ground? 'Twixt thee and thine a never-failing bond, Thrills not the less the bosom of the plain ; Yet mightst thou seem, proud privilege ! to sing All independent of the leafy spring. Leave to the nightingale her shady wood ; A privacy of glorious light is thine. Thy nest, into which thou canst drop at will. Those quivering wings composed, that music still! To the last point of vision and beyond. Mount, daring warbler !— that love-prompted strain, Whence thou dost pour upon the world a flood Of harmony, with instinct more divine; Type of the wise, who soar, but never roam — True to the kindred points of heaven and home ! William Wordsworth. THE CHARMS OF NATURE. 8» THE PINE FOREST BY THE SEA. There lay the glade and the neighboring lawn, And through the dark green woods The white sun, twinkling like the dawn Out of a speckled cloud. Sweet views which in our world above Can never well be seen, ONE THE day was gray and dark and chill, Though May had come to meet us, So closely April lingered still. She had no heart to greet us ; When, with a swift and sudden flight, Wind-blown o'er hill and hollow, Two gray wings swept across my sight, And lo ! the first wild swallow. "Alas, fair bird ! the little breast That cuts the air so fleetly Should still have pressed its southern nest Till June was piping sweetly. In spite of cheery song and voice. Thou brave and blithe newcomer, I cannot in thy joy rejoice ; One swallow makes no summer." WE wandered to the pine forest That skirts the ocean's foam ; The lightest wind was in its nest. The tempest in its home. The whisp'ring waves were half asleep, The clouds were gone to play. And on the bosom of the deep The smile of heaven lay; It seemed as if the hour were one Sent from beyond the skies. Which scattered from above the sun A light of Paradise ! How calm it was ! the silence there By such a chain was bound. That even the busy woodpecker Made stiller by her sound The inviolable quietness ; The breath of peace we drew. With its soft motion made not less The calm that round us grew. We paused beside the pools that lie Under the forest bough ; Each seemed as 'twere a little sky Gulfed in a world below ; A firmament of purple light Which in the dark earth lay, More boundless than the depth of night, And purer than the day — In which the lovely forests grew. As in the upper air. More perfect both in shape and hue Than any spreading there. Were imaged by the water's love Of that fair forest green : And all was interfused beneath With an Elysian glow, An atmosphere without a breath, A softer day below. Percy B. Shelley. SWALLOW. Thus in my thought I fain would say : Meantime, on swift wing speeding. Its wild and winning roundelay The bird sang on unheeding : Of odorous fields and drowsy nooks. Of slow tides landward creeping, Of woodlands thrilled with jocund tunes, Of soft airs hushed and sleeping. He sang of waving forest heights With strong green boughs upspringing ; Of faint stars pale with drowsy lights. In dusky heavens swinging ; Of nests high hung in cottage eaves. Of yellow corn-fields growing. And through the long, slim, fluttering leaves. The sleepy winds a-1 lowing. 84 THE CHARMS OF NATURE. He sang until my soul took heed Of warm, soft-falling showers, Of dells high piled with tangled leaves, And gay with tangled flowers ; FIRST SIGHT OF THE VALLEY THE troops, refreshed by a night's rest, suc- ceeded, early on the following day, in gain- ing the crest of the sierra of Ahualco, which stretches like a curtain between the two great moun- tains on the north and south. Their progress w a s now compara- tively easy, and they marched forward with a buoyant step as they felt they were treading the soil of Montezuma. They had not advanced far, when, turning an angle of the sierra, they suddenly came on a view which more than compensated the toils of the pre- ceding day. _ It was that of the Valley of Mexico, which, with its picturesque assemblage of water, woodland, and cultivated plains, its shining cities and shadowy hills, was spread out like some gay Of life, and love, and hope's bright crew; This brave and blithe new comer — And so, and so, at last I knew One swallow made the summer. M. E. Blaine. OF MEXICO BY THE SPANIARDS. and gorgeous panorama before them. Stretching far away at their feet were seen noble forests of oak, sycamore, and cedar, and beyond, yellow fields of maize and the towering maguey, intermingled with orchards and blooming gardens ; for flowers, in such demand for their religious festivals, were even more abundant in this populous valley than in other parts of Anahuac. In the centre of the great basin were beheld the lakes, occupying then a much larger portion of its surface than at present; their borders thickly studded with towns and ham- lets, and, in the midst — like some Indian empress with her coronal of pearls — the fair city of Me.xico, with her white towers and pyramidal temple, re- posing, as it were, on the bosom of the waters — the far-famed "Venice of the Aztecs." High over all rose the royal hill of Chapultepec, the residence of the Mexican m o n a r c h s , crowned with the same grove of gigantic cyp- resses, which at this day fling their broad shad- ows over the land. In the distance beyond the blue waters of the lake, and nearly screened by intervening foliage, was seen a shining speck, the rival capital of Tezcuco, and, still further on, the dark belt of porphyry, girdling the valley around like a rich set- ting which nature had devised for the fairest of her jewels. Such was the beauti- ful vision which broke on the eyes of the con- querors. And even now, when so sad a change has "'" come over the scene; when the stately forests have been laid low, and the soil, unsheltered from the fierce radiance of a tropical sun, is in many places abandoned to sterility ; when the waters have retired, leaving a broad and ghastly margin white with the incrustation of salts, while the cities and hamlets on their borders have mould- ered into ruins ; — even now that desolation broods over the landscape, so indestructible are the lines of beauty which nature has traced on its features, that no traveler, however cold, can gaze on them In maiden meditation, fancy free. SHAKESPEARE. With thee conversing I forget all time, All seasons and their change — all please alike. MILTON. • THE CHARMS OF NATURE. 85 with any other emotions than those of astonish- ment and rapture. What, then, must have been the emotions of the Spaniards, when, after working their toilsome way into the upper air, the cloudy tabernacle parted before their eyes, and they beheld these fair scenes in all their pristine magnificence and beauty! It was like the spectacle which greeted the eyes of Moses from the summit of Pisgah, and, in the warm glow of their feelings, they cried out, " It is the promised land." W. H. Prescott. o THE FLOWER. NCE in a golden hour I cast to earth a seed. Up there came a flower, The people said, a weed. Sowed it far and wide By every town and tower. Till all the people cried, "Splendid is the flower." -\W\' To and fro they went Through my garden-bower, And muttering discontent Cursed me and my flower. Then it grew so tall It wore a crown of light, But thieves from o'er the wall Stole the seed by night ; Read my little fable : He that runs may read, Most can raise the flowers now, For all have got the seed. And some are pretty enough, And some are poor indeed ; And now again the people Call it but a weed. Alfred Tennyson. s NEW ENGLAND IN WINTER. HUT in from all tlie world without We sat the clean-winged hearth about Content to let the north-wind roar In baffled rage at pane and door, While the red logs before us beat The frost-line back with tropic heat; And ever, when a louder blast Shook beam and rafter as it passed, The merrier up its roaring draught The great throat of the chimney laughed. T TO THE FRINGED HOU blossom, bright with autumn dew, And colored with the heaven's own blue, That openest when the quiet light Succeeds the keen and frosty night ; Thou comest not when violets lean O'er wandering brooks and springs unseen, The house-dog on his paws outspread Laid to the fire his drowsy head, The cat's dark silhouette on the wall A couchant tiger's seemed to fall ; And, for the winter fireside meet, Between the andirons' straddling feet. The mug of cider simmered slow, The apples sputtered in a row. And, close at hand, the basket stood With nuts from brown October's wood. J. G. Whittiee. GENTIAN. Or columbines, in purple dressed, Nod o'er the ground-bird's hidden nest. Thou waitest late, and com'st alone. When woods are bare and birds are flown. And frosts and shortening days portend The aged year is near his end. 86 THE CHARMS OF NATURE. Then doth thy sweet and quiet eye Look through its fringes to the sky, Blue — blue — as if that sky let fall A flower from its cerulean wall. I would that thus, when I shall see The hour of death draw near to me, Hope, blossoming within my heart. May look to heaven as I depart. W. C. Bryant. s THE THRUSH. ONGSTER of the russet coat, Full and liquid is thy note; Plain thy dress, but great thy skill, Captivating at thy will. Small musician of the field, Near my bower thy tribute yield, Little servant of the ear. Ply thy task, and never fear. I will learn from thee to praise God, the author of my days . I will learn from thee to sinj:, Christ, my Saviour and my King; Learn to labor with my voice, Make the sinking heart rejoice. THE CHARMS OF NATURE. 87 PRINQ. THE bud is in the bough and the leaf is in the bud, And earth's beginning now in her veins to feel the blood, Which, warmed by summer's sun in the alembic of the vine, From her founts will overrun in a ruddy gush of wine. How awful is the thought of the wonders under- ground. Of the mystic changes wrought in the silent, dark ])rofound ; How each thing upward tends by necessity decreed, And the world's support depends on the shooting of a seed ! The summer's in her ark, and this sunny-pinioned day Is commissioned to remark whether winter holds her sway ; Go back, thou dove of peace, with myrtle on thy wing, Say that floods and tempests cease and the world is ripe for spring. Thou hast fanned the sleeping earth till her dreams are all of flowers, And the waters look in mirth for their overhang- ing bowers ; The forest seems to listen for the rustle of its leaves, And the very skies to glisten in the hope of sum- mer eves. The cattle lift their voices from the valleys and the hills, And the feathered race rejoices with a gush of tuneful bills ; And if this cloudless arch fills the poet's song with glee, O thou sunny first of March ! be it dedicate to thee. Horace Smith. 