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Title: Golden Numbers

A Book of Verse for Youth

Author: Various

Editor: Kate Douglas Wiggin

Nora Archibald Smith

Release Date: November 8, 2010 [EBook #34237]

Language: English

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McCLURE'S LIBRARY OF CHILDREN'S CLASSICS

EDITED BY KATE DOUGLAS WIGGIN
AND NORA ARCHIBALD SMITH

GOLDEN NUMBERS
A BOOK OF VERSE FOR YOUTH

THE POSY RING
A BOOK OF VERSE FOR CHILDREN

PINAFORE PALACE
A BOOK OF RHYMES FOR THE NURSERY

Library of Fairy Literature

THE FAIRY RING

MAGIC CASEMENTS A SECOND FAIRY BOOK

OTHER VOLUMES TO FOLLOW

Send to the publishers for Complete Descriptive Catalogue

GOLDEN NUMBERS

A BOOK OF VERSE FOR YOUTH

CHOSEN AND CLASSIFIED BY

Kate Douglas Wiggin

AND

Nora Archibald Smith

WITH INTRODUCTION AND INTERLEAVES BY

KATE DOUGLAS WIGGIN

"To add to golden numbers, golden numbers."

Thomas Dekker.

NEW YORK
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
1909


Copyright, 1902, by
McCLURE, PHILLIPS & CO.

Published, October, 1902, N

GOLDEN NUMBERS

Then read from the treasured volume the poem of thy choice.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

Hark! the numbers soft and clear Gently steal upon the ear; Now louder, and yet louder rise, And fill with spreading sounds the skies; Exulting in triumph now swell the bold notes, In broken air, trembling, the wild music floats.

Alexander Pope.

A NOTE

We are indebted to the following firms for permission to use poems mentioned:

Frederick Warne & Co., for poems of George Herbert and Reginald Heber; Small, Maynard & Co., for two poems by Walt Whitman, and "The Tax-Gatherer," by John B. Tabb; George Routledge & Son, for "Sir Lark and King Sun," George Macdonald; Longmans, Green & Co., for Andrew Lang's "Scythe Song"; Lee & Shepard, for "A Christmas Hymn," "Alfred Dommett," and "Minstrels and Maids," William Morris; J. B. Lippincott Co., for three poems by Thomas Buchanan Read; John Lane, for "The Forsaken Merman," Matthew Arnold, and "Song to April," William Watson; "The Skylark," Frederick Tennyson; E. P. Dutton & Co., for "O Little Town of Bethlehem," Phillips Brooks; Dana, Estes & Co., for "July," by Susan Hartley Swett; Little, Brown & Co., for poems of Christina G. Rossetti, and for the three poems, "The Grass," "The Bee," and "Chartless" by Emily Dickinson; D. Appleton & Co., publishers of Bryant's Complete Poetical Works, for "March," "Planting of the Apple Tree," "To the Fringed Gentian," "Death of Flowers," "To a Waterfowl," and "The Twenty-second of December"; Charles Scribner's Sons, for "The Wind" and "A Visit from the Sea," both taken from "A Child's Garden of Verses"; "The Angler's Reveille," from "The Toiling of Felix"; "Dear Land of All My Love," from "Poems of Sidney Lanier," and "The Three Kings," from "With Trumpet and Drum," by Eugene Field; The Churchman, for "Tacking Ship Off Shore," by Walter Mitchell; The Whitaker-Ray Co., for "Columbus" and "Crossing the Plains," from The Complete Poetical Works of Joaquin Miller; The Macmillan Co., for "At Gibraltar," from "North Shore Watch and Other Poems," by George Edward Woodberry.

The following poems are used by permission of, and by special arrangement with, Houghton, Mifflin Co., the authorized publishers:

T. B. Aldrich, "A Turkish Legend," "Before the Rain," "Maple Leaves," and "Tiger Lilies"; Christopher P. Cranch, "The Bobolinks"; Alice Cary, "The Gray Swan"; Margaret Deland, "While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks by Night"; Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Forbearance," "The Humble-Bee," "Duty," "The Rhodora," "Concord Hymn," "The Snow Storm," and Ode Sung in the Town Hall, Concord; James T. Fields, "Song of the Turtle and the Flamingo"; Oliver Wendell Holmes, "Old Ironsides" and "The Chambered Nautilus"; John Hay, "The Enchanted Shirt"; Julia Ward Howe, "Battle Hymn of the Republic"; Bret Harte, "The Reveille" and "A Greyport Legend"; T. W. Higginson, "The Snowing of the Pines"; H. W. Longfellow, "The Wreck of the Hesperus," "The Psalm of Life," "Home Song," "The Three Kings," and "The Harvest Moon"; James Russell Lowell, "Washington," extracts from "The Vision of Sir Launfal," "The Fatherland," "To the Dandelion," "The Singing Leaves," and "Stanzas on Freedom"; Lucy Larcom, "Hannah Binding Shoes"; Edna Dean Proctor, "Columbia's Emblem"; T. W. Parsons, "Dirge for One Who Fell in Battle"; E. C. Stedman, "The Flight of the Birds" and "Going A-Nutting"; E. R. Sill, "Opportunity"; W. W. Story, "The English Language"; Celia Thaxter, "The Sandpiper" and "Nikolina"; J. T. Trowbridge, "Evening at the Farm" and "Midwinter"; Bayard Taylor, "A Night With a Wolf" and "The Song of the Camp"; J. G. Whittier, "The Corn Song," "The Barefoot Boy," "Barbara Frietchie," extracts from "Snow-Bound," "Song of the Negro Boatman," and "The Pipes at Lucknow"; W. D. Howells, "In August"; J. G. Saxe, "Solomon and the Bees."

CONTENTS

A CHANTED CALENDAR Page

Daybreak. By Percy Bysshe Shelley 1
Morning. By John Keats 1
A Morning Song. By William Shakespeare 2
Evening in Paradise. By John Milton 2
Evening Song. By John Fletcher 3
Night. By Robert Southey 4
A Fine Day. By Michael Drayton 5
The Seasons. By Edmund Spenser 5
The Eternal Spring. By John Milton 5
March. By William Cullen Bryant 6
Spring. By Thomas Carew 7
Song to April. By William Watson 7
April in England. By Robert Browning 8
April and May. By Ralph Waldo Emerson 9
May. By Edmund Spenser 9
Song on May Morning. By John Milton 10
Summer. By Edmund Spenser 10
June Weather. By James Russell Lowell 11
July. By Susan Hartley Swett 13
August. By Edmund Spenser 14
In August. By William Dean Howells 14
Autumn. By Edmund Spenser 15
Sweet September. By George Arnold 15
Autumn's Processional. By Dinah M. Mulock 16
October's Bright Blue Weather. By H. H. 16
Maple Leaves. By Thomas Bailey Aldrich 17
Down to Sleep. By H. H. 18
Winter. By Edmund Spenser 19
When Icicles Hang by the Wall. By William Shakespeare 19
A Winter Morning. By James Russell Lowell 20
The Snow Storm. By Ralph Waldo Emerson 21
Old Winter. By Thomas Noel 22
Midwinter. By John Townsend Trowbridge 23
Dirge for the Year. By Percy Bysshe Shelley 25


THE WORLD BEAUTIFUL

The World Beautiful. By John Milton 27
The Harvest Moon. By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 27
The Cloud. By Percy Bysshe Shelley 28
Before the Rain. By Thomas Bailey Aldrich 31
Rain in Summer. By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 32
Invocation to Rain in Summer. By William C. Bennett 34
The Latter Rain. By Jones Very 35
The Wind. By Robert Louis Stevenson 35
Ode to the Northeast Wind. By Charles Kingsley 36
The Windy Night. By Thomas Buchanan Read 39
The Brook. By Alfred, Lord Tennyson 40
The Brook in Winter. By James Russell Lowell 42
Clear and Cool. By Charles Kingsley 44
Minnows. By John Keats 45
Snow-Bound (Extracts). By John G. Whittier 46
Highland Cattle. By Dinah M. Mulock 50
A Scene in Paradise. By John Milton 52
The Tiger. By William Blake 53
The Spacious Firmament on High. By Joseph Addison 54


