BETROTHED ANEW.

THE sunlight fills the trembling air,
And balmy days their guerdons bring;
The Earth again is young and fair,

And amorous with musky Spring.

The golden nurslings of the May

In splendor strew the spangled green, And hues of tender beauty play,

Entangled where the willows lean.

Mark how the rippled currents flow;
What lustres on the meadows lie!
And hark! the songsters come and go,
And trill between the earth and sky.
Who told us that the years had fled,

Or borne afar our blissful youth?
Such joys are all about us spread ;

We know the whisper was not truth.

The birds that break from grass and grove
Sing every carol that they sung
When first our veins were rich with love,
And May her mantle round us flung.

O fresh-lit dawn! immortal life!

O Earth's betrothal, sweet and true, With whose delights our souls are rife, And aye their vernal vows renew!

Then, darling, walk with me this morn ; Let your brown tresses drink its sheen; These violets, within them worn,

Of floral fays shall make you queen.

What though there comes a time of pain
When autumn winds forebode decay?
The days of love are born again;
That fabled time is far away!

THE JOYS OF THE ROAD. To R. H.

Now the joys of the road are chiefly these:
A crimson touch on the hard-wood trees;
A vagrant's morning wide and blue,
In early fall, when the wind walks, too;
A shadowy highway cool and brown,
Alluring up and enticing down
From rippled water to dappled swamp,
The outward eye, the quiet will,
From purple glory to scarlet pomp;
And the striding heart from hill to hill;
The tempter apple over the fence;
The cobweb bloom on the yellow quince;
The palish asters along the wood,-
A lyric touch of the solitude;

An open hand, an easy shoe,

And a hope to make the day go through,-
Another to sleep with, and a third
To wake me up at the voice of a bird;
The resonant, far-listening morn,
And the hoarse whisper of the corn;
The crickets mourning their comrades lost,
In the night's retreat from the gathering frost;
(Or is it their slogan, plaintive and shrill,
As they beat on their cor-elets, valiant still?)

A hunger fit for the kings of the sea,
And a loaf of bread for Dick on and me;
A thirst like that of the Thirsty Sword,
And a jug of cider on the board;
An idle noon, a bubbling spring,
The sea in the pine-tops murmuring;

A scrap of gossip at the ferry;

A comrade neither glum nor merry,
Asking nothing, revealing naught,

But minting his words from a fund of thought,

A keeper of silence eloquent,

Needy, yet royally well content,

Of the mettled breed, yet abhorring strife,
And full of the mellow juice of life,

A taster of wine, with an eye for a maid,
Never too bold and never afraid,
Never heart-whole, never heart-sick
(These are the things I worship in Dick),
No fidget and no reformer, just
A calm observer of ought and must,
A lover of books, but a reader of man,
No cynic and no charlatan,

Who never defers and never demands,
But, smiling, takes the world in his hands,-
Seeing it good as when God first saw
And gave it the weight of his will for law.

And oh the joy that is never won,

But follows and follows the journeying sun, By marsh and tide, by meadow and stream, A will-o'-the-wind, a light-o'-dream, Delusion afar, delight anear,

From morrow to morrow, from year to year, A jack-o'-lantern, a fairy fire,

A dare, a bliss, and a desire!

The racy smell of the forest loam,

When the stealthy, sad-heart leaves go home; (O leaves, O leaves, I am one with you,

Of the mould and the sun, and the wind and

the dew!)

The broad gold wake of the afternoon;
The silent fleck of the cold new moon:
The sound of the hollow sea's release
From stormy tumult to starry peace;
With only another league to wend,
And two brown arms at the journey's end:

These are the joys of the open roadFor him who travels without a load.

BLISS CARMAN.

And never seemed the land so-fair

As now, nor birds such notes to sing, Since first within your shining hair

I wove the blossoms of the spring.

EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN.

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 Win

ter'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.

HENRY KIRKE WHITE

THE RHODORA.

LINES ON BEING ASKED, WHENCE IS THE FLOWER:

In May, when sea-winds pierced our solitudes, I found the fresh rhodora in the woods, Spreading its leafless blooms in a damp nook, To please the desert and the sluggish brook : The purple petals fallen in the pool

Made the black waters with their beauty gay, Here might the red-bird come his plumes to cool, And court the flower that cheapens his array. Rhodora! if the sages ask thee why This charm is wasted on the marsh and sky,

Then beauty is its own excuse for being.