1'^\ THE COMET. WAS a beautiful night on a beautiful deep, And the man at the helm had fiillen asleep, And the watch on the deck, with his head on his breast. Was beginning to dream that another's is pressed, When the look-out aloft cried, '-A sail! ho, a sail!" "A sail! ho, a sail!" "Where away?" " North- nn'th west !" "Make her out?" "No, your honor!" The din drowns the rest. There indeed is the stranger, the first in these seas. Yet she drives boldly on in the teeth of the breeze, Now her bows to the breakers she readily turns ; Ah, how brightly the light of her binnacle burns 1 Not a signal for Saturn this rover has given. No salute from our Venus, the flag-star of Heaven, Not a rag or a ribbon adorning her spars, She has saucily sailed by the red planet Mars ; She has doubled triumphant the Cape of the Sun, And the sentinel stars without firing a gun ! Now a flag at the fore and mizzen unfurled. She is bearing quite gallantly down on the world ! " Helm-a-port !" "Show a light !" " She will run us aground !" "Fireagun!" " Bring her to !" "Sail ahoy!" " Whither bound ?" "Avast! there, ye lubbers! Leave the rudder alone ;" 'Tis a craft in commission — the Admiral's own; And she sails with sealed orders, unopened as yet. Though her anchor she weighed before Lucifer set! Ah ! she sails by a chart no draughtsman can make. Where each cloud that can trail, and each wave that can break ; Where each planet is cruising, each star is at rest. 88 THE CHARMS OF NATURE. With its anchor let go in the blue of the blest ; Where the sparkling flotilla, the Asteroids, lie, Where the craft of red morning is flung on the si^y; . . . , Where the breath of the sparrow ]S staining the air — On the chart that she bears you will find them all there ! Let her pass on in peace to the port whence she came. With her trackings of fire and her streamers of flame ! Benjamin F. Taylor. FLOWERS. HOW the universal heart of man blesses flowers! They are wreathed round the cradle, the marriage-altar, and the tomb. The Per- sian in the far East delights in their perfume, and writes his love in nosegays ; while the Lidian child of the far West clasps his hands with glee as he gathers the abundant blossoms — the illuminated scripture of the prairies. The Cupid of the an- cient Hindoos tipped his arrows with flowers, and orange buds are the bridal crown with us, a nation of yesterday. Flowers garlanded the Grecian LAKE MAHOPAC. LAKE of the soft and sunny hills, What loveliness is thine ! Around thy fair, romantic shore What countless beauties shine ! Shrined in their deep and hollow urn, Thy silver waters lie — A mirror set in waving gems Of many a regal dye. Oh, pleasant to the heart it is In those fair isles to stray. Or fancy's idle visions weave Through all the golden day, Where dark old trees, around whose stems Caressing woodbines cling, O'er mossy, flower-enamelled banks Their trembling shadows fling. Caroline M. Sawyer. altar, and they hang in votive wreaths before the Christian shrine. All these are appropriate uses. Flowers should deck the brow of the youthful bride, for they are in themselves a lovely type of marriage. They should twine round the tomb, for their perpetually renewed beauty is a symbol of the resurrection. They should festoon the altar, for their fragrance and their beauty ascend in perpetual worship be- fore the Most High. Lydia M. Child. THE BUGLE. THE splendor falls on castle walls And snowy summits old in story : The long light shakes across the lakes, And the wild cataract leaps in glory. Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying. Blow, bugle ; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying. THE CHARMS OF NATURE. m O hark ! O hear \ how thin and clear, And thinner, clearer, farther going ! O sweet and far, from cliff and scar, The horns of Elfiand faintly blowing ! Blow, let us hear the purple glens replying ; Blow, bugle ; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying. O love, they die in yon rich sky. They faint on hill or field or river ; Our echoes roll from soul to soul. And grow forever and forever. Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying. And answer, echoes, answer, dying, dying, dying, Alfred Tennyson. R OSES, roses, red and white. They are sweet and fresh and bright ; Buy them for thy love's delight ! In a garden old they grew. Old with flowers ever new — Buy them for thy loved one true, Roses, red and white, to wear On her bosom, in her hair. Buy them for thy lady fair : Like a token from above, Thy heart faithful they will prove — Buy them for thy lady love. William Cowan. THE NIGHTINGALE. HARK ! the nightingale begins his song, "Most musical, most melancholy " bird ! A melancholy bird ! O idle thought ! In nature there is nothing melancholy. But some night-wandering man, whose heart was pierced With the remembrance of a grievous wrong. Or slow distemper, or neglected love (x\nd so, poor wretch ! filled all things with him- self. And made all gentle sounds tell back the tale Of his own sorrows), he, and such as he. First named these notes a melancholy strain. S. T. Coleridge. THE NORTH STAR. ON thy unaltering blaze i'he half-wrecked mariner, his compass lost. Fixes his steady gaze. And steers, undoubting, to the friendly coast ; And they who stray in perilous wastes, by night. Are glad when thou dost shine to guide their foot- steps right. And, therefore, bards of old. Sages, and hermits of the solemn wood. Did in thy beams behold A beauteous type of that unchanging good. That bright eternal beacon, by whose ray The voyager of time should shape his heedful way. W. C. Bryant. eo THE CHARMS OF NATURE. lARVEST SWEET, sweet, sweet, Is the wind's song. Astir in the rippled wheat All day long, ^t hath the brook's wild gayety, The sorrowful cry of the sea. Oh, hush and hear ! Sweet, sweet and clear, Above the locust's whirr And hum of bee Rises that soft, pathetic harmony. In the meadow-grass The innocent white daisies blow, Tlie dandelion plume doth pass Vaguely to and fro — The unquiet spirit of a flower, That hath too brief an hour. Now doth a little cloud all white, Or golden bright, Drift down the warm blue sky; And now on the horizon line Where dusky woodlands lie, A sunny mist doth shine, Like to a veil before a holy shrine, Concealing, half-revealing, things divine. Sweet, sweet, sweet. Is the wind's song, Astir in the rippled wheat All day long. That exquisite music calls The reaper everywhere — Life and death must share. The golden harvest falls. So doth all end — Honored philosophy. Science and art. The bloom of the heart ; Master, Consoler, Friend, Make Thou the harvest of our day.'' To fall within thy ways. Ellen M. Hutchinson. SONQ OF THE BROOK. I COME from haunts of coot and hern : I make a sudden sally And sparkle out among the fern, To bicker down a valley. By thirty hills I hurry down, Or slip between the ridges, By twenty thorps, a little town. And half a hundred bridges. Till last by Philip's farm I flow To join the brimming river, For men may come and men may go. But I go on forever. I chatter over stony ways, In little sharps and trebles, I bubble into eddying bays, I babble on the pebbles. With many a curve ray banks I fret By many a field and fallow, And many a fairy foreland set With willow-weed and mallow. I chatter, chatter, as I flow To join the brimming river; For men may come and men may go. But I go on forever. I wind about, and in and out. With here a blossom sailing, And here and there a lusty trout, .\nd here and there a grayling, And here and there a foamy flake Upon me, as I travel With many a silvery waterbreak Above the golden gravel. And draw them all along, and flow. To join the brimming river. For men may come and men may go, But I go on forever. I steal by lawns and grassy plots : I slide by hazel covers ; I move the sweet forget-me-nots That grow for happy lovers. I slip, I slide, I gloom, I glance, Among my skimming swallows; I make the netted sunbeam dance .Against my sandy shallows. THE CHARMS OF NATURE. 91 I murmur under moon and stars In brambly wildernesses ; I linger by my shingly bars ; 1 loiter round ray cresses ; And out again I curve and flow To join the brimming river, For men may come and men may go, But I go on forever. Alfred Tennyson. A MIDSUMMER. ROUND this lovely valley rise The purple hills of Paradise. O, softly on yon banks of haze Her rosy face the summer lays ! Becalmed along the azure sky The argosies of cloudland lie, The butterfly and humble-bee Come to the pleasant woods with me; Quickly before me runs the quail, The chickens skulk behind the rail ; High up the lone wood-pigeon sits, And the woodpecker pecks and flits. Sweet woodland music sinks and swells, The brooklet rings its tinkling bells, The swarming insects drone and hum, The partridge beats his throbbing drum, The squirrel lea])S among the boughs And chatters in his leafy house. The oriole flashes by; and, look ! Into the mirror of the brook, Whose shores, with many a shining rift. Far off their pearl-white peaks uplift. Through all the long midsummer day The meadow sides are sweet with hay. I seek the coolest sheltered seat. Just where the field and forest meet — Where grow the pine trees tall and bland, The ancient oaks austere and grand, And fringy roots and pebbles fret The ripples of the rivulet. I watch the mowers as they go Through the tall grass, a white-sleeved row. With even stroke their scythes they swing. In tune their merry whetstones ring. Behind, the nimble youngsters run And toss the thick swaths in the sun. The cattle graze ; while warm and still Slopes the broad pasture, basks the hill, And bright, where summer breezes break. The green wheat crinkles like a lake. Where the vain bluebird trims his coat. Two tiny feathers fall and float. As silently, as tenderly. The down of peace descends on me. O, this is peace ! I have no need Of friend to talk, of book to read ; A dear Companion here abides; Close to my thrilling heart He hides ; The holy silence is His voice: I lie and listen, and rejoice. J. T. Trowbridge. SUMMER-TIME. THEY were right — those old German minne- singers — to sing the pleasant summer-time ! What a time it is ! How June stands illum- inated in the calendar ! The windows are all wide open ; only the Venetian blinds closed. Here and there a long streak of sunshine streams in through a crevice. We hear the low sotmd of the wind among the trees ; and, as it swells and freshens, the distant doors clap to, with a sudden sound. 92 THE CHARMS OF NATURE. The trees are heavy with leaves ; and the gardens full of blossoms, red and white. 'I he whole atmos- phere is laden with perfume and sunshine. The birds sing. Tlie cock struts about, and crows loft- ily. Inse°cts chirp in the grass. Yellow butter-cups stud the green carpet like golden buttons, and the red blossoms of the clover like rubies. The elm- trees reach their long, pendulous branches almost to the ground. White clouds sail aloft, and vapors fret the blue sky with silver threads. The white village gleams afar against the dark hills. Through the meadow winds the river — careless, indolent. It seems to love the country, and is in no haste to reach the sea. The bee only is at work— the hot and angry bee. All things else are at play ! he never plays, and is ve.