GREEN THINGS GROWING

Green Things Growing. By Dinah M. Mulock 57
The Sigh of Silence. By John Keats 58
Under the Greenwood Tree. By William Shakespeare 59
The Planting of the Apple Tree. By William Cullen Bryant 59
The Apple Orchard in the Spring. By William Martin 63
Mine Host of "The Golden Apple." By Thomas Westwood 64
The Tree. By Jones Very 65
A Young Fir-Wood. By Dante G. Rossetti 65
The Snowing of the Pines. By Thomas W. Higginson 66
The Procession of the Flowers. By Sydney Dobell 67
Sweet Peas. By John Keats 68
A Snowdrop. By Harriet Prescott Spofford 69
Almond Blossom. By Sir Edwin Arnold 69
Wild Rose. By William Allingham 70
Tiger-Lilies. By Thomas Bailey Aldrich 71
To the Fringed Gentian. By William Cullen Bryant 72
To a Mountain Daisy. By Robert Burns 73
Bind-Weed. By Susan Coolidge 74
The Rhodora. By Ralph Waldo Emerson 76
A Song of Clover. By "Saxe Holm" 76
To the Dandelion (Extract). By James Russell Lowell 77
To Daffodils. By Robert Herrick 78
The Daffodils. By William Wordsworth 79
The White Anemone. By Owen Meredith 80
The Grass. By Emily Dickinson 81
The Corn-Song. By John G. Whittier 82
Columbia's Emblem. By Edna Dean Proctor 84
Scythe Song. By Andrew Lang 86
Time to Go. By Susan Coolidge 86
The Death of the Flowers. By William Cullen Bryant 88
Autumn's Mirth. By Samuel Minturn Peck 90


ON THE WING

Sing On, Blithe Bird. By William Motherwell 93
To a Skylark. By Percy Bysshe Shelley 94
Sir Lark and King Sun: A Parable. By George Macdonald 99
The Skylark. By Frederick Tennyson 101
The Skylark. By James Hogg 102
The Bobolinks. By Christopher P. Cranch 103
To a Waterfowl. By William Cullen Bryant 105
Goldfinches. By John Keats 107
The Sandpiper. By Celia Thaxter 107
The Eagle. By Alfred, Lord Tennyson 109
Child's Talk in April. By Christina G. Rossetti 109
The Flight of the Birds. By Edmund Clarence Stedman 111
The Shepherd's Home. By William Shenstone 112
To a Cricket. By William C. Bennett 113
On the Grasshopper and Cricket. By John Keats 114
The Tax-Gatherer. By John B. Tabb 114
To the Grasshopper and the Cricket. By Leigh Hunt 115
The Bee. By Emily Dickinson 116
The Humble-Bee. By Ralph Waldo Emerson 116
All Things Wait Upon Thee. By Christina G. Rossetti 119
Providence. By Reginald Heber 119


THE INGLENOOK

A New Household. By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 121
Two Heavens. By Leigh Hunt 121
A Song of Love. By "Lewis Carroll" 122
Mother's Song. Unknown 123
The Bonniest Bairn in a' the Warl'. By Robert Ford 125
Cuddle Doon. By Alexander Anderson 126
I am Lonely. By George Eliot 128
Brother and Sister. By George Eliot 129
Home. By William Ernest Henley 131
Love Will Find Out the Way. Unknown 133
The Sailor's Wife. By William J. Mickle 134
Evening at the Farm. By John Townsend Trowbridge 136
Home Song. By Henry W. Longfellow 138
Étude Réaliste. By Algernon C. Swinburne 139
We Are Seven. By William Wordsworth 141


FAIRY SONGS AND SONGS OF FANCY

Puck and the Fairy. By William Shakespeare 145
Lullaby for Titania. By William Shakespeare 146
Oberon and Titania to the Fairy Train. By William Shakespeare 147
Ariel's Songs. By William Shakespeare 147
Orpheus with His Lute. By William Shakespeare 149
The Arming of Pigwiggen. By Michael Drayton 149
Hesperus' Song. By Ben Jonson 151
L'Allegro (Extracts). By John Milton 152
Sabrina Fair. By John Milton 157
Alexander's Feast. By John Dryden 158
Kubla Khan. By Samuel Taylor Coleridge 160
The Magic Car Moved On. By Percy Bysshe Shelley 162
Arethusa. By Percy Bysshe Shelley 165
The Culprit Fay (Extracts). By Joseph Rodman Drake 168
A Myth. By Charles Kingsley 173
The Fairy Folk. By William Allingham 174
The Merman. By Alfred, Lord Tennyson 177
The Mermaid. By Alfred, Lord Tennyson 178
Bugle Song. By Alfred, Lord Tennyson 181
The Raven. By Edgar Allan Poe 182
The Bells. By Edgar Allan Poe 189


SPORTS AND PASTIMES

Blowing Bubbles. By William Allingham 195
Bicycling Song. By Henry C. Beeching 196
Going A Maying. By Robert Herrick 197
Jog On, Jog On. By William Shakespeare 200
A Vagabond Song. By Bliss Carman 201
Swimming. By Algernon C. Swinburne 201
Swimming. By Lord Byron 202
The Angler's Reveille. By Henry van Dyke 203
The Angler's Invitation. By Thomas Tod Stoddart 207
Skating. By William Wordsworth 207
Reading. By Elizabeth Barrett Browning 209
On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer. By John Keats 210
Music's Silver Sound. By William Shakespeare 210
The Power of Music. By William Shakespeare 211
Descend, Ye Nine! By Alexander Pope 212
Old Song. By Edward Fitzgerald 213
The Barefoot Boy. By John G. Whittier 214
Leolin and Edith. By Alfred, Lord Tennyson 218
Going A-Nutting. By Edmund Clarence Stedman 219
Whittling. By John Pierpont 220
Hunting Song. By Sir Walter Scott 222
The Hunter's Song. By Barry Cornwall 223
The Blood Horse. By Barry Cornwall 225
The Northern Seas. By William Howitt 226
The Needle. By Samuel Woodwork 228


A GARDEN OF GIRLS

A Portrait. By Elizabeth Barrett Browning 231
Little Bell. By Thomas Westwood 234
A Child of Twelve. By Percy Bysshe Shelley 237
Chloe. By Robert Burns 238
O, Mally's Meek, Mally's Sweet. By Robert Burns 239
Who Is Silvia? By William Shakespeare 240
To Mistress Margaret Hussey. By John Skelton 240
Ruth. By Thomas Hood 242
My Peggy. By Allan Ramsay 243
Annie Laurie. By William Douglas 243
Lucy. By William Wordsworth 245
Jessie. By Bret Harte 246
Olivia. By Alfred, Lord Tennyson 247
Nikolina. By Celia Thaxter 248
The Solitary Reaper. By William Wordsworth 249
Helena and Hermia. By William Shakespeare 250
Phyllis. By William Drummond 251
So Sweet is She. By Ben Jonson 251
I Love My Jean. By Robert Burns 252
My Nannie's Awa'. By Robert Burns 253


