How often in the chapel too, The fresh-thrown reeds might lie; While the tears and smiles of a bridal band Went softly passing by! And they were there when sorrow deep Wept the untimely doom Of young, and bright, and beautiful, In sooth it is an ancient thing, I love it for them all right well, For the fairy scene that lay around Beside the bank the stately trees The leafy branches thro', And danced among the tall keen reeds, And on the water fell, Where the merry fish were glancing swift; And the water snake, as well, Came, gliding in a graceful curl Like a lord in his own dominions there, Now toward the margin where we stood We saw him steering on,— Then under groups of lily leaves And wild-fowl, water-rats, and all, Its margent of smooth lawny turf Was mossy, soft, and deep, Where the shadows broad of the beech and oak Seemed quietly to sleep. The rhododendrons, purple yet With many a massive wreath, I dearly love small relics brought That seem to certify the facts Of memory's pictured scene; But seeds and roots of flowers are I've Broom-seeds from a heathy glen, Of wall-flower slips and roots I've got So many, that I'm fain, Dear as they are to me, to turn My ivy-plant from Tintern's braved The feathery seeds of clematis And so at Claremont, where the crowd My whims were humoured, and I now And e'en those little things can bring The very nook where the scented leaves Of the graceful calamus dwell. Louisa A. Twamley. BROOM....Humility. Thomas Miller thus speaks of the "bonny Broom," in his Romance of Nature:— Beautiful art thou, O Broom! waving in all thy rich array of green and gold, on the breezy bosom of the bee-haunted heath. The sleeping sunshine, and the silver-footed showers, the clouds that for ever play about the face of Heaven, the homeless winds, and the crystal-globed dews, that settle upon thy blossoms like sleep on the veined eyelids of an infant, are ever beating above and around thee, as if to tell that they rejoice in thy companionship, and that, although a thousand years have strided by with silent steps, time hath not abated an atom of their love. Who can tell the thoughts of Saxon Alfred when, wandering alone, crownless and sceptreless, he stretched himself on the lonely moor beneath the shadow of thy golden blossoms, sighing for the fair queen he had left far behind? When he bowed his kingly head, and, musing on thy beauty, buried in a solitary wild, thought how even regal dignity would be enhanced by humility, and that, although thou didst grow there unmarked and unpruned, not a more princely flower waved in his own English garden. Humility, that low, sweet root, From which all heavenly virtues shoot. Moore. Oh the Broom, the bonny bonny Broom, For sure so soft, so sweet a bloom, Elsewhere there never grows. Scottish Song. Here is a precious jewel I have found Longfellow. Their groves of sweet myrtle, let foreign lands reckon, But the publican stood afar off in his grief, While the publican sinner, though loathed and oppressed, |