\ed that any one should. People drive out from town to breathe, and to be happy. Most of them have flowers in their hands ; bunches of apple-blossoms, and still oftener lilacs. Ye denizens of the crowded city, how pleasant to you is the change from the sultry streets to the open fields, fragrant with clover blossoms ! how pleasant the fresh, breezy, country air, dashed with brine from the meadows ! how pleasant, above all, the flowers, the manifold beautiful flowers ! H. W. Longfellow. D TRAILING ARBUTU5. ARLINGS of the forest ! Blossoming, alone. When earth's grief is sorest For her jewels gone — Ere the last snow-drift melts, your tender buds have blown. Tinged with color faintly, Like the morning sky, Or, more pale and saintly, Wrapped in leaves you lie — Even as children sleep in faith's simplicity. There the wild-wood robin, Hymns your solitude ; And the rain comes sobbing Through the budding wood, While the low south wind sighs, but dare not be more rude. Were your pure lips fashioned Out of air and dew, Starlight unimpassioned. Dawn's most tender hue, And scented by the woods that gathered sweets for you? Fairest and most lonely. From the world apart ; Made for beauty only, Veiled from nature's heart With such unconscious grace as makes the dream of Art ! Were not mortal sorrow An immortal shade, Then would I to-morrow Such a flower be made. And live in the dear woods where my lost child- hood played. Rose Terry Cooke. LITTLE STREAMS. LITTLE streams are light and shadow ; Flowing through the pasture meadow, Flowing by the green way-side. Through the forest dim and wide, Through the hamlet still and small — By the cottage, by the hall, By the ruined abbey still ; Turning here and there a mill, Bearing tribute to the river — Little streams, I love you ever. Summer music is there flowing, Flowering plants in them are growing ; Happy life is in them all. Creatures innocent and small ; Little birds come down to drink Fearless of their leafy brink ; Noble trees beside them grow. Glooming them with branches low ; And between, the sunshine, glancing In their little wave-, is dancing. Little streams have flowers a many. Beautiful and fair as any; Typha strong, and green bur-reed ; Willow-herb, with cotton seed ; Arrow-head, with eye of jet ; And the water-violet. There the flowering-rush you meet, .\nd the plumy meadowsweet ; And, in places deep and stilly. Marble-like, the water-lily. Little streams, their voices cheery, Sound forth welcomes to the weary, Flowing on from day to day. Without stint and without stay ; Here, upon their flowery bank. In the old time pilgrims drank. Here have seen, as now, pass by, King-fisher, and dragon-fly; Those bright things that have their dwelin.j Where the little streams are welling. Down in valleys green and lowly. Murmuring not and gliding slowly; , Up in mountain-hollows wild. Fretting like a peevish child ; Through the hamlet, where all day In their waves the children play ; Running west, or running east. Doing good to man and beast — Always giving, weary never, Little streams, I love you ever. Mary Howitt, 'GATHERING FLOWERS, HERSELF A FAIRER FLOWER" AN OCEAN VOYAGE THE CHARMS OF NATURE. 93 1 THE BURIED FLOWER. N the silence of my chamber, When the night is still and deep, And the drowsy heave of ocean Mutters in its charmed sleep : Oft I hear the angel voices That have thrilled me long ago — Voices of my lost companions, Lying deep beneath the snow. Where are now the flowers we tended ? Withered, broken, branch and stem; AVhere are now the hopes we cherished ? Scattered to the winds with them. 94 THE CHARMS OF NATURE. For ye, too, were flowers, ye dear ones ! Nursed in hope and reared in love, Looking fondly ever upward To the clear blue heaven above : Smiling on the sun that cheered us, Rising lightly from the rain, Never folding up your freshness Save to give it forth again : Never shaken, save by accents From a tongue that was not free. As the modest blossom trembles At the wooing of the bee. O ! 'tis sad to lie and reckon All the days of faded youth, All the vows that we believed in. All the words we spoke in truth. Severed — were it severed only By an idle thought of strife. Such as time may knit together; Not the broken chord of life ! O my heart ! that once so truly Kept another's time and tune, — Heart, that kindled in the morning, Look around thee in the noon ! Where are they who gave the impulse To thy earliest thought and flow? Look across the ruined garden — All are withered, dropped, or low ! O ! I fling my spirit backward, And I pass o'er years of pain ; All I loved is rising round me, All the lost returns again. Brighter, fairer far than living, With no trace of woe or pain, Robed in everlasting beauty. Shall I see thee once again. By the light that never fadeth, Underneath eternal skies. When the dawn of resurrection Breaks o'er deathless Paradise. William E. Aytoun. THE SAND-PIPER. ACROSS the narrow beach we flit, One little sand-piper and I ; And fast I gather, bit by bit. The scattered drift-wood, bleached and dry. The wild waves reach their hands for it, The wild wind raves, the tide runs high. As up and down the beach we flit — One little sandpiper and L Above our heads the sullen clouds Scud black and swift across the sky ; Like silent ghosts, in misty shrouds Stand out the white light-houses nigh. Almost as far as eye can reach, I see the close-reefed vessels fly, As fast we flit along the beach — One little sand-piper and L I watch him as he skims along, Uttering his sweet and mournful cry ; He starts not at my fitful song, Or flash of fluttering drapery : He has no thought of any wrong. He scans me with a fearless eye ; Staunch friends are we, well-tried and strong, This little sand-piper and I. Comrade, where wilt thou be to-night. When the loosed storm breaks furiously ? My drift-wood fire will burn so bright ! To what warm shelter canst thou fly ? I do not fear for thee, though wroth The tempest rushes through the sky ; For are we not God's children both. Thou little sand-piper and I ? Celia Thaxter. ELEGY— WRITTEN IN SPRING. 1^^ IS past : the iron north has spent his rage ; Stern winter now resigns the lengthening day, The stormy howlings of the winds assuage, And warm o'er ether west- ern breezes play. Of genial heat and cheerful light the source. From southern climes, beneath another sky. The sun, returning, wheels his golden course : Before his beams all noxious vapors fly. Far to the north grim winter draws his train, To his own clime, to Zembla's frozen shore ; Where, throned on ice, he holds eternal reign ; Where whirlwinds madden, and where tempests roar. Loosed from the bands of frost, the verdant ground Again jnits on her robe of cheerful green. Again puts forth her flowers ; and all around Smiling, the cheerful face of spring is seen. Behold ! the trees new deck their withered boughs; Their ample leaves the hospitable plane. The taper elm, and lofty ash disclose ; The bloomiRg hawthorn variegates the scene. THE CHARMS OF NATURE. 95 The lily of the vale, of flowers the queen, Puts on the robe she neither sewed nor spun ; The birds on ground, or on the branches green, Hop to and fro, and glitter in the sun. Soon as o'er eastern hills the morning peers, From her low nest the tufted lark upsprings ; And, cheerful singing, up the air she steers; Still high she mounts, still loud and sweet she sings. Now is the time for those who wisdom love. Who love to walk in virtue's flowery road, Along the lovely paths of spring to rove. And follow nature up to nature's God. Michael Bruce. AMERICAN SKIES. THE sunny Italy may boast The beauteous tints that flush her skies, And lovely, round the Grecian coast. May thy blue pillars rise. I only know how fair they stand Around my own beloved land. And they are fair — a charm is theirs. That earth, the proud green earth, has not — With all the forms, and hues, and airs, That haunt her sweetest spot. We gaze upon thy calm pure sphere, And read of Heaven's eternal year. Oh, when, amid the throng of men, The heart grows sick of hollow mirth, How willingly we turn us then Away from this cold earth. And look into thy azure breast, For seats of innocence and rest ! W. C. Bryant. SCENERY OF LAKE SUPERIOR. FEW portions of America can vie in scenic attractions with this interior sea. Its size alone gives it all the elements of grandeur, but these have been heightened by the mountain masses which nature has piled along its shores. In some places these masses consist of vast walls of coarse gray or drab sandstone, placed horizon- tally until they have attained many hundred feet in height above the water. The action of such an immense liquid ^"^'^ ysi. area, forced against these crum- ^^^fe bling walls by tempests, has caused wide and deep arches to be worn into the solid structure at their base, into which the billows rush with a noise resembling low pealing thunder. By this means, large areas of the impending mass are at length undermined and precipitated into the lake, leaving the split and rent parts from which they have sepa- rated standing like huge misshapen turrets and battlements. Such is the varied coast called the Pictured Rocks. At other points of the coast vol- canic forces have operated, lifting up these level strata into positions nearly vertical, and leaving them to stand like the leaves of an open book. At the same time, the volcanic rocks sent up from below have risen in high mountain piles. Such is the condition of things at the Porcupine Mountains. There are yet other theatres of action for this sublime mass of inland waters, where it has mani- fested perhaps still more strongly, if not so strik- ingly, its abrasive powers. The whole force of the lake, under the impulse of a north-west tem- pest, is directed against prominent portions of the shore, which consist of the black and hard volcanic rocks. Solid as these are, the waves have found an entrance in veins of spar or minerals of softer structure, and have thus been led inland, and torn up large fields of amygdaloid and other rock, or left portions of them standing in rugged knobs or promontories. Such are the east and west coasts of the great peninsuia of Keweena, which has recently become the theatre of mining operations. When the visitor to these remote and boundless waters comes to see this wide and varied scene of complicated attractions, he is absorbed in wonder and astonishment. The eye, once introduced to this panorama of waters, is never done looking and admiring. Scene after scene, cliff after chff, island after island, and vista after vista are pre- sented. One day's scenes are but the prelude to another, and when weeks and months have been spent in picturesque rambles along its shores, the •96 THE CHARMS OF NATURE. traveler has only to ascend some of its streams and go inland to find falls and cascades, and cataracts of the most beautiful or magnificent character. Go where he will, there is something to attract him. Beneath