THE WORLD OF WATERS

To the Ocean. By Lord Byron 255
A Life on the Ocean Wave. By Epes Sargent 257
The Sea. By Barry Cornwall 258
A Sea-Song. By Allan Cunningham 259
A Visit from the Sea. By Robert Louis Stevenson 261
Drifting. By Thomas Buchanan Read 262
Tacking Ship Off Shore. By Walter Mitchell 265
Windlass Song. By William Allingham 268
The Coral Grove. By James Gates Percival 269
The Shell. By Alfred, Lord Tennyson 270
Bermudas. By Andrew Marvell 272
Where Lies the Land? By Arthur Hugh Clough 273


FOR HOME AND COUNTRY

The First, Best Country. By Oliver Goldsmith 275
My Native Land. By Sir Walter Scott 276
Loyalty. By Allan Cunningham 276
My Heart's in the Highlands. By Robert Burns 277
The Minstrel Boy. By Thomas Moore 278
The Harp that Once Through Tara's Halls. By Thomas Moore 279
Fife and Drum. By John Dryden 280
The Cavalier's Song. By William Motherwell 280
The Old Scottish Cavalier. By Wm. Edmondstoune Aytoun 281
The Song of the Camp. By Bayard Taylor 284
Border Ballad. By Sir Walter Scott 286
Gathering Song of Donuil Dhu. By Sir Walter Scott 287
The Reveille. By Bret Harte 288
Ye Mariners of England. By Thomas Campbell 290
The Knight's Tomb. By Samuel Taylor Coleridge 292
How Sleep the Brave! By William Collins 292
Dirge. By Thomas William Parsons 293
The Burial of Sir John Moore. By Charles Wolfe 295
Soldier, Rest! By Sir Walter Scott 296
Recessional. By Rudyard Kipling 297
The Fatherland. By James Russell Lowell 298


NEW WORLD AND OLD GLORY

Dear Land of All My Love. By Sidney Lanier 301
Columbus. By Joaquin Miller 301
Pocahontas. By William Makepeace Thackeray 303
Landing of the Pilgrim Fathers. By Felicia Hemans 305
The Twenty-second of December. By William Cullen Bryant 306
Washington. By James Russell Lowell 307
Warren's Address. By John Pierpont 308
Carmen Bellicosum. By Guy Humphreys McMaster 309
The American Flag. By Joseph Rodman Drake 311
Old Ironsides. By Oliver Wendell Holmes 312
Indians. By Charles Sprague 313
Crossing the Plains. By Joaquin Miller 314
Concord Hymn. By Ralph Waldo Emerson 315
Ode. By Ralph Waldo Emerson 316
Stanzas on Freedom. By James Russell Lowell 317
Abraham Lincoln. By Richard Henry Stoddard 318
Lincoln, the Great Commoner. By Edwin Markham 319
Abraham Lincoln. By Henry Howard Brownell 321
O Captain! My Captain! By Walt Whitman 323
The Flag Goes By. By Henry Holcomb Bennett 324
The Black Regiment. By George Henry Boker 326
Night Quarters. By Henry Howard Brownell 329
Battle-Hymn of the Republic. By Julia Ward Howe 331
Sheridan's Ride. By Thomas Buchanan Read 332
Song of the Negro Boatman. By John G. Whittier 335
Barbara Frietchie. By John G. Whittier 337
Two Veterans. By Walt Whitman 340
Stand by the Flag! By John Nichols Wilder 342
At Gibraltar. By George Edward Woodberry 343
Faith and Freedom. By William Wordsworth 345
Our Mother Tongue. By Lord Houghton 345
The English Language (Extracts). By William Wetmore Story 346
To America. By Alfred Austin 347
The Name of Old Glory. By James Whitcomb Riley 349


IN MERRY MOOD
On a Favorite Cat, Drowned in a Tub of Goldfishes. By Thomas Gray 353
The Priest and the Mulberry Tree. By Thomas Love Peacock 355
The Council of Horses. By John Gay 356
The Diverting History of John Gilpin. By William Cowper 359
To a Child of Quality. By Matthew Prior 369
Charade. By Winthrop M. Praed 370
A Riddle. By Hannah More 371
A Riddle. By Jonathan Swift 372
A Riddle. By Catherine M. Fanshawe 373
Feigned Courage. By Charles and Mary Lamb 374
Baucis and Philemon. By Jonathan Swift 375
The Lion and the Cub. By John Gay 378
Elegy on the Death of a Mad Dog. By Oliver Goldsmith 379
The Walrus and the Carpenter. By "Lewis Carroll" 381
Song of the Turtle and Flamingo. By James T. Fields 385
Captain Reece. By William S. Gilbert 387
The Cataract of Lodore. By Robert Southey 391
The Enchanted Shirt. By John Hay 395
Made in the Hot Weather. By William Ernest Henley 398
The Housekeeper. By Charles Lamb 400
The Monkey. By Mary Howitt 401
November. By Thomas Hood 402
Captain Sword. By Leigh Hunt 403


STORY POEMS: ROMANCE AND REALITY

The Singing Leaves. By James Russell Lowell 407
Seven Times Two. By Jean Ingelow 411
The Long White Seam. By Jean Ingelow 413
Hannah Binding Shoes. By Lucy Larcom 414
Lord Ullin's Daughter. By Thomas Campbell 416
The King of Denmark's Ride. By Caroline E. Norton 418
The Shepherd to His Love. By Christopher Marlowe 420
Ballad. By Charles Kingsley 422
Romance of the Swan's Nest. By Elizabeth Barrett Browning 423
Lochinvar. By Sir Walter Scott 427
Jock of Hazeldean. By Sir Walter Scott 430
The Lady of Shalott. By Alfred, Lord Tennyson 431
The High Tide on the Coast of Lincolnshire. By Jean Ingelow 438
The Forsaken Merman. By Matthew Arnold 444
The Sands of Dee. By Charles Kingsley 450
The "Gray Swan." By Alice Gary 452
The Wreck of the Hesperus. By Henry W. Longfellow 454
A Greyport Legend. By Bret Harte 458
The Glove and the Lions. By Leigh Hunt 460
How's My Boy? By Sydney Dobell 462
The Child-Musician. By Austin Dobson 463
How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix. By Robert Browning 464
The Inchcape Rock. By Robert Southey 468
A Night with a Wolf. By Bayard Taylor 471
The Dove of Dacca. By Rudyard Kipling 472
The Abbot of Inisfalen. By William Allingham 474
The Cavalier's Escape. By George Walter Thornbury 479
The Pied Piper of Hamelin. By Robert Browning 480
Hervé Riel. By Robert Browning 493
Vision of Belshazzar. By Lord Byron 500
Solomon and the Bees. By John G. Saxe 502
The Burial of Moses. By Cecil Frances Alexander 504


WHEN BANNERS ARE WAVING

When Banners Are Waving. Unknown 509
Battle of the Baltic. By Thomas Campbell 511
The Pipes at Lucknow. By John Greenleaf Whittier 514
The Battle of Agincourt. By Michael Drayton 517
The Battle of Blenheim. By Robert Southey 522
The Armada. By Lord Macaulay 524
Ivry. By Lord Macaulay 530
On the Loss of the Royal George. By William Cowper 535
The Charge of the Light Brigade. By Alfred, Lord Tennyson 537
Bannockburn. By Robert Burns 539
The Night Before Waterloo. By Lord Byron 540
Hohenlinden. By Thomas Campbell 542
Incident of the French Camp. By Robert Browning 544
Marco Bozzaris. By Fitz-Greene Halleck 545
The Destruction of Sennacherib. By Lord Byron 548


TALES OF THE OLDEN TIME

Sir Patrick Spens. Old Ballad 551
The Bailiff's Daughter of Islington. Old Ballad 555
King John and the Abbot of Canterbury. Old Ballad 558
Lord Beichan and Susie Pye. Old Ballad 563
The Gay Gos-hawk. Old Ballad 569
Earl Mar's Daughter. Old Ballad 576
Chevy-Chace. Old Ballad 582
Hynde Horn. Old Ballad 593
Glenlogie. Old Ballad 597


