[*.* No collection of the author's poems has been made since 1848, and some of those in this volume date back even farther than that. All but two of the shortest have been printed before, either wholly or in part. As the greater number, however, were published more than fifteen years ago, they will have, perhaps, something of novelty to most readers. A few pieces, more strictly comic, have been omitted, as out of keeping; and “Fitz Adam's Story," which some good friends will miss, is also left to stand over, because it belongs to a connected scries, which, it is hoped, may be completed if the days should be propitious.]

RANK-HEARTED hostess of the field and wood,

FRAN

Gypsy, whose roof is every spreading tree,
June is the pearl of our New England year.
Still a surprisal, though expected long,
Her coming startles. Long she lies in wait,
Makes many a feint, peeps forth, draws coyly back,
Then, from some southern ambush in the sky,
With one great gush of blossom storms the world.
A week ago the sparrow was divine;

The bluebird, shifting his light load of song
From post to post along the cheerless fence,
Was as a rhymer ere the poet come;

But now, O rapture! sunshine winged and voiced,
Pipe blown through by the warm wild breath of the

West

Shepherding his soft droves of fleecy cloud,

10

UNDER THE WILLOWS.

Gladness of woods, skies, waters, all in one,

The bobolink has come, and, like the soul
Of the sweet season vocal in a bird,
Gurgles in ecstasy we know not what

Save June! Dear June! Now God be praised for June!

May is a pious fraud of the almanac,

A ghastly parody of real Spring

Shaped out of snow and breathed with eastern wind;

Or if, o'er-confident, she trust the date,
And, with her handful of anemones,

Herself as shivery, steal into the sun,

The season need but turn his hourglass round,
And Winter suddenly, like crazy Lear,
Reels back, and brings the dead May in his arms,
Her budding breasts and wan dislustred front
With frosty streaks and drifts of his white beard
All overblown. Then, warmly walled with books,.
While my wood-fire supplies the sun's defect,
Whispering old forest-sagas in its dreams,
I take my May down from the happy shelf
Where perch the world's rare song-birds in a row,