his feet the pebbles are agates. The water is of the most crystalline purity. The sky is filled at sunset with the most gorgeous piles of clouds. The air itself is of the purest and most inspiriting kind. To visit such a scene is to draw health from its purest fountains, and to revel in intel- lectual delights. Henry R. Schoolcraft. HAMPTON BEACH. THE sunlight glitters keen and bright, Where, miles away. Lies stretching to my dazzled sight A luminous belt, a misty light, Beyond the dark pine bluffs and wastes of sandy gray. The tremulous shadow of the sea ! Against its ground Of silvery light, rock, hill, and tree, Still as a picture, clear and free. With varying outline mark the coast for miles around. On — on — we tread with loose-flung rein Our seaward way, Through dark-green fields and blossoming grain, Where the wild brier-rose skirts the lane. And bends above our heads the flowering locust spray. Ha ! like a kind hand on my brow Comes this fresh breeze, Cooling its dull and feverish glow, While through my being seems to flow The breath of a new life — the healing of the seas! Now rest we, where this grassy mound His feet hath set In the great waters, which have bound His granite ancles greenly round "With long and tangled moss, and weeds with cool spray wet. Good-bye to pain and care ! I take Mine ease to-day ; Here where these sunny waters break. And ripples this keen breeze, I shake All burdens from the heart, all weary thoughts away. I draw a freer breath — I seem Like all I see — Waves in the sun — the white-winged gleam Of sea-birds in the slanting beam — And far-off sails which flit before the south wind free. So when time's veil shall fall asunder, The soul may know No fearful change, nor sudden wonder, Nor sink the weight of mystery under, But with the upward rise, and with the vastness grow. And all we shrink from now may seem No new revealing ; Familiar as our childhood's stream. Or pleasant memory of a dream The loved and cherished past upon the new life stealing. Serene and mild the untried light May have its dawning ; And, as in summer's northern night The evening and the dawn unite. The sunset hues of time blend with the soul's new morning. I sit alone : in foam and spray Wave after wave Breaks on the rocks which, stern and gray, Shoulder the broken tide away. Or murmurs hoarse and strong through mossy cleft and cave. What heed I of the dusty land And noisy town ? I see the mighty deep expand From its white line of glimmering sand To where the blue of heaven on bluer waves shuts down ! In listless quietude of mind, I yield to all The change of cloud and wave and wind, And passive on the flood reclined, I wander with the waves, and with them rise and fall. But look, thou dreamer ! — wave and shore In shadow lie ; The night-wind warns me back once more To where my native hill-tops o'er Bends like an arch of fire the glowing sunset sky! So then, beach, bluff, and wave, farewell ! I bear witli me No token stone nor glittering shell. But long and oft shall Memory tell Of this brief thoughtful hour of musing by the Sea. J. G. Whittier. THE CHANGED SONG. I THOUGHT the sparrows note from heaven, Singing at dawn from the alder bough ; I brought him home, in his nest, at even ; He sings the song, but it pleases not now. For I did not bring home the river and sky; — He sang to my ear, — they sang to my eye. R. W. Emerson. THE CHARMS OF NATURE. 97 THE GARDEN. OVV vainly men themselves amaze, To win the palm, the oak, or bays; And their incessant labors see Crowned from some single herb, or tree. Whose short and narrow-verged shade Does prudently their toils upbraid ; While all the flowers and trees do close, 'I'o weave the garland of repose. No white nor red was ever seen So amorous as this lovely green. Fond lovers, cruel as their flame. Cut in these trees their mistress' name. Little, alas ! they know or heed. How far these beauties her exceed ! Fair trees! where'er your barks I wound. No name shall but your own be found. When we have run our passion's heat. Love hither makes his best retreat. The gods who mortal beauty chase. Still in a tree did end their race. Apollo hunted Daphne so, Only that she might laurel grow : And Pan did after Syrinx speed, Not as a nymph, but for a reed. What wondrous life in this I lead ! Ripe apples drop about my head ; The luscious clusters of the vine Upon my mouth do crush their wine ; The nectarine, and curious peach. Into my hands themselves do reach ; Stumbling on melons, as I pass, Insnared with flowers, I fall on grass. Meanwhile the mind from pleasure less Withdraws into its happiness. The mind, that ocean where each kind Does straight its own resemblance find ; Yet it creates, transcending these. Far other worlds and other seas ; Annihilating all that's made To a green thouglit in a green shade. Here at the fountain's sliding foot. Or at some fruit-tree's mossy root, Casting the body's vest aside, My soul into the boughs does glide ; There, like a bird, it sits and sings, Then whets and claps its silver wings, And, till prepared for longer flight, Waves in its plumes the various light. Such was the happy garden state, While man there walked without a mate ; After a place so pure and sweet, What other help could yet be meet ? But 'twas beyond a mortal's share To wander solitary there: 7 Two jjaradises are in one, To live in paradise alone. How well the skillful gardener drew Of flowers, and herbs, this dial nesv ! Where, from above, the milder sun Does through a fragrant zodiac run ; And, as it works, th' industrious bee Computes its time as well as we. How could such sweet and wholesome hours Be reckoned, but with herbs and flowers ? Andrew Marvell. TO THE RIVER ARVE. SUPPOSED TO BE WRITTEN AT A HAMLET NEAR THE FOOT OF MONT BLANC. Tourists in Switzerland are in the habit of visiting the point where the River Arve unites with the River Rhone. The Arve flows from tlie glaciers of the Alps, and has a peculiarly muddy appearance. The waters of the Rhone are clear as crystal. When the two rivers unite there is a dis- tinct line of deniarkation between them for a considerable distance, but gradually their %vaters are mingled. N' ' OT from the sands or cloven rocks. Thou rapid Arve ! thy waters flow ; Nor earth, within her bosom, locks Thy dark, unfathomed wells below. Thv springs are in the cloud, thy stream Begins to move and murmur first Where ice-peaks feel the noonday beam, Or rain-storms on the glacier burst. 98 THE CHARMS OF NATURE. Born where the thunder and the blast, And morning's earliest light are born. Thou rushest swol'n, and loud, and fast. By these low homes, as if in scorn ; Yet humbler springs yield purer waves ; And brighter, glassier streams than thine. Sent up from earth's unlighted caves, Witli heaven's own beam and image shine. Yet stay ; for here are flowers and trees ; Warm rays on cottage roofs are here, And laugh of girls, and hum of bees — Here linger till thy waves are clear. Thou heedest not — thou hastest on ; From steep to steep thy torrent falls, Till, mingling with the mighty Rhone, It rests beneath Geneva's walls. Rush on — but were there one with me That loved me, I would light my hearth Here, wherewith God's own majesty Are touched the features of the earth. By these old peaks, white, high, and vast, Still rising as the tempests beat. Here would I dwell, and sleep, at last, Among the blossoms at their feet. W. C. Brvant. VIEW ACROSS THE ROMAN CAMPAQNA. OVER the dumb campagna-sea, Out in the offing through mist and rain, St. Peter's Church heaves silently Like a mighty ship in pain, Facing the tempest with struggle and strain. Motionless waifs of ruined towers, Soundless breakers of desolate land ! The sullen surf of the mist devours That mountain-range upon either hand. Eaten away from its outline grand. And over the dumb campagna-sea Where (he ship of the Church heaves on to wreck. Alone and silent as God must be The Christ walks! — Ay, but Peter's neck Is stiff to turn on the foundering deck. Peter, Peter, if such be thy name, Now leave the ship for another to steer. And proving thy faith evermore the same Come forth, tread out through the dark and drear. Since He who walks on the sea is here ! Peter, Peter ! — he does not speak, — He is not as rash as in old Galilee. Safer a ship, though it toss and leak, Than a reeling foot on a rolling sea ! And he's got to be round in the girth, thinks he. Peter, Peter ! — he does not stir, — Kis nets are heavy with silver fish : He reckons his gains, and is keen to infer "The broil on the shore, if the Lord should wish, — But the sturgeon goes to the Caesar's dish." Peter, Peter, thou fisher of men, Fisher of fish wouldst thou live instead, — Haggling for pence with the other Ten, Cheating the market at so much a head, Griping the bag of the traitor dead ! At the triple crow of the Gallic cock Thou weep'st not, thou, though thine eyes be dazed : What bird comes ne.\t iij the tempest shock ? . . Vultures 1 See — as when Romulus gazed. To inaugurate Rome for a world amazed I Elizabeth B. Browning. THE BIRCH-TREE. RIPPLING through thy branches goes the sun- shine. Among thy leaves that palpitate for ever ; Ovid in thee a pining Nymph had prisoned. The soul once of some tremulous inland river, Quivering to tell her woe, but, ah! dumb, dumb for ever ! While all the forest, witched with slumberous moon- shine. Holds up its leaves in happy, happy silence, Waiting the dew, with breath and pulse suspended, — I hear afar thy whispering, gleaming islands, And track thee wakeful still amid the wide-hung silence. Upon the brink of some wood-nestled lakelet, Thy foliage, like the tresses, of a Dryad, Dripping about thy slim white stem, whose shadow Slopes quivering down the water's dusky quiet, Thou shrink'st as on her bath's edge would some startled Dryad. Thou art the go-between of rustic lovers ; Thy white bark has their secrets in its keeping ; Reuben writes here the happy name of Patience, And thy lithe boughs hang murmuring and weeping Above her, as she steals the mystery from thy keeping. Thou art to me like my beloved maiden, So frankly coy, so fiill of trembly confidences ; Thy shadow scarce seems shade ; thy pattering leaflets Sprinkle their gathered sunshine o'er my senses. And Nature gives me all her summer confidences. Whether my heart with hope or sorrow tremble. Thou sympathizest still ; wild and unquiet, I fling me down, thy ripple, like a river. Flows valleyward while calmness is, and by it My heart is floated down into the land of quiet. James Russell Lowell. THE CHARMS OF NATURE. 