LIFE LESSONS

Life. By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 601
In a Child's Album. By William Wordsworth 602
To-Day. By Thomas Carlyle 602
The Noble Nature. By Ben Jonson 603
Forbearance. By Ralph Waldo Emerson 603
The Chambered Nautilus. By Oliver Wendell Holmes 604
Duty. By Ralph Waldo Emerson 605
On His Blindness. By John Milton 606
Sir Launfal and the Leper. By James Russell Lowell 606
Opportunity. By Edward Rowland Sill 608
Abou Ben Adhem and the Angel. By Leigh Hunt 609
Be True. By Horatio Bonar 610
The Shepherd Boy Sings in the Valley of Humiliation. By John Bunyan 610
A Turkish Legend. By Thomas Bailey Aldrich 611
Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard. By Thomas Gray 612
Polonius to Laertes. By William Shakespeare 618
The Olive-Tree. By S. Baring-Gould 619
Coronation. By H. H. 620
December. By John Keats 622
The End of the Play. By William Makepeace Thackeray 623
A Farewell. By Charles Kingsley 625
A Boy's Prayer. By Henry C. Beeching 626
Chartless. By Emily Dickinson 626
Peace. By Henry Vaughan 627
Consider. By Christina G. Rossetti 628
The Elixir. By George Herbert 629
One by One. By Adelaide A. Procter 629
The Commonwealth of the Bees. By William Shakespeare 631
The Pilgrim. By John Bunyan 632
Be Useful. By George Herbert 633


THE GLAD EVANGEL

A Christmas Carol. By Josiah Gilbert Holland 635
The Angels. By William Drummond 636
While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks by Night. By Margaret Deland 637
The Star Song. By Robert Herrick 638
Hymn for Christmas. By Felicia Hemans 639
New Prince, New Pomp. By Robert Southwell 640
The Three Kings. By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 641
The Three Kings. By Eugene Field 644
A Christmas Hymn. By Alfred Dommett 646
O Little Town of Bethlehem. By Phillips Brooks 648
While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks by Night. By Nahum Tate 649
Christmas Carol. Old English 650
Old Christmas. By Mary Howitt 652
God Rest Ye, Merry Gentlemen. By Dinah Maria Mulock 653
Minstrels and Maids. By William Morris 654
An Ode on the Birth of Our Saviour. By Robert Herrick 656
Old Christmas Returned. Old English 657
Ceremonies for Christmas. By Robert Herrick 658
Christmas in England. By Sir Walter Scott 659
The Gracious Time. By William Shakespeare 661
Brightest and Best of the Sons of the Morning. By Reginald Heber 661

INTRODUCTION

On the Reading of Poetry

There is no doubt, I fear, that certain people are born without, as certain other people are born with, a love of poetry. Any natural gift is a great advantage, of course, be it physical, mental, or spiritual. The dear old tales which suggest the presence of fairies at the cradle of the new-born child, dealing out, not very impartially, talents, charms, graces, are not so far from the real truth. You may have been given a straight nose, a rosy cheek, a courteous manner, a lively wit, a generous disposition; but perhaps the Fairy Fine-Ear, who hears the grass grow, and the leaf-buds throb, had a pressing engagement at somebody else's cradle-side when you most needed her benefactions. There is another elf too, a Dame o' Dreams; she is clad all in color-of-rose, and when she touches your eyelids you see visions forever after; beautiful haunting things hidden from duller eyes, visions made of stars and dew and magic. Never any great poet lived but these two fairies were present at his birth, and it may be that they stole a moment to visit you. If such was the case you love, need, crave poetry, to understand yourself, your neighbor, the world, God; and you will find that nothing else will satisfy you so completely as the years go on. If, on the other hand, these highly mythical but interesting personages were absent when the question of your natural endowment was being settled, do not take it too much to heart, but try to make good the deficiencies.

You must have liked the rhymes and jingles of your nursery-days:

Ride a Cock-horse To Banbury Cross!

or

Mistress Mary quite contrary How does your garden grow?

I am certain you remember what pleasure it gave you to make "contrary" rhyme with "Mary" instead of pronouncing it in the proper and prosy way.

"But" you answer, "I did indeed like that sort of verse, and am still fond of it when it dances and prances, or trips and patters and tinkles; it is what is termed "sublime" poetry that is dull and difficult to understand; the verb is always a long distance from its subject; the punctuation comes in the middle of the lines, so that it reads like prose in spite of one, and it is generally sprinkled with allusions to Calypso, Œdipus, Eurydice, Hesperus, Corydon, Arethusa, and the Acroceraunian Mountains; or at any rate with people and places which one has to look up in the atlas and dictionary."

Of course, all poems are not equally simple in sound and sense. It does not require much intelligence to read or chant Poe's Raven, and if one does not quite understand it, one is so taken captive by the weird, haunting music of the lines, the recurrence of phrases and repetition of words, that one does not think about its meaning:

"While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door. ''Tis some visitor, I muttered, 'tapping at my chamber door— Only this, and nothing more.'"

The moment, however, that your eye falls upon the following lines from "Paradise Lost" you confess privately that if you were obliged to parse and analyze them the task would cause you a weary half-hour with Lindley Murray or Quackenbos.

"Adam the goodliest man of men since born His sons; the fairest of her daughters Eve. Under a tuft of shade that on a green Stood whispering soft, by a fresh fountain-side, They sat them down;"

Very well then, do not try to parse them; Paradise Lost was not written exclusively for the grammarians; content yourself with enjoying the picture; the frisking of the beasts of the earth, while Adam and Eve watched them from a fountain-side in Paradise.

No one need be ashamed of liking a good deal of rhyme and rhythm, swing and movement and melody in poetry; absolute perfection of form, though all too rarely attained, is one of the chief delights of the verse-lover. "The procession of beautiful sounds that is a poem," says Walter Raleigh. It is quite natural to love the music of verse before you catch the deeper thought, and you feel, in some of the greatest poetry, as if only the angels could have put the melodious words together. There is more in this music than meets the eye or ear; it is what differentiates prose from poetry, which, to quote Wordsworth, is the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge. Prose it is said can never be too truthful or too wise, but song is more than mere Truth and Wisdom, it is the "rose upon Truth's lips, the light in Wisdom's eyes." That is why the thought in it finds its way to the very heart of one and makes one glow and tremble, fills one with desire to do some splendid action, right some wrong, be something other than one is, more noble, more true, more patient, more courageous.

We who have selected the poems in this book have had to keep in mind the various kinds of young people who are to read it. The boys may wish that there were more story and battle poems, and verses ringing with spirited and war-like adventures; the girls may think that there are too many already; while both, perhaps, may miss certain old favorites like Horatius or The Ancient Mariner, omitted because of their great length. Some of you will yawn if the book flies open at Milton; some will be bored whenever they chance upon Pope; others will never read Wordsworth except on compulsion. Romantic little maids will turn away from "Tacking Ship off Shore," while their brothers will disdain "The Swan's Nest Among the Reeds"; but it was necessary to make the book for all sorts and conditions of readers, and such a volume must contain a taste of the best things, whether your special palate is ready for them or not. When you are twenty-one you may say, loftily, "I do not care for Pope and Dryden, I prefer Spenser and Tennyson, or Ben Jonson and Herrick," or whatever you really do prefer,—but now, although, of course, you have your personal likes and dislikes, you cannot be sure that they are based on anything real or that they will stand the test of time and experience.

So you will find between these covers we hope, a little of everything good, for we have searched the pages of the great English-speaking poets to find verses that you would either love at first sight, or that you would grow to care for as you learn what is worthy to be loved. Where we found one beautiful verse, quite simple and wholly beautiful, we have given you that, if it held a complete thought or painted a picture perfect in itself, even although we omitted the very next one, which perhaps would have puzzled and wearied the younger ones with its involved construction or difficult phraseology.