Why thou wert there, O rival of the rose!

I never thought to ask; I never knew,
But in my simple ignorance suppose
The self-same Power that brought me there brought

you.

RALPH WALDO EMERSON.

Let my vexed spirit be!

O violet thy odor through my brain
Hath searched, and stung to grief
This sunny day, as if a curse did stain
Thy velvet leaf.

WILLIAM WETMORE STORY.

THE DAISY.

TO A MOUNTAIN DAISY,

FROM THE "LEGEND OF GOOD WOMEN."

OF all the floures in the mede,

Than love I most these floures white and rede,
Soch that men callen daisies in our town;
To hem I have so great affection,
As I said erst, whan comen is the May,
That in my bedde there daweth me no day
That I nam up and walking in the mede,
To seene this flour ayenst the Sunne sprede,
Whan it up riseth early by the morrow.
That blissful sight softeneth all my sorrow,
So glad am I, whan that I have the presence
Of it, to done it all reverence,

And ever I love it, and ever ylike newe,
And ever shall, till that mine herte die
All swere I not, of this I will not lie.

My busie gost, that thursteth alway newe,
To seen this flour so yong, so fresh of hew,
Constrained me, with so greedy desire,
That in my herte I fele yet the fire,
That made me rise ere it were day,
And this was now the first morow of May,
With dreadful † herte, and glad devotion
For to been at the resurrection

Of this floure, whan that it should unclose
Againe the Sunne, that rose as redde as rose.
And doune on knees anon right I me sette,
And as I could, this fresh floure I grette,
Kneeling alway, till it unclosed was,
Upon the small, soft, swete gras,
That was with floures swete embrouded all,
Of such swetenesse, and such odour overall
That for to speke of gomme, herbe, or tree,
Comparison may not ymaked be,
For it surmounteth plainly all odoures,
And of rich beaute of floures.

And Zephirus, and Flora gentelly,
Yave to these floures soft and tenderly,

Hir swote breth, and made hem for to sprede,
As god and goddesse of the flourie mede,
In which me thoughte I might day by day,
Dwellen alway, the joly month of May,
Withouten slepe, withouten meat or drinke:
Adoune full softly I gan to sinke,
And leaning on my elbow and my side,
The long day I shope me for to abide,
For nothing els, and I shall nat lie,
But for to looke upon the daisie,
That well by reason men it call may
The daisie, or els the eye of the day,
The empress and floure of floures all,
I pray to God that faire mote she fall,
And all that loven floures for her sake.

ON TURNING ONE DOWN WITH THE PLOUGH, IN APRIL, 178

WEE, modest, crimson-tippèd flower,
Thou's met me in an evil hour,
For I maun crush amang the stoure
Thy slender stem;

To spare thee now is past my power,
Thou bonny gem.

Alas! it's no thy neebor sweet,
The bonnie lark, companion meet,
Bending thee 'mang the dewy weet,
Wi' spreckled breast,

When upward springing, blithe to greet
The purpling east.

Cauld blew the bitter-biting north Upon thy early, humble birth; Yet cheerfully thou glinted forth Amid the storm,

Scarce reared above the parent earth Thy tender form.

The flaunting flowers our gardens yield
High sheltering woods and wa's maun shield :
But thou beneath the random bield
O' clod or stane,

Adorns the histie stibble-field,
Unseen, alane.

There, in thy scanty mantle clad,
Thy snawie bosom sunward spread,
Thou lifts thy unassuming head
In humble guise;
But now the share uptears thy bed,
And low thou lies!

Such is the fate of artless maid,
Sweet floweret of the rural shade!
By love's simplicity betrayed,
And guileless trust,

Till she, like thee, all soiled, is laid
Low i' the dust.

Such is the fate of simple bard,
On life's rough ocean luckless starred !
Unskilful he to note the card

Of prudent lore,
Till billows rage, and gales blow hard,
And whelm him o'er!

Such fate to suffering worth is given,
Who long with wants and woes has striven,
By human pride or cunning driven

To misery's brink,

Till, wrenched of every stay but Heaven,

He, ruined, sink!