99 MOUNTAINS. MOUNTAINS! who was your builder? Who laid your awful foundations in the central fires, and piled your rocks and snow- capped summits among the clouds? Who placed you in the gardens of the world, like noble altars, on which to offer the sacrificial gifts of many nations? Who reared your rocky walls in the barren desert, like towering pyramids, like monumental mounds, like giants' graves, like dismantled piles of royal ruins, telling a mournful tale of glory, once bright, but now fled forever, as flee the dreams of a mid- summer's night ? Who gave you a home in the islands of the sea, — those emeralds that gleam among the waves, — those slars of ocean that mock the beauty of the stars of night? Mountains ! I know who built you. It was God ! His name is written on your foreheads. He laid your cornerstones on that glorious morn- ing when the orchestra of heaven sounded the anthem of creation. He clothed your high, im- perial forms in royal robes. He gave you a snowy garment, and wove for you a cloudy vail of crimson and gold. He crowned you with a diadem of icy jewels; pearls from the Arctic seas; gems from the frosty pole. Moun- tains ! ) e are glorious. Ye stretch your granite arms away toward the vales of the undiscovered : ye have a longing for immortality. But, Mountains! ye long in vain. I called you glorious, and truly ye are; but your glory is like that of the starrv heavens, — it shall pass away at the trumpet-blast of the angel of the Most High. .\nd yet ye are worthy of a high and eloquent eulogium. Ye were the lovers of the daughters of the gods ; ye are the lovers of the daughters of Liberty and Religion now ; and in your old and feeble age tlie children of the skies shall honor your bald heads. The clouds of heaven — those shadows of Olym- pian power, those spectral phantoms of dead Titans — kiss your summits, as guardian angels kiss the brow of infant nobleness. On your sacred rocks I see the footprints of the Creator ; I see the blazing fires of Sinai, and hear its awful voice; I see the tears of Calvary, ard listen to its mighty groans. Mountains ! ye are proud and haughty things. Ye hurl defiance at the storm, the lightning, and the wind ; ye look down with deeji disdain upon the thunder-cloud ; ye scorn the devastating tem- pest ; ye despise the works of puny man ; ye s'-ake your rock-rilibed sides with giant laughter, when the great earthquake passes by. Ye stand as giant sentinels, and seem to say to the boisterous bil- lows, — "Thus far shah thou come, and here shall thy proud waves be stayed !" Mountains! ye are growing old. Your ribs of granite are getting weak and rotten ; your muscles are losing their fatness; your hoarse voices are heard only at distant intervals; your volcanic heart throbs feebly and your lava-blood is thickening, as the winters of many ages gather their chilling snows around your venerable forms. The brazen sunlight laughs in your old and wrinkled faces; the pitying moonlight nestles in your hoary locks ; and the silvery starlight rests upon you like the halo of inspiration that crowned the heads of dying patriarchs and prophets. Mountains ! ye must die. Old Father Time, that sexton of earth, has dug you a deep, dark tomb ; and in silence ye shall sleep after sea and shore shall have been pressed by the feet of the apoca- lyptic angel, through the long watches of an eternal night. E. M. Morse. THE GLORY OF MOTION. THRP^E twangs of the horn, and they're all out of cover ! Must brave you, old bull-finch, that's right in the way ! A rush, and a bound, and a crash, and I'm over ! They're silent and racing and for'ard away; 100 THE CHARMS OF NATURE. Fly, Charley, my darling ! Away and we follow ; There's no earth or cover for mile upon mile ; We're winged with the flight of the stork and the swallow ; The heart of the eagle is ours for a while. The pasture land knows not of rough plough or harrow ! The hoofs echo hollow and soft on the sward ; The soul of the horses goes into our marrow ; My saddle's a kingdom, and I am its lord : And rolling and flowing beneath us like ocean, Gray waves of the high ridge and furrow glide on. And small flying fences in musical motion, Before us, beneath us, behind us, are gone. O puissant of bone and of sinew availing. On thee how I've longed for the brooks and the showers ! O white-breasted camel, the meek and unfailing, I To speed through the glare of the long desert hours ! And, bright little barbs, ye make worthy pretences To go with the going of Solomon's sires ; But you stride not the stride, and you fly not the fences ! And all the wide Hejaz is naught to the shires. O gay gondolier ! from thy night-flitting shallop I've heard the soft pulses of oar and guitar; But sweeter the rhythmical rush of the gallop, The fire in the saddle, the flight of the star. Old mare, my beloved, no stouter or faster Hath ever strode under a man at his need ; But glad in the hand and embrace of thy master, And pant to the passionate music of speed. Can there e'er be a thought to an elderly person So keen, so inspiring, so hard to forget, So fully adapted to break into burgeon As this — that the steel isn't out of him yet ; That flying speed tickles one's brain with a feather; That one's horse can restore one the years that are gone ; That, spite of gray winter and weariful weather, The blood and the pace carry on, carry on ? R. S. J. TVRWHITT. THE WINDY NIGHT. LOW and aloof, Over the roof, How the midnight tempests howl ! With a dreary voice, like the dismal tune Of wolves that bay at the desert moon ; Or whistle and shriek Through limbs that creak. "Tu-who! Tu-whit!" They cry, and flit, " Tu-whit ! Tu-who !" like the solemn owl I Alow and aloof, Over the roof. A Sweep the moaning winds amain, ; And wildly dash The elm and ash, Clattering on the window sash With a clatter and patter Like hail and rain. That well-nigh shatter The dusky pane 1 Alow and aloof. Over the roof. How the tempests swell and roar ! Though no foot is astir, Though the cat and the cur Lie dozing along the kitchen floor, There are feet of air On every stair — Through every hall ! Through each gusty door There's a jostle and bustle, With a silken rustle. Like the meeting of guests at a festival ! Alow and aloof, Over the roof, How the stormy tempests swell ! And make the vane On the spire complain ; They heave at the steeple with might and main, And burst and sweep Into the belfry, on the bell I They smite it so hard, and they smite it so well. That the sexton tosses his arms in sleep. And dreams he is ringing a funeral knell ! T. B. Read. w THE OWL. HILE the moon, with sudden gleam, Through the clouds that cover busr. Darts her light upon the stream, And the poplars gently stir ; Pleased I hear thy boding cry, Owl, that lov'st the cloudy sky ! Sure thy notes are harmony. While the maiden, pale with care, Wanders to the lonely shade. Sighs her sorrows to the air, While the flowerets round her fade,— Shrinks to hear thy boding cry; Owl, that lovst the cloudy sky, To her it is not harmony. While the wretch with mournful dole. Wrings his hands in agonv, Praying for his brother's soul. Whom he pierced suddenly, — Shrinks to hear thy boding cry ; Owl, that lov'st the cloudy sky. To him it is not harmony. THOMAS MOORE. JAMES WHITCOMB RILEV. POETRY OF THE YEAR: COMPRISING Poems on the Seasons, Including Flowers and Birds. THE YEAR'S TWELVE CHILDREN. ANUARY, wan and gray, Like an old pilgrim by the way, Watches the snow, and shivering sighs As the wild curlew round him flies, Or, huddled underneath a thorn. Sits praying for the lingering morn. February, bluff and cold, O'er furrows striding scorns the cold. And with his horses two abreast Makes the keen plough do his behest. Rough March comes blustering down the road. In his wrathy hand the oxen goad ; Or, with a rough and angry haste, Scatters the seeds o'er the dark waste. April, a child, half tears, half smiles, Trips full of little playful wiles ; And laughing, 'neath her rainbow hood. Seeks the wild violets in the wood. May, the bright maiden, singing goes. To where the snowy hawthorn blows. Watching the lambs leap in the dells, List'ning the simple village bells. Ji'NE, with the mower's scarlet face. Moves o'er the clover field apace. And fast his crescent scythe sweeps on O'er spots from whence the lark has flown. July, the farmer, happy fellow, Laughs to see the corn grow yellow ; The heavy grain he tosses up From his right hand as from a cup. August, the reaper, cleaves his way. Through golden waves at break of day ; Or in his wagon, piled with corn, At sunset home is proudly borne. September, with his baying hound, Leaps fence and pale at every bound, And casts into the wind in scorn, All cares and dangers from his horn. October comes, a woodman old. Fenced with tough leather from the cold ; Round swings his sturdy axe. and lo ! A fir branch falls at every blow. November cowers before the flame, Blear crone, forgetting her own name ! Watching the blue smoke curling rise. And broods upon old memories. December, fat and rosy, strides. His old heart warm, well clothed his sides; With kindly word for young and old, The cheerier for the bracing cold, Laughing a welcome, open flings His doors, and as he goes he sings. JOY OF SPRING. FOR lo ! no sooner has the cold withdrawn. Than the bright elm is tufted on the lawn ; The merry sap has run up in the bovvers. And burst the windows of the buds in flowers; With song the bosoms of the birds run o'er. The cuckoo calls, the swallow's at the door, And apple-trees at noon, with bees alive, Burn with the golden chorus of the hive. Now all these sweets, these sounds, this vernal blaze Is but one joy, expressed a thousand ways ; And honey from the flowers, and song from birds. Are from the poet's pen his overflowing words. Leigh Hunt. 101 102 POETRY OF THE YEAR. SPRING. I COME ! I come ! ye have called me long — I come o'er the mountains with light and song! Ye may trace my step o'er the wakening earth By the winds which tell of the violet's birth, By the primrose-stars in the shadowy grass, By the green leaves opening as 1 pass. I have breathed on the South, and the chestnut flowers By thousands have burst from the forest-bowers, And the ancient graves and the fallen fanes Are veiled with wreaths on Italian plains; — But it is not for me, in my hour of bloom, To speak of the ruin or the tomb ! I have looked on the hills of the stormy North, And the larch has hung all his tassels forth, The fisher is out on the sunny sea. And the reindeer bounds o'er the pastures free, And the pine has a fringe of softer green. And the moss looks bright where my foot hath been. I have sent through the wood-paths a glowing sigh. And called out each voice of the deep blue sky ; From the night bird's lay through the starry time, In the groves of the soft Hesperian clime, To the swan's wild note by the Iceland lakes. When the dark fir-branch into verdure breaks. From the streamsand founts I have loosed the chain; They are sweeping on to the silvery main, They are flashing down from the mountain brows, They are flinging spray o'er the forest boughs, They are bursting fresh from their sparry caves. And the earth resounds with the joy of waves ! Come forth, O ye children of gladness ! come ! Where the violets lie may be now your home. Ye of the rose-lip and dew-bright eye, And the bounding footstep, to meet me fly ! With the lyre, and the wreath, and the joyous lay. Come forth to the sunshine — I may not stay. Felicia D. Hemans. MARCH. HE cock is crowing, The stream is flowing. The small birds twitter. The lake doth glitter. The green field sleeps in thesun; The oldest and youngest ; Are at work with the strongest ; The cattle are grazing, Their heads never raising ; There are forty feeding like one ! Like an army defeated, The snow hath retreated. And now doth fare ill Cn the top of the bare hill; The ploughboy is whooping — anon — anon There's joy on the mountains ; There's life in the fountains; Small clouds are sailing, Blue sky prevailing ; The rain is over and gone ! William Wordsworth. / ^ y A? '/' //, •'E^ M >7 r'^xir^^^" '» 0*{ w r If A MARCH DAY. 103 104 POETRY OF THE YEAR. APRIL-LARK. Rejoicing bird : whose wings have cleft the blue And those far heights of morning sky have scaled : Youth loves to watch thee, but with sighs watc'.i those Whose wings grow wearied, and whose hopes have failed. DAY: A PASTORAL. "SWIFTLY from the mountain's brow, ^ Shadows, nursed by night, retir -^ And the peeping sunbeam, now, Paints with gold the village spire. Philomel forsakes the thorn. Plaintive where she prates at night ; And the lark, to meet the morn. Soars beyond the shepherd's sight. From the low-roofed cottage ridge. See the chatt'ring swallow spring ; Darting through the one-arched bridge, Quick she dips her dappled wing. Now the pine-tree's waving top Gently greets the morning gale! THE HAPPY insect, what can be, In happiness compared to thee? Fed with nourishment divine, The dewy morning's gentle wine ! Nature waits upon thee still, And thy verdant cup does fill ; 'Tis filled wherever thou dost tread, Nature self's thy Ganymede. Thou dost drink and dance and sing, Happier than the happiest king ! All the fields which thou dost see, All the plants belong to thee ; All the summer hours produce. Fertile made with early juice. Man for thee does sow and plough, Kidlings, now, begin to crop Daisies, in the dewy dale. From the balmy sweets, uncloyed (Restless till her task be done). Now the busy bee's employed Sipping dew before the sun. Trickling through the creviced rock. Where the limpid stream distils. Sweet refreshment waits the flock When 'tis sun-drove from the hills. Sweet — O sweet, the warbling throng. On the white emblossomed spra\' ! Nature's universal song Echoes to the rising day. John Cunningham. GRASSHOPPER. Farmer he, and landlord thou ! Thou dost innocently enjoy. Nor does thy luxury destroy. The shepherd gladly heareth thee. More harmonious than he, The country hinds with gladness hear. Prophet of the ripened year ! To thee, of all things upon earth, Life is no longer than thy mirth. Happy insect ! happy thou, Dost neither age nor winter know; But when thou'st drunk and danced and sung Thy fill, the flowery leaves among. Sated with thy summer feast, Thou retir'st to endless rest. Abraham Cowley. POETRY OF THE YEAR. 105 APRIL. NOVV daisies pied, and violets blue, And lady-smocks all silver-white. And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue. Do paint the meadows with delight; The cuckoo now on every tree, Sings cuckoo ! cuckoo ! William Shakespeare. L A WALK BY THE WATER. ET us walk where reeds are growing, By the alders in the mead; Where the crystal streams are flowing, In whose waves the fishes feed. There the golden carp is laving. With the trout, the perch, and bream; Mark ! their flexile fins are waving, As they glance along the stream. Now they sink in deeper billows, Now upon the surface rise ; Or, from under roots of willows, Dart to catch the water-flies. Midst the reeds and pebbles hiding, See the minnow and the roach ; Or, by water-lilies gliding. Shun with fear our near approach. Do not dread us, timid fishes, We have neither net nor hook ; Wanderers we, whose only wishes Are to read in nature's book. Charlotte Smith. N' BUD AND BLOOM. 0\V fades the last long streak of snow. Now burgeons every maze of quick About the flowering squares and thick By ashen roots the violets blow. Now rings the woodland loud and long, The distance takes a lovelier hue, And drowned in yonder living blue The lark becomes a sightless song. ^ Now dance the lights on lawn and lea, The flocks are whiter down the vale, And milkier every milky sail, On winding stream or distant sea ; Where now the seamew pipes, or dives In yonder greening gleam, and fly The happy birds, that change their sky To build and brood, that li\e their lives From land to land ; and in my breast Spring wakens too : and my regret Becomes an April violet, And buds and blossoms like the rest. Alfred Tennyson. THE OPEN DAY. OFT have I listen'd to a voice that spake Of cold and dull realities of life. Deem we not thus of life ; for we may fetch Light from a hidden glory, which shall clothe The meanest thing that is with hues of heaven. Our light should be the broad and open day ; And as we lose its shining, we shall look Still on the bright and daylight face of things. Henry Alford. 106 POETRY OF THE YEAR. No new son_j biiigs the Nightingale, And no new month she finds for singing; She sings the sweet old song of love, When May her fairest flowers is bringing. THE PRIMROSE. WELCOME, pale primrose ! starting up between Dead matted leaves of ash and oak, that strew The every lawn, the wood, and spinny through ; 'Mid creeping moss and ivy's darker green ; How much thy presence beautifies the ground, How sweet thy modest, unaffected pride. Glows on the sunny bank, and wood's warm side ! And when thy fairy flowers in groups are found, The schoolboy roams enchantedly along, Plucking the fairest with a rude delight ; While the meek shepherd stops his simple song. To gaze a moment on the pleasing sight ; O'erjoyed to see the flowers that truly bring The welcome news of sweet returning spring. John Clare. M A TRIBUTE TO MAY. FROM THE GERMAN OF CONRAD OF KIRCHBERG. AY, sweet May, again is come — May that frees the land from gloom ; Children, children ! up and see All her stores of jollity. On the laughing hedgerow's side She hath spread her treasures wide ; She is in the greenwood shade, Where the nightingale hath made Every branch and every tree Ring with her sweet uulody : Hill and dale are May's own treasures, Youths, rejoice ! In sportive measures Sing ye ! join the chorus gay ! Hail this merry, merry May ! Up ! then, children ! we will go. Where the blooming roses grow ; In a joyful company. We the bursting flowers will see ; Up, your festal dress prepare ! Where gay hearts are meeting, there POETRY OF THE YEAR. 107 May hath pleasures most inviting, Heart, and sight, and ear delighting. Listen to the bird's sweet song. Hark ! how soft it floats along. Courtly dames ! our pleasure share ; Never saw I May so fair : Therefore, dancing will we go, Youths, rejoice ! the flow'rets blow ! Sing ye ! join the chorus gay ! Hail this merry, merry May ! William Roscoe. THE WOODLAND IN SPRING. E'EN in the spring and playtime of the year. That calls the unwonted villager abroad With all her little ones, a sportive train. To gather kingcups in the yellow mead, Sits cooing in the pine-tree, nor suspends His long love-ditty for my near approach. Drawn from his refuge in some lovely elm. That age or injury has hollowed deep, Where, on his bed of wool and matted leaves, He has outslept the winter, ventures forth To frisk awhile, and bask in the warm sun. The squirrel, flippant, pert, and full of play. And prink their hair with daisies, or to pick A cheap but wholesome salad from the brook : These shades are all my own. The timorous hare. Grown so familiar with her frequent guest. Scarce shuns me ; and the stock dove, unalarmed, " He sees me, and at once, swift as a bird, Ascends the neighboring beech ; there whisks his brush, And perks his ears, and stamps and cries aloud. With all the prettiness of feigned alarm, And anger insignificantly fierce. William Cowper. BREATHINGS OF SPRING. WHATwakest thou, Spring? Sweet voices in the woods, And reed-like echoes, that long have been mute ; Thou bringest back to fill the solitudes. The lark's clear pipe, the cuckoo's viewless flute. Whose tone seems breathing mournfulness or glee. E'en as our hearts may be. And the leaves greet thee. Spring! — the joyous leaves, Whose tremblings gladden many a copse and glade, Where each young spray a rosy flush receives. When thy south wind hath pierced the whispery shade. And happy murmurs, running through the grass. Tell that thy footsteps pass. 108 POETRY OF THE YEAR. And the bright waters — they too hear thy call, Spring, the awakener ! thou hast burst their sleep ! Amidst the hollows of the rocks their fall Makes melody, and in the forests deep. Where sudden sparkles and blue gleams betray Their winding to the day. And flowers — the fairy-peopled world of flowers ! Thou from the dust hast set that glory free, Coloring the cowslip with the sunny hours. And pencilling the wood anemone : Silent they seem — yet each to thoughtful eye Glows with mute poesy. But what awakest thou in the heart, O Spring I The human heart, with all its dreams and sighs? Thou that givest back so many a buried thing. Restorer of forgotten harmonies! Fresh songs and scents break forth, where'er thou art, What wakest thou in the heart ? Vain longings for the dead ! — why come they back With thy young birds, and leaves and living blooms ? Oh ! is it not, that from thine earthly track Hope to thy world may look beyond the tombs ? Yes, gentle Spring ! no sorrow dims thine air, Breathed by our loved ones there ! I'elicia D. Hemans. CORINNA'S GOING A-MAYING. GET up, get up for shame ! the blooming morn Upon her wings presents the God unshorn ! See how Aurora throws her fair Fresh-quilted colors through the air ! — Get up, sweet slug-a-bed I and see The dew bespangling herb and tree. Each flower has wept and bowed towards the east Above an hour since, )et you are not dressed ! — Nay, not so much as out of bed. When all the birds have matins said, And sung their thankful hymns : 'tis sin — Nay, profanation, to keep in. Whereas a thousand virgins on this day Spring sooner than the lark, to fetch in May! Come, my Corinna ! come, and coming, mark How each field turns a street— each street a park. Made green, and trimmed with trees ! — see how Devotion gives each house a bough Or branch ! — each porch, each door, ere this An ark, a tabernacle is. Made up of whitehorn neatly interwove, As if here were those cooler shades of love. Can such delights be in the street And open fields, and we not .see 't? Come, we'll abroad, and let's obey The proclamation made for May, And sin no more, as we have done by staying, But, my Corinna ! come let's go a-Maying. Come, let us go, while we are in our prime. And take the harmless folly of the time ; We shall grow old apace and die Before we know our liberty. Our life is short, and our days run As fast away as does the sun : And as a vapor, or a drop of rain. Once lost, can ne'er be