Will you think, I wonder, that this very simple talk is too informal to be quite proper when one remembers that it is to serve as introduction to the greatest poets that ever lived? Informality is very charming in its place, no doubt (for so the thought might cross your mind), but one does not use it with kings and queens; still the least things, you know, may sometimes explain or interpret the greatest. The brook might say, "I am nothing in myself, I know, but I am showing you the way to the ocean; follow on if you wish to see something really vast and magnificent."

There are besides gracious courtesies to be observed on certain occasions. If a famous poet or author should chance to come to your village or city and appear before the people, someone would have to introduce the stranger and commend him to your attention; and if he did it modestly it would only be an act of kindliness; a wish to serve you and at the same time bespeak for him a gentle and a friendly hearing. Once introduced—Presto, change! If he is a great poet he is a great wizard; the words he uses, the method and manner in which he uses them, the cadence of his verse, the thoughts he calls to your mind, the way he brings the quick color to your cheek and the tear to your eye, all these savor of magic, nothing else. Who could be less than modest in his presence? Who could but wish to bring the whole world under his spell? You will readily be modest, too, when you confront these splendid poems, even although some of you may not wholly comprehend as yet their grandeur and their majesty; may not fully understand their claim to immortality. Where is there a girl who would not make a low curtsey to Shakespeare's Silvia, Milton's Sabrina, Wordsworth's Lucy, or Mrs. Browning's Elizabeth? And if there is a boy who could stand with his head covered before Horatius, Hervé Riel, Sir Launfal, or Motherwell's Cavalier he is not one of those we had in mind when we made this book. Neither is it altogether the personality of hero or heroine that fills us with reverence; it is the beauty and perfection of the poem itself that almost brings us to our knees in worship. A little later on you will have the same feeling of admiration and awe for Shelley's Skylark, Emerson's Snow Storm, Wordsworth's Daffodils, Keats's Daybreak, and for many another poem not included in this book, to which you must hope to grow. For it is a matter of growth after all, and growth, in mind and spirit, as in body, is largely a matter of will. It is all ours, the beauty in the world: your task is merely to enter into possession. Chaucer, Spenser, and Shakespeare are yours as much as another's. The great treasury of inspiring thoughts that has been heaped together as the ages went by, that "rich deposit of the centuries," is your heritage; if you wish to assert your heirship no one can say you nay; if you will to be a Crœsus in the things of the mind and spirit, no one can ever keep you poor.

We have brought you only English verse, so you must wait for the years to give you Homer, Virgil, Dante, Goethe, Schiller, Victor Hugo, and many another; and of English verse we have only given a hint of the treasures in store for you later on.

We have quoted you poems from the grand old masters, those "bards sublime,"

"Whose distant footsteps echo Through the corridors of Time,"

and many a verse:—

—"from some humbler poet Whose songs gushed from his heart As showers from the clouds of summer, Or tears from the eyelids start; Who through long days of labor, And nights devoid of ease, Still heard in his soul the music Of wonderful melodies."

Since you will not like everything in the book equally well, may we advise you how to use it? First find something you know and love, and read it over again. (Penitent, indeed, shall we be if it has been omitted!) The meeting will be like one with a dear playfellow and friend in a new and strange house, and the house will seem less strange after you have met and welcomed the friend.

Then search the pages until you see a verse that speaks to you instantly, catches your eye, begs you to read it, willy-nilly. There are dozens of such poems in this collection, as simple as if they had been written for six-year-olds instead of for the grown-up English-speaking world: little masterpieces like Tennyson's Brook, Kingsley's Clear and Cool, Shakespeare's Fairy Songs, Burns's Mountain Daisy, Emerson's Rhodora, Motherwell's Blithe Bird, Hogg's Skylark, Wordsworth's Pet Lamb, Scott's Ballads, and scores of others.

This so far is pure pleasure, but why not, as another step, find something difficult, something you instinctively draw back from? It will probably be Milton, Pope, Dryden, Browning, or Shelley. You cannot find any "story" in it; its rhymes do not run trippingly off the tongue; there are a few strange and unpronounceable words, the punctuation and phrasing puzzle you, and worse than all you are obliged to read it two or three times before you really understand its meaning. Very well, that is nothing to be ashamed of, and you surely do not want to be vanquished by a difficulty. You will realize some time or other that all learning, like all life, is a sort of obstacle race in which the strongest wins.

I once said to a dear old minister who was preaching to a very ignorant and unlearned congregation, "It must be very difficult, sir, for you to preach down to them"; for he was a man of rare scholarship and true wisdom;—"I try to be very simple a part of the time," he answered, "but not always; about once a month I fling the fodder so high in the rack that no man can catch at a single straw without stretching his neck!"

Now pray do not laugh at that illustration; smile if you will, but it serves the purpose. Just as we develop our muscles by exercising our bodies, so do we grow strong mentally and spiritually by this "stretching" process. You are not obliged to love an impersonal, remote, or complex poem intimately and passionately, but read it faithfully if you do not wish to be wholly blind and deaf to beauties of sense or sound that happier people see and hear. Joubert says most truly: "You will find poetry nowhere unless you bring some with you," but there are some splendid things in verse as in prose that you stand in too great awe of to love in any real, childlike way. It is never scenes from Paradise Lost that run through your mind when you are going to sleep. It is something with a lilt, like:

"Up the airy mountain, Down the rushy glen, We daren't go a-hunting For fear of little men;"

or a poem with a gallant action in it like Marco Bozzaris, or with a charming story like The Singing Leaves, or a mysterious and musical one, like Kubla Khan or The Bells, or something that when first you read it made you a little older and a little sadder, in an odd, unaccustomed way quite unlike that of real grief:

"A feeling of sadness and longing That is not akin to pain And resembles sorrow only As the mist resembles rain."

When you read that verse of Longfellow's afterwards you see that he has expressed your mood exactly. That is what it means to be a poet, and that is what poetry is always doing for us; revealing, translating thoughts we are capable of feeling, but not expressing.

Perhaps you will not for a long time see the beauty of certain famous reflective poems like Gray's Elegy, but we must include a few of such things whether they appeal to you very strongly or not, merely because it is necessary that you should have an acquaintance, if not a friendship, with lines that the world by common consent has agreed to call immortal. They show you, without your being conscious of it, show you by their lines "all gold and seven times refined,"—how beautiful the English language can be when it is used by a master of style. Young people do not think or talk very much about style, but they come under its spell unconsciously and respond to its influence quickly enough. To give a sort of definition: style is a way of saying or writing a thing so that people are compelled to listen. When you grow sensitive to beauty of language you become, in some small degree at least, capable of using it yourself. You could not, for instance, read daily these "honey-tongued" poets without gathering a little sweetness for your own unruly member.

There are certain spiritual lessons to be gained from many of these immortal poems, lessons which the oldest as well as the youngest might well learn. Turn to Milton's Ode on his Blindness. It is not easy reading, but you will begin to care for it when experience brings you the meaning of the line, "They also serve who only stand and wait." It is one of a class of poems that have been living forces from age to age; that have quickened aspiration, aroused energy, deepened conviction; that have infused a nobler ardor and loftier purpose into life wherever and whenever they were read.

Prefacing each of the divisions of this volume you will find a page or "interleaf" of comment on, and appreciation of, the poems that follow. These pages you may read or not as you are minded; they are only friendly or informal letters from an old traveller to a pilgrim who has just taken his staff in hand.

