MAY, thou month of rosy beauty,
Month when pleasure is a duty;
Month of maids that milk the kine,
Bosom rich, and health divine;
Month of bees and month of flowers,
Month of blossom-laden bowers :
Month of little hands with daisies,
Lovers' love, and poets' praises;
O thou merry month complete,
May, the very name is sweet!
May was MAID in olden times,
And is still in Scottish rhymes

May's the month that 's laughing now.

I no sooner write the word,

Than it seems as though it heard,
And looks up and laughs at me,
Like a sweet face, rosily,
Flushing from the paper's white;
Like a bride that knows her power,
Startled in a summer bower.

If the rains that do us wrong
Come to keep the winter long
And deny us thy sweet looks,
I can love thee, sweet, in books,
Love thee in the poets' pages,
Where they keep thee green for ages;
Love and read thee as a lover
Reads his lady's letters over,
Breathing blessings on the art
Which commingles those that part.

There is May in books forever:
May will part from Spencer never;
May 's in Milton, May 's in Prior,
May's in Chaucer, Thomson, Byer;
May's in all the Italian books;
She has old and modern nooks,
Where she sleeps with nymphs and elves
In happy places they call shelves,
And will rise and dress your rooms
With a drapery thick with blooms.

Come, ye rains, then, if ye will, May's at home and with me still; But come rather, thou good weather, And find us in the fields together.

LEIGH HUNT.

MAY.

I FEEL a newer life in every gale;
The winds that fan the flowers,

And with their welcome breathings fill the sail,
Tell of serener hours,

Of hours that glide unfelt away

Beneath the sky of May.

The spirit of the gentle south-wind calls

From his blue throne of air,

And where his whispering voice in music falls,
Beauty is budding there;

The bright ones of the valley break
Their slumbers, and awake.

The waving verdure rolls along the plain, And the wide forest weaves,

To welcome back its playful mates again, A canopy of leaves;

And from its darkening shadow floats A gush of trembling notes.

Fairer and brighter spreads the reign of May;

The tresses of the woods

With the light dallying of the west-wind play;
And the full-brimming floods,
As gladly to their goal they run,
Hail the returning sun.

JAMES GATES PERCIVAL.

THEY COME! THE MERRY SUMMER MONTHS.

THEY come! the merry summer months of beauty, song, and flowers;

They come the gladsome months that bring thick leafiness to bowers.

Up, up, my heart! and walk abroad; fling cark and care aside;

Seek silent hills, or rest thyself where peaceful waters glide;

Or, underneath the shadow vast of patriarchal tree,

Scan through its leaves the cloudless sky in rapt tranquillity.

The grass is soft, its velvet touch is grateful to the hand;

And, like the kiss of maiden love, the breeze is sweet and bland;

The daisy and the buttercup are nodding courteously;

It stirs their blood with kindest love, to bless and welcome thee;

And mark how with thine own thin locksthey now are silvery gray

That blissful breeze is wantoning, and whispering, "Be gay!"

THE CHILD'S WISH IN JUNE.
MOTHER, mother, the winds are at play,
Prithee, let me be idle to-day.
Look, dear mother, the flowers all lie
Languidly under the bright blue sky.
See, how slowly the streamlet glides;
Look, how the violet roguishly hides;
Even the butterfly rests on the rose,
And scarcely sips the sweets as he goes.
Poor Tray is asleep in the noonday sun,
And the flies go about him one by one;
And pussy sits near with a sleepy grace,
Without ever thinking of washing her face.
There flies a bird to a neighboring tree,
But very lazily flieth he,

And he sits and twitters a gentle note,
That scarcely ruffles his little throat.

You bid me be busy; but, mother, hear
How the humdrum grasshopper soundeth near,
And the soft west-wind is so light in its play,
It scarcely moves a leaf on the spray.

I wish, O, I wish I was yonder cloud,

That sails about with its misty shroud ;
Books and work I no more should see,
And I'd come and float, dear mother, o'er thee.

CAROLINE GILMAN.

IN SUMMER TIME.

O LINDEN-TREES! whose branches high
Shut out the noontide's sultry sky,
Throwing a shadow cool and dim
Along the meadow's grassy rim,

SHORT is the doubtful empire of the night;
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 widening glow,
And, from before the luster 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

Calm is the deep and purple sea,

Yea, smoother than the sand; The waves, that weltering wont to be, Are stable like the land.

So silent is the cessile air,

That every cry and call,

The hills and dales and forest fair Again repeats them all.

The flourishes and fragrant flowers, Through Phoebus' fostering heat, Refreshed with dew and silver showers, Cast up an odor sweet.

The clogged, busy humming-bees,
That never think to drone,
On flowers and flourishes of trees,
Collect their liquor brown.

The sun, most like a speedy post, With ardent course ascends; The beauty of the heavenly host Up to our zenith tends;

Not guided by a Phaethon,
Not trained in a chair,

But by the high and holy One,
Who does all where empire.

The burning beams down from his face So fervently can beat,

That man and beast now seek a place To save them from the heat.

The herds beneath some leafy tree, Amidst the flowers they lie; The stable ships upon the sea Tend up their sails to dry.

With gilded eyes and open wings,
The cock his courage shows;
With claps of joy his breast he dings,
And twenty times he crows.

The dove with whistling wings so blue,
The winds can fast collect,
Her purple pens turn many a hue
Against the sun direct.

Now noon is went; gone is midday,
The heat does slake at last,
The sun descends down west away,
For three o'clock is past.

The rayons of the sun we see

Diminish in their strength,

The shade of every tower and tree Extended is in length.

FORTY REASONS FOR NOT ACCEPTING AN INVITATION OF A
FRIEND TO MAKE AN EXCURSION WITH HIM.

1 The hollow winds begin to blow;
2 The clouds look black, the glass is low,
3 The soot falls down, the spaniels sleep,
4 And spiders from their cobwebs peep.
5 Last night the sun went pale to bed,
6 The moon in halos hid her head;
7 The boding shepherd heaves a sigh,
8 For see, a rainbow spans the sky!

9 The walls are damp, the ditches smell,
10 Closed is the pink-eyed pimpernel.
11 Hark how the chairs and tables crack!
12 Old Betty's nerves are on the rack;
13 Loud quacks the duck, the peacocks cry,
14 The distant hills are seeming nigh.
15 How restless are the snorting swine!
16 The busy flies disturb the kine,
17 Low o'er the grass the swallow wings,
18 The cricket, too, how sharp he sings!
19 Puss on the hearth, with velvet paws,