found again. So when or you or I are made A fable, song, or fleeting shade, All love, all liking, all delight, Lies drowned with us in endless night. Then while time serves, and we are but decaying. Come, my Corinna ! come, let's go a-Maying. Robert Herrick. THE EARTHS GLADNESS. THE earth with Spring's first flowers is glad. The skies, the seas are blue. But still shall finer spirits turn With hearts that long, and souls that burn, And for some ghostly whiteness yearn Some glimpses of the true ; Chasing some fair ideal sweet. Breathless with bleeding feet. High Summer comes with warmth and light. The populous cities teem Through statue-decked perspectives, long, Aglow with painting, lit with song. Surges the busy, world-worn throng. But, ah ! not these their dream. Not these, like that white ghost allure, August, celestial, pure. Crowning the cloud-based ramparts, shines The city of their love, Now soft with fair reflected light, And now intolerably bright, Dazzling the feeble, struggling sight. It beckons from above. It gleams above the untrodden snows, Flushed by the dawn's weird rose. It gleams, it grows, it sinks, it fades. While up the perilous height, From the safe, cloistered walls ot home. Low cot, or aery ]ialace dome. The faithful pilgrims boldly come. Though Heaven be veiled in night. They come, they climb, they dare not stay Whose feet forerun the day. And some through midnight darkness fall Missing the illumined sky ; And some with cleansed heart and mind, And souls to lower splendors blind. The city of their longing find, Clear to the mortal eye. For all yet here, or far beyond the sun, At last the height is won. Lewis R. Morris. I— %. fc> ^_ A FAIR BEGINNER -JJ o < c Q k4 O O POETRY OF THE YEAR. 109 ON MAY day's har- from the East, and leads NOW the bright morning-star, binger, Comes dancini with her The flowery May, who from her green lap throws The yellow cowslip and the pale primrose. MORNING. Hail bounteous May ! that dost inspire Mirth, and youth, and warm desire ; Woods and groves are of thy dressing, Hill and dale doth boast thy blessing. Thus we salute thee with our early song, And welcome thee, and wish thee long. John Milton. SUMMER EVE. OWN the sultry arc of day The burning wheels have The burning wheels have urged way, And Eve along the western skies Spreads her intermingling dyes; Down the deep, the miry lane, Creaking comes the empty wain ; And driver on the shaft-horse sits, Whistling now and then by fits. The barn is still — the master's gone — And thresher jmts his jacket on ; While Dick upon the ladder tall Nails the dead kite to the wall. Here comes Shepherd Jack at last, He has penned the sheepcot fast ; For 'twas but two nights before A lamb was eaten on the moor ; His empty wallet Rover carries — Now for Jack, when near home, tarries ; With lolling tongue he runs to try If the horse-trough be not dry. The milk is settled in the pans, And supper messes in the cans ; In the hovel carts are wheeled. And both the colts are drove a-field : The horses are all bedded up. their And the ewe is with the tup. The siiare for Mister Fox is set, The leaven laid, the thatching wet, And Bess has slinked away to talk With Roger in the holly walk. Now on the settle all but Bess Are set, to eat their supper mess ; And little Tom and roguish Kate Are swinging on the meadow gate. Now they chat of various things — Of taxes, ministers, and kings; Or else tell all the village news — How madam did the 'squire refuse, How parson on his tithes was bent. And landlord oft distrained for rent. Thus do they, till in the sky The pale-eyed moon is mounted high. The mistress sees that lazy Kate The happing coal on kitchen grate Has laid — while master goes throughout. Sees shutter fast, the mastiff out; The candles safe, the hearths all clear, And nought from thieves or fire to fear; Then both to bed together creep, And join the general troop of sleep. Henry Kirke White. 110 POETRY OF THE YEAR. CHILDREN IN SPRING. THE snow has left the cottage-top; The thatch moss grows in brighter green ; And eaves in quick succession drop, Where grinning icicles have been, Pit-patting with a pleasant noise In tubs set by the cottage-door; While ducks and geese, with happy joys, Plunge in the yard-pond brimming o'er. The sun peeps through the window-pane. Which children mark with laughing eye, And in the wet street steal again. To tell each other spring is nigh. Then as young hope the past recalls, In playing groups they often draw, To build beside the sunny walls Their spring-time huts of sticks or straw. And oft in pleasure's dream they hie Round homesteads by the village sidp Scratching the hedge-row mosses by, Where painted pooty shells abide; Mistaking oft the ivy spray For leaves that come with budding spring, And wondering, in their search for play, Why birds delay to build and sing. THE G O, lovely rose ! Tell her that wastes her time and me That now she knows, When I resemble her to thee. How sweet and fair she seems to be. Tell her that's young. And shuns to have her graces spied, That hadst thou sprung In deserts where no men abide. Thou must have uncommended died. The mavis thrush, with wild delight, Upon the orchard's dripping tree Mutters, to see the day so bright Fragments of young hope's poesy; And dame oft stops her buzzing wheel. To hear the robin's note once more, Who tootles while he pecks his meal j From sweet-brier buds beside the door John Clare. ROSE. I Small is the worth Of beauty from the light retired ! Bid her come forth — Suffer herself to be desired. And not blush so to be admired. Then die, that she The common fate of all things rare May read in thee — How small a part of time they share That are so wondrous sweet and fair. Edmund W.^ller. r I J 1 |||. I 1,1' ,-^ f A SPRING ROSE. Ill 112 POETRY OF THE YEAR. MORNING IN SUMMER. AND soon, observant of approaching day, The meek-eyed morn appears, mother of dews. At first faint gleaming in the dappled east ; Till far o'er ether spreads the winding glow. And from before the lustre of her face White break the clouds away. With quickened step, Brown night retires: young day pours in apace. And opens all the lawny prospect wide. The dripping rock, the mountain's misty top, Swell on the sight, and brighten with the dawn. Blue, through the dusk, the smoking currents shine ; And from the bladed field the fearful hare Limps, awkward : while along the forest glade w A JUNE DAY, HO has not dreamed a world of bliss, On a bright, sunny noon like tliis, Couched by his native brook's green maze. With comrade of his boyish days? While all around them seemed to be Just as in joyous infancy. Who has not loved, at such an hour, Upon that heath, in birchen bower, Lulled in the poet's dreamy mood, Its wild and sunny solitude ? The wild deer trip, and, often turning, gaze At early passenger. Music awakes The native voice of undissembled joy ; And thick around the woodland hymns arise. Roused by the cock, the soon-clad shepherd leaves His mossy cottage, where with peace he dwells ; And from the crowded fold, in order, drives His flock, to taste the verdure of the morn. But yonder comes the powerful king of day, Rejoicing in the east ! The lessening cloud, The kindling azure, and the mountain's brow Illumed with fluid gold, his near approach Betoken glad. Lo ! now, apparent all, Aslant the dew-bright earth, and colored air, He looks in boundless majesty abroad ; And sheds the shining day, that burnished plays On rocks, and hills and towers, and wandering streams, High-gleaming from afar. James Thomson. While o'er the waste of purple ling You marked a sultry glimmering ; Silence herself there seems to sleep. Wrapped in a slumber long and deep. Where slowly stray those lonely sheep Through the tall fox-gloves' crimson bloom, And gleaming of the scattered broom. Love you not, then, to list and hear The crackling of the gorse-flowers near, Pouring an orange-scented tide Of fragrance o'er the desert wide? 'l"o hear the buzzard whimpering shrill Hovering above you high and still? The twittering of the bird that dwells Amongst the heath's delicious bells? While round your bed, or fern and blade. Insects in green and gold arrayed. The sun's gay tribes have lightly strayed And sweeter sound their humming wings Tlian the proud minstrel's echoing strings. William Howitt. POETRY OF THE YEAR. 113 H REPOSE IN SUMMER. ER eyelids dropped their silken eaves, I breathed upon her eyes, Through all the summer of my leaves, A welcome mixed with sighs. Sometimes I let a sunbeam slip To light her shaded eye ; A second fluttered round her lip, Like a golden butterfly. Alfred Tennyson. SONNET ON COUNTRY LIFE. TO one who has been long in city pent, 'Tis very sweet to look into the fair And open lace of heaven — to breathe prayer Full in the smile of the blue firmament. Who is more happy, when, with heart's cor tent. Fatigued he sinks into some pleasant lair Of wavy grass, and reads a debonair And gentle tale of love and languishment ? Returning home at evening, with an ear Catching the notes of Philomel — an eye Watching the sailing cloudlet's bright career. He mourns that day so soon has glided by: E'en like the passage of an angel's tear That falls through the clear ether silently. John Keats. THE BLACKBIRD. O BLACKBIRD ! sing me something well : While all the neighbors shoot the round, I keep smooth plats of fruitful ground. Where thou may'st warble, eat, and dwell. The espaliers and the standards all Are thine ; the range of lawn and park ; The unnetted black-hearts ripen dark, All thine, against the garden wall. Yet, tho' I spared thee all the spring, Thy sole delight is, sitting still, With that gold dagger of thy bill To fret the summer jenneting. A golden bill ! the silver tongue. Cold February loved, is dry : Plenty corrupts the melody That made thee famous once, when young : And in the sultry garden-squares. Now thy flute-notes are changed to coarse, I hear thee not at all, or hoarse As when a hawker hawks his wares. Take warning ! he that will not sing While yon sun prospers in the blue. Shall sing for want, ere leaves are new, Caught in the frozen palms of spring. Alfred Tennyson. 