By and by you will add poem after poem to your list of favorites, and so, gradually, you will make your own volume of Golden Numbers, which will be far better than any book we can fashion for you. Perhaps you will copy single verses and whole poems in it and, later, learn them by heart. Such treasures of memory "will henceforth no longer be forgettable, detachable parts of your mind's furniture, but well-springs of instinct forever."

Kate Douglas Wiggin.

GOLDEN NUMBERS

INTERLEAVES

A Chanted Calendar

Here is the Year's Processional in verse; the story of her hours, her days, her seasons, told as only poets can, because they see and hear things not revealed to you and me, and are able by their magic to make us sharers in the revelation. Read the first six poems and ask yourself whether you have ever realized the glories of the common day; from the moment when morning from her orient chambers comes, and the lark at heaven's gate sings, to the hour when the moon, unveiling her peerless light, throws her silver mantle o'er the dark, and the firmament glows with living sapphires.

It is the task of poetry not only to say noble things, but to say them nobly; having beautiful fancies, to clothe them in beautiful phrases, and if you search these poems you will find some of the most wonderful word-pictures in the English language. How charming Drayton's description of the summer breeze:

"The wind had no more strength than this, That leisurely it blew, To make one leaf the next to kiss That closely by it grew."

If the day is dreary you need only read Lowell's "June Weather," and like the bird sitting at his door in the sun, atilt like a blossom among the leaves, your "illumined being" will overrun with the "deluge of summer it receives."

Then turn the page; the picture fades as you read Trowbridge's "Midwinter." The speckled sky is dim; the light flakes falter and fall slow; the chickadee sings cheerily; lo, the magic touch again and the house mates sit, as Emerson saw them,

"Around the radiant fireplace enclosed In a tumultuous privacy of storm."

I

A CHANTED CALENDAR

Daybreak

Day had awakened all things that be, The lark, and the thrush, and the swallow free, And the milkmaid's song, and the mower's scythe, And the matin bell and the mountain bee: Fireflies were quenched on the dewy corn, Glowworms went out, on the river's brim, Like lamps which a student forgets to trim: The beetle forgot to wind his horn, The crickets were still in the meadow and hill: Like a flock of rooks at a farmer's gun, Night's dreams and terrors, every one, Fled from the brains which are its prey, From the lamp's death to the morning ray.

Percy Bysshe Shelley.

Morning

Now morning from her orient chambers came, And her first footsteps touch'd a verdant hill: Crowning its lawny crest with amber flame, Silvering the untainted gushes of its rill, Which, pure from mossy beds of simple flowers By many streams a little lake did fill, Which round its marge reflected woven bowers, And, in its middle space, a sky that never lowers.

John Keats.

A Morning Song

Hark! hark! the lark at heaven's gate sings. And Phœbus 'gins arise, His steeds to water at those springs On chaliced flowers that lies; And winking Mary-buds begin To ope their golden eyes: With every thing that pretty bin, My lady sweet, arise: Arise, arise!

William Shakespeare.

From "Cymbeline."

Evening in Paradise

Now came still Evening on, and Twilight gray Had in her sober livery all things clad; Silence accompanied; for beast and bird— They to their grassy couch, these to their nests, Were slunk, all but the wakeful nightingale; She all night long her amorous descant sung; Silence was pleased: now glowed the firmament With living sapphires: Hesperus, that led The starry host, rode brightest, till the Moon, Rising in clouded majesty, at length Apparent queen, unveiled her peerless light, And o'er the dark her silver mantle threw.

John Milton.

From "Paradise Lost."

Evening Song

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 dew-drops how they kiss Every little flower that is, Hanging on their velvet heads, Like a rope of crystal beads: See the heavy clouds low falling, And bright Hesperus down calling The dead Night from under ground; At whose rising, mists unsound, Damps and vapors fly apace, Hovering o'er the wanton face Of these pastures, where they come, Striking dead both bud and bloom: Therefore, from such danger lock Every one his lovèd 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 yourselves from these, Be not too secure in ease; Let one eye his watches keep, Whilst the other eye doth sleep; So you shall good shepherds prove, And for ever hold the love Of our great god. Sweetest slumbers, And soft silence, fall in numbers On your eyelids! So, farewell! Thus I end my evening's knell.

John Fletcher.

Night

How beautiful is night! A dewy freshness fills the silent air; No mist obscures, nor cloud, nor speck, nor stain, Breaks the serene of heaven: In full-orb'd glory yonder Moon divine Rolls through the dark-blue depths. Beneath her steady ray The desert-circle spreads, Like the round ocean, girdled with the sky. How beautiful is night!

Robert Southey.

A Fine Day

Clear had the day been from the dawn, All chequer'd was the sky, Thin clouds like scarfs of cobweb lawn Veil'd heaven's most glorious eye. The wind had no more strength than this, That leisurely it blew, To make one leaf the next to kiss That closely by it grew.

Michael Drayton.

The Seasons

So forth issued the seasons of the year; First, lusty Spring, all dight in leaves of flowers That freshly budded, and new blooms did bear, In which a thousand birds had built their bowers.

Edmund Spenser.

From "The Faerie Queene."

The Eternal Spring

The birds their quire apply; airs, vernal airs, Breathing the smell of field and grove, attune The trembling leaves, while universal Pan, Knit with the Graces and the Hours in dance, Led on the eternal Spring.

John Milton.

March[1]

The stormy March is come at last, With wind, and cloud, and changing skies; I hear the rushing of the blast That through the snowy valley flies.

Ah, passing few are they who speak, Wild, stormy month, in praise of thee; Yet though thy winds are loud and bleak, Thou art a welcome month to me.

For thou, to northern lands, again The glad and glorious sun dost bring; And thou hast joined the gentle train And wear'st the gentle name of Spring.

Then sing aloud the gushing rills In joy that they again are free, And, brightly leaping down the hills, Renew their journey to the sea.

Thou bring'st the hope of those calm skies, And that soft time of sunny showers, When the wide bloom, on earth that lies, Seems of a brighter world than ours.

William Cullen Bryant.

[1] By courtesy of D. Appleton & Co., publishers of Bryant's Complete Poetical Works.

Spring

Now that the winter's gone, the earth hath lost Her snow-white robes; and now no more the frost Candies the grass or casts an icy cream Upon the silver lake or crystal stream: But the warm sun thaws the benumbèd earth, And makes it tender; gives a sacred birth To the dead swallow; wakes in hollow tree The drowsy cuckoo and the bumble-bee. Now do a choir of chirping minstrels bring In triumph to the world the youthful spring! The valleys, hills, and woods, in rich array, Welcome the coming of the longed-for May.

Thomas Carew.

Song to April[2]

April, April, Laugh thy girlish laughter; Then, the moment after, Weep thy girlish tears! April, that mine ears Like a lover greetest, If I tell thee, sweetest, All my hopes and fears, April, April, Laugh thy golden laughter, But the moment after, Weep thy golden tears!

William Watson.

[2] By courtesy of John Lane.

April in England

Oh, to be in England Now that April's there, And whoever wakes in England Sees, some morning, unaware, That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf Round the elm-tree hole are in tiny leaf, While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough In England—now!

And after April, when May follows, And the whitethroat builds, and all the swallows! Hark! where my blossomed pear-tree in the hedge Leans to the field, and scatters on the clover Blossoms and dewdrops,—at the bent spray's edge— That's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over, Lest you should think he never could recapture The first fine careless rapture! And though the fields look rough with hoary dew, All will be gay when noontide wakes anew The buttercups, the little children's dower, —Far brighter than this gaudy melon flower.

Robert Browning.

April and May

April cold with dropping rain Willows and lilacs brings again, The whistle of returning birds, And trumpet-lowing of the herds; The scarlet maple-keys betray What potent blood hath modest May; What fiery force the earth renews, The wealth of forms, the flush of hues; What Joy in rosy waves outpoured, Flows from the heart of Love, the Lord.

Ralph Waldo Emerson.

From "May-Day."

May

Then came fair May, the fairest maid on ground, Deck'd all with dainties of her season's pride, And throwing flowers out of her lap around: Upon two brethren's shoulders she did ride; The twins of Leda, which on either side Supported her like to their sovereign queen. Lord! how all creatures laught when her they spied, And leapt and danced as they had ravish'd been. And Cupid's self about her fluttered all in green.

Edmund Spenser.

Song on May Morning

Now the bright morning star, Day's harbinger, Comes dancing from the East, and leads with her The flowery May, who from her green lap throws The yellow cowslip and the pale primrose. Hail, bounteous May, that doth 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

Then came jolly Summer, being dight In a thin silken cassock, colored green, That was unlined, all to be more light, And on his head a garland well beseene.

Edmund Spenser.

From "The Faerie Queene."

June Weather

For a cap and bells our lives we pay, Bubbles we earn with a whole soul's tasking; 'T is heaven alone that is given away, 'T is only God may be had for the asking; No price is set on the lavish summer; June may be had by the poorest comer. And what is so rare as a day in June? Then, if ever, come perfect days; Then Heaven tries the earth if it be in tune, And over it softly her warm ear lays: Whether we look, or whether we listen, We hear life murmur, or see it glisten; Every clod feels a stir of might, An instinct within it that reaches and towers, And, groping blindly above it for light, Climbs to a soul in grass and flowers; The flush of life may well be seen Thrilling back over hills and valleys; The cowslip startles in meadows green, The buttercup catches the sun in its chalice, And there's never a leaf nor a blade too mean To be some happy creature's palace; The little bird sits at his door in the sun, Atilt like a blossom among the leaves, And lets his illumined being o'errun With the deluge of summer it receives; His mate feels the eggs beneath her wings, And the heart in her dumb breast flutters and sings; He sings to the wide world, and she to her nest,— In the nice ear of Nature which song is the best?

Now is the high tide of the year, And whatever of life hath ebbed away Comes flooding back, with a ripply cheer, Into every bare inlet and creek and bay; Now the heart is so full that a drop overfills it, We are happy now because God wills it; No matter how barren the past may have been, 'T is enough for us now that the leaves are green; We sit in the warm shade and feel right well How the sap creeps up and the blossoms swell; We may shut our eyes, but we cannot help knowing That skies are clear and grass is growing; The breeze comes whispering in our ear, That dandelions are blossoming near, That maize has sprouted, that streams are flowing, That the river is bluer than the sky, That the robin is plastering his house hard by; And if the breeze kept the good news back, For other couriers we should not lack, We could guess it all by yon heifer's lowing,— And hark! how clear bold chanticleer, Warmed with the new wine of the year, Tells all in his lusty crowing!

James Russell Lowell.

From "The Vision of Sir Launfal."

July[3]

When the scarlet cardinal tells Her dream to the dragon fly, And the lazy breeze makes a nest in the trees, And murmurs a lullaby, It is July.

When the tangled cobweb pulls The cornflower's cap awry, And the lilies tall lean over the wall To bow to the butterfly, It is July.

When the heat like a mist-veil floats, And poppies flame in the rye, And the silver note in the streamlet's throat Has softened almost to a sigh, It is July.

When the hours are so still that time Forgets them, and lets them lie 'Neath petals pink till the night stars wink At the sunset in the sky, It is July.

Susan Hartley Swett.

[3] By courtesy of Dana Estes & Co.

August

The sixth was August, being rich arrayed In garment all of gold down to the ground; Yet rode he not, but led a lovely maid Forth by the lily hand, the which was crowned With ears of corn, and full her hand was found: That was the righteous Virgin, which of old Lived here on earth, and plenty made abound.

Edmund Spenser.

In August

All the long August afternoon, The little drowsy stream Whispers a melancholy tune, As if it dreamed of June, And whispered in its dream.

The thistles show beyond the brook Dust on their down and bloom, And out of many a weed-grown nook The aster flowers look With eyes of tender gloom.

The silent orchard aisles are sweet With smell of ripening fruit. Through the sere grass, in shy retreat Flutter, at coming feet, The robins strange and mute.

There is no wind to stir the leaves, The harsh leaves overhead; Only the querulous cricket grieves, And shrilling locust weaves A song of summer dead. William Dean Howells.

Autumn

Then came the Autumn all in yellow clad, As though he joyèd in his plenteous store, Laden with fruits that made him laugh, full glad That he had banished hunger, which to-fore Had by the belly oft him pinchèd sore: Upon his head a wreath, that was enroll'd With ears of corn of every sort, he bore; And in his hand a sickle he did hold, To reap the ripen'd fruits the which the earth had yold.

Edmund Spenser.

From "The Faerie Queene."

Sweet September

O sweet September! thy first breezes bring The dry leafs rustle and the squirrel's laughter, The cool, fresh air, whence health and vigor spring, And promise of exceeding joy hereafter.

George Arnold.

Autumn's Processional

Then step by step walks Autumn, With steady eyes that show Nor grief nor fear, to the death of the year, While the equinoctials blow.

Dinah Maria Mulock.

October's Bright Blue Weather

O suns and skies and clouds of June, And flowers of June together, Ye cannot rival for one hour October's bright blue weather;

When loud the bumblebee makes haste, Belated, thriftless vagrant, And goldenrod is dying fast, And lanes with grapes are fragrant;

When gentians roll their fringes tight To save them for the morning, And chestnuts fall from satin burrs Without a sound of warning;

When on the ground red apples lie In piles like jewels shining, And redder still on old stone walls Are leaves of woodbine twining; When all the lovely wayside things Their white-winged seeds are sowing, And in the fields, still green and fair, Late aftermaths are growing;

When springs run low, and on the brooks, In idle golden freighting, Bright leaves sink noiseless in the hush Of woods, for winter waiting;

When comrades seek sweet country haunts, By twos and twos together, And count like misers, hour by hour, October's bright blue weather.

O sun and skies and flowers of June, Count all your boasts together, Love loveth best of all the year October's bright blue weather.

H. H.

Maple Leaves

October turned my maple's leaves to gold; The most are gone now; here and there one lingers: Soon these will slip from out the twigs' weak hold, Like coins between a dying miser's fingers.

Thomas Bailey Aldrich.

"Down to Sleep"

November woods are bare and still, November days are clear and bright, Each noon burns up the morning's chill, The morning's snow is gone by night, Each day my steps grow slow, grow light, As through the woods I reverent creep, Watching all things "lie down to sleep."

I never knew before what beds, Fragrant to smell and soft to touch, The forest sifts and shapes and spreads. I never knew before, how much Of human sound there is, in such Low tones as through the forest sweep, When all wild things "lie down to sleep."

Each day I find new coverlids Tucked in, and more sweet eyes shut tight. Sometimes the viewless mother bids Her ferns kneel down full in my sight, I hear their chorus of "good night," And half I smile and half I weep, Listening while they "lie down to sleep."

November woods are bare and still, November days are bright and good, Life's noon burns up life's morning chill, Life's night rests feet that long have stood, Some warm, soft bed in field or wood The mother will not fail to keep Where we can "lay us down to sleep."

H. H.

Winter

Lastly came Winter cloathèd all in frize, Chattering his teeth for cold that did him chill; Whilst on his hoary beard his breath did freeze, And the dull drops that from his purple bill As from a limbeck did adown distill; In his right hand a tippèd staff he held With which his feeble steps he stayèd still, For he was faint with cold and weak with eld, That scarce his loosèd limbs he able was to weld.

Edmund Spenser.

When Icicles Hang by the Wall

When icicles hang by the wall, And Dick the shepherd blows his nail, And Tom bears logs into the hall, And milk comes frozen home in pail, When blood is nipped, and ways be foul, Then nightly sings the staring owl, To-whit! To-who!—a merry note, While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.