114 POETRY OF THE YEAR. AUGUST— WREN. " Little wren. why do you warble ? Blackbird was singing at dawn, Thrush will be here in the twilight, Nightingale then, sweet and lorn." " One hour of day would be silent If I should pause in my sonj You may not care for my music — One answering heart listens long." SUMMER REVERIE. I STOOD tiptoe upon a little hill, The air was cooling, and so very still, That the sweet buds which with a modest pride Pull droopingly, in slanting curve aside. Their scanty-leaved, and finely-tapering stems. Had not yet lost their starry diadems Caught from the early sobbing of the morn. The clouds were pure and white as flocks new shorn, And fresh from the clear brook ; sweetly they slept On the blue fields of heaven, and then there crept A little noiseless noise among the leaves. Born of the very sigh that silence heaves ; For not the faintest motion could be seen Of all the shades that slanted o'er the green. There was wide wandering for the greediest eye, To peer about upon variety ; Far round the horizon's crystal air to skim, And trace the dwindled edgings of its brim ; ' To picture out the quaint and curious bending Of a fresh woodland alley never-ending : Or by the bowery clefts, and leafy shelves, Guess where the jaunty streams refresh themselves. I gazed awhile, and felt as light and free As though the fanning wings of Mercury Had played upon my heels : I was light-heartea, And many pleasures to my vision started ; So I straightway began to pluck a posy Of luxuries bright, milky, soft, and rosy. A bush of May-flowers with the bees about tl-.em j Ah, sure no tasteful nook could be without them ! And let a lush laburnum oversweep them. And let long grass grow round the roots to keep them Moist, cool, and green ; and shade the violets, That they may bind the moss in leafy nets. John Keats. SHEPHERD AND FLOCK. AROUND the adjoining brook, that purls along The vocal grove, now fretting o'er a rock. Now scarcely moving through a reedy pool. Now starting to a sudden stream, and now Gently diffused into a limpid plain ; A various group the herds and flocks compose. Rural confusion ! On the grassy bank Some ruminating lie ; while others stand Half in the flood, and often bending sip The circling surface. In the middle droops The strong laborious ox, of honest front. Which incomposed he shakes ; and from his sides The troublous insects lashes with his tail. Returning still. Amid his subjects safe Slumbers the monarch-swain, his careless arm Thrown round his head, on downy moss sustained Here laid his scrip, with wholesome viands filled; There, listening every noise, his watchful dog. James Thomson. POETRY OF THE YEAR. 115 A WINTER SKETCH. THE blessed morn has come again ; The early gray Taps at the slumberer's window-pane, And seems to say, Break, break from the enchanter's chain. Away, away ! '■ lis winter, yet there is no sound Along the air Of winds along their battle-ground ; But gently there The snow is falling — all around How fair, how fair! Ralph Hci: -k.^!.:lli'^j^>f Y TO MEADOWS. E have been fresh and green ; Ye have been filled with flowers; And ye the walks have been Where maids have spent their hours. Ye have beheld where they With wicker arks did come, To kiss and bear away The richer cowslips home ; Y'ou've heard them sweetly sing, And seen them in a round ; Each virgin, like the spring. With honeysuckles crowned. But now we see none here Whose silvery feet did tread, And with dishevelled hair Adorned this smoother mead. Like unthrifts, having spent Your stock, and needy grown, You're left here to lament Your poor estates alone. Robert Herrioc. 116 POETRY OF THE YEAR. A SONG FOR THE SEASONS. w HEN the merry lark doth gild Witli his song the summer hours, And their nests the swallows build In the roofs and tops of towers, And the golden broom-flower burns All about the waste, And the maiden May returns With a pretty haste — Then, how merry are the times ! The summer times ! the spring times! Now, from off the ashy stone The chilly midnight cricket crieth, And all merry birds are flown. And our dream of pleasure dieth ; Now the once blue, laughing sky Saddens into gray. And the frozen rivers sigh. Pining all away ! Now, how solemn are the times ! The winter times ! the night times ! Yet, be merry : all around Is through one vast change revolving ; Even night, who lately frowned, Is in paler dawn dissolving ; Earth will burst her fetters strange. And in S])ring grow free ; All things in the world will change. Save — my love for thee ! Sing then, hopeful are all times ! Winter, summer, spring times ! Barry Cornwall. SUMMER'S HAUNTS. UNTO me, glad summer. How hast thou flown to me ? My chain less footsteps nought hath kept From thy haunts of song and glee ; Thou hast flown in wayward visions, In memories of the dead — In shadows from a troubled heart. O'er thy sunny pathway shed. Felicia D. Hemans. 5T-^I THE LAST ROSE OF SUMMER. ^IS the last rose of summer Left blooming alone ; All her lovely companions Are faded and gone ; No flower of her kindred. No rosebud is nigh, To reflect back her blushes, Or give sigh for sigh ! I'll not leave thee, thou lone one, To pine on the stem : Since the lovely are sleeping, Go, sleep thou with them. Thus kindly I scatter Thy leaves o'er the bed Where thy mates of the garden Lie scentless and dead. So soon may I follow. When friendships decay. And from love's shining circle The gems drop away ! When true hearts lie withered And fond ones are flown. Oh ! who would inhabit This bleak world alone? Thomas Moore. FAIR SUMMER. THE spring's gay promise melted into thee, Fair summer ! and thy gentle reign is here ; Thy emerald robes are on each leafy tree ; In the blue sky thy voice is rich and clear ; And the free brooks have songs to bless thy reign — • They leap in music 'midst thy bright domain. Thus gazing on thy void and sapphire sky, O, summer ! in my inmost soul arise Uplifted thoughts, to which the woods reply. And the bland air with its soft melodies — Till basking in some vision's glorious ray, I long for eagles' plumes to flee away ! Willis G. Clark. A DAY IN AUTUMN. THERE was not, on that day, a speck to stain The azure heaven ; the blessed sun, alone, In unapproachable divinity. Careered, rejoicing in his fields of light. How beautiful, beneath the bright blue sky. The billows heave ! one glowing green expanse. Save where along the bending line of shore Such hue is known as when the peacock's neck Assumes its proudest tint of amethyst, Embathed in emerald glory. All the flocks Of ocean are abroad : like floating foam. The sea-gulls rise and fall upon the waves ; With long-protruded neck the cormorants Wing their far flight aloft, and round and round The plovers wheel, and give their note of joy. It was a day that sent into the heart A summer feeling : even the insect swarms From their dark nooks and coverts issued forth. To sport through one day of existence more ; The solitary primrose on the bank Seemed now as though it had no cause to mourn Its bleak autumnal birth ; the rocks and shores, The forest, and the everlasting hills. Smiled in that joyful sunshine — they partook The universal blessing. Robert Southey. JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. IW .-(» » '^. ROBERT BURNS AND HIS HICHLAXH MARY POETRY OF THE YEAR. 117 SEPTEMBER— CURLEW. White breakers foam upon the desolate sands. The gray sea-grass bends in the freshening breeze, And, heard with winds and waves, the curlew's cry Blends in a wild sea music that can please. A SONG FOR SEPTEMBER. SEPTEMBER strews the woodland o'er With many a brilliant color ; The world is brighter than before — • Why should our hearts be duller? Sorrow and the scarlet kaf, Sad thoughts and sunny weather ! Ah me ! this glory and this grief Agree not well together. This is the parting season — this The time when friends are flying ; And lovers now, with many a kiss, Their long farewells are sighing. Why is earth so gayly drest? This jiomp that autumn beareth, A funeral seems, where e\ery guest A bridal garment weareth. Each one of us, perchance, may here, On some blue morn hereafter. Return to view the gaudy year, But not wiih boyish laughter. We shall then be wrinkled men, Our brows wi'h silver laden, And thou this glen mayst seek again, But nevermore a maiden ! Nature perhaps foresees that spring Will touch her teeming bosom, And that a few brief months will bring The bird, the bee, the blossom ; Ah ! these forests do not know — Or would less brightly wither — The virgin that adorns them so Will never more come hither ! Thoivias William Parsons^ SERENITY OF AUTUMN. BUT see the fading many-colored woods, Shade deepening over shade, the country round Imbrown ; a crowded umbrage, dusk and dun. Of every hue, from wan declining green To sooty dark. These now the lonesome Muse, Low whispering, lead into their leaf-strown walks. And give the season in its latest view. Meantime, light shadowing all, a sober calm Fleeces unbounded eth r : whose least wave Stands tremulous, uniertain where to turn The gentle current : while illumined wide. The dewy-skirted clouds imbibe the sun. And through their lucid veil his softened force Shed o'er the peaceful world. Then is the time, For those whom virtue and whom nature charm. To steal themselves from the degenerate crowd, .'^nd soar above this little scene of things ; To tread low-thoughted vice beneath their feet \ To soothe th_- throbbing passions into peace; And woo lone quiet in her silent walks. Thus solitary, and in ])ensive guise, Oft let me wander o'er the russet mead, And through the saddened grove, where scarce is heard 118 POETRY OF THE YEAR. One dying strain, to cheer the woodman's toil. Haply some widowed songster pours his plaint, Far, in faint warblings, through the tawny copse ; While congregated thrushes, linnets, larks. And each wild throat, whose artless strains so late Swelled all the music of the swarming shades, The rivers run chill ; The red sun is sinking ; And I am grown old, And life is fast shrinking; Here's enough for sad thinking! Thomas Hood. Robbed of their tuneful souls, now shivering sit On the dead tree, a dull despondent flock; With not a brightness waving o'er their plumes. And nought save chattering discord in their note James Thomson. T AUTUMN. HE autumn is old ; The sere leaves are flying ; He hath gathered up gold, And now he is dying : Old age, begin sighing ! The vintage is ripe ; The harvest is heaping ; But some that have sowed Have no riches for reaping : Poor wretch, fall a-weeping ! The year's in the wane ; There is nothing adorning ; The night has no eve. And the day has no morning; Cold winter gives warning. AUTUMN FLOWERS. THOSE few pale autumn flowers, How beautiful they are ! Than all that went before, Than all the summer store, How lovelier far ! And why ? — They are the last ! The last ! the last ! the last ! Oh! by that little word How many thoughts are stirred That whisper of the past ! Pale flowers! pale perishing flowers! Ye're types of precious things ; Types of those bitter moments. That flit, like life's enjoyments. On rapid, rapid wings : Last hours with parting dear ones (That time the fastest spends), POETRY OF THE YEAR. 119 Last tears in silence shed. Last words iialf uttered, Last loolcs of dying friends. Who but would fain compress A life into a day — The last day spent with one Wlio, ere the morrow's sun, Must leave us, and for aye ? The rabbit is cavorting Along the gloomy slope, The shotgun of the sportsman Eliminates his lope. The butterfly's departed, Likewise the belted bee, The small boy in the orchard Is up the apple tree. OCTOBER— SWALLOW. The sky grows dim, the leaves like lost hope fall And Swallows, joyous comers long ago. Rise up to take departure — summer friends, Who leave us lone t