When all aloud the wind doth blow, And coughing drowns the parson's saw, And birds sit brooding in the snow, And Marian's nose looks red and raw, When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl, Then nightly sings the staring owl, To-whit! To-who!—a merry note, While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.

William Shakespeare.

From "Love's Labor's Lost."

A Winter Morning

There was never a leaf on bush or tree, The bare boughs rattled shudderingly; The river was dumb and could not speak, For the weaver Winter its shroud had spun; A single crow on the tree-top bleak From his shining feathers shed off the cold sun; Again it was morning, but shrunk and cold, As if her veins were sapless and old, And she rose up decrepitly For a last dim look at earth and sea.

James Russell Lowell.

From "The Vision of Sir Launfal."

The Snow Storm

Announced by all the trumpets of the sky, Arrives the snow, and, driving o'er the fields, Seems nowhere to alight; the whited air Hides hills and woods, the river, and the heaven, And veils the farmhouse at the garden's end. The sled and traveler stopped, the courier's feet Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit Around the radiant fireplace, inclosed In a tumultuous privacy of storm.

Come see the north-wind's masonry. Out of an unseen quarry evermore Furnished with tile, the fierce artificer Curves his white bastions with projected roof Round every windward stake, or tree, or door. Speeding, the myriad-handed, his wild work So fanciful, so savage, naught cares he For number or proportion. Mockingly, On coop or kennel he hangs Parian wreaths; A swan-like form invests the hidden thorn; Fills up the farmer's lane from wall to wall, Maugre the farmer's sighs; and, at the gate, A tapering turret overtops the work: And when his hours are numbered, and the world Is all his own, retiring, as he were not, Leaves, when the sun appears, astonished Art To mimic in slow structures, stone by stone, Built in an age, the mad wind's night-work, The frolic architecture of the snow.

Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Old Winter

Old Winter sad, in snow yclad, Is making a doleful din; But let him howl till he crack his jowl, We will not let him in.

Ay, let him lift from the billowy drift His hoary, hagged form, And scowling stand, with his wrinkled hand Outstretching to the storm.

And let his weird and sleety beard Stream loose upon the blast, And, rustling, chime to the tinkling rime From his bald head falling fast.

Let his baleful breath shed blight and death On herb and flower and tree; And brooks and ponds in crystal bonds Bind fast, but what care we?

Let him push at the door,—in the chimney roar, And rattle the window pane; Let him in at us spy with his icicle eye, But he shall not entrance gain.

Let him gnaw, forsooth, with his freezing tooth, On our roof-tiles, till he tire; But we care not a whit, as we jovial sit Before our blazing fire.

Come, lads, let's sing, till the rafters ring; Come, push the can about;— From our snug fire-side this Christmas-tide We'll keep old Winter out.

Thomas Noel.

Midwinter

The speckled sky is dim with snow, The light flakes falter and fall slow; Athwart the hill-top, rapt and pale, Silently drops a silvery veil; And all the valley is shut in By flickering curtains gray and thin.

But cheerily the chickadee Singeth to me on fence and tree; The snow sails round him as he sings, White as the down of angels' wings.

I watch the slow flakes as they fall On bank and brier and broken wall; Over the orchard, waste and brown, All noiselessly they settle down, Tipping the apple-boughs, and each Light quivering twig of plum and peach.

On turf and curb and bower-roof The snow-storm spreads its ivory woof; It paves with pearl the garden-walk; And lovingly round tattered stalk And shivering stem its magic weaves A mantle fair as lily-leaves.

The hooded beehive small and low, Stands like a maiden in the snow; And the old door-slab is half hid Under an alabaster lid.

All day it snows: the sheeted post Gleams in the dimness like a ghost; All day the blasted oak has stood A muffled wizard of the wood; Garland and airy cap adorn The sumach and the wayside thorn, And clustering spangles lodge and shine In the dark tresses of the pine.

The ragged bramble, dwarfed and old, Shrinks like a beggar in the cold; In surplice white the cedar stands, And blesses him with priestly hands.

Still cheerily the chickadee Singeth to me on fence and tree: But in my inmost ear is heard The music of a holier bird; And heavenly thoughts as soft and white As snow-flakes on my soul alight, Clothing with love my lonely heart, Healing with peace each bruised part, Till all my being seems to be Transfigured by their purity.

John Townsend Trowbridge.

Dirge for the Year

"Orphan Hours, the Year is dead! Come and sigh, come and weep!" "Merry Hours, smile instead, For the Year is but asleep; See, it smiles as it is sleeping, Mocking your untimely weeping."

Percy Bysshe Shelley.

INTERLEAVES

The World Beautiful

"Study Nature, not books," said that inspired teacher, Louis Agassiz.

The poets do not bring you the fruit of conscious study, perhaps, for they do not analyze or dissect Dame Nature's methods; with them genius begets a higher instinct, and it is by a sort of divination that they interpret for us the power and grandeur, romance and witchery, beauty and mystery of "God's great out-of-doors." The born poet, like the born naturalist, seems to have additional senses. Emerson says of his friend Thoreau that he saw as with microscope and heard as with ear-trumpet, while his memory was a photographic register of all he saw and heard; and Thoreau the naturalist might have said the same of Emerson the poet.

Glance at the succession of beautiful images in Shelley's "Cloud" or Aldrich's "Before the Rain", lend your ear to the tinkle of Tennyson's "Brook." Contrast them with the bracing lines of the "Northeast Wind," the rough metre of "Highland Cattle," the chill calm of "Snow Bound," the grand style of Milton's "Morning," the noble simplicity of Addison's "Hymn," and note how the great poet bends his language to the mood of Nature, grim or sunny, stormy or kind, strong or tender. There is a stanza in Pope's "Essay on Criticism" which conveys the idea perfectly:

"Soft is the strain when zephyr gently blows, And the smooth stream in smoother numbers flows; But when loud surges lash the sounding shore, The hoarse, rough verse should like the torrent roar. When Ajax strives some rock's vast weight to throw, The line too labors, and the words move slow: Not so when swift Camilla scours the plain, Flies o'er th' unbending corn, and skims along the main."

II

THE WORLD BEAUTIFUL

The World Beautiful

Sweet is the breath of Morn, her rising sweet With charm of earliest birds; pleasant the Sun When first on this delightful land he spreads His orient beams, on herb, tree, fruit, and flower, Glistening with dew; fragrant the fertile Earth After soft showers; and sweet the coming on Of grateful Evening mild; then silent Night With this her solemn bird, and this fair Moon, And these the gems of Heaven, her starry train.

John Milton.

From "Paradise Lost."

The Harvest Moon

It is the harvest moon! On gilded vanes And roofs of villages, on woodland crests And their aerial neighborhoods of nests Deserted, oh the curtained window-panes Of rooms where children sleep, on country lanes And harvest-fields, its mystic splendor rests! Gone are the birds that were our summer guests; With the last sheaves return the laboring wains!

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

The Cloud

I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers, From the seas and the streams; I bear light shade for the leaves when laid In their noonday dreams. From my wings are shaken the dews that waken The sweet buds every one, When rocked to rest on their mother's breast, As she dances about the sun. I wield the flail of the lashing hail, And whiten the green plains under; And then again I dissolve it in rain, And laugh as I pass in thunder.

I sift the snow on the mountains below, And their great pines groan aghast; And all the night 'tis my pillow white, While I sleep in the arms of the blast. Sublime on the towers of my skyey bowers, Lightning my pilot sits; In a cavern under is fettered the thunder, It struggles and howls at fits; Over earth and ocean, with gentle motion, This pilot is guiding me, Lured by the love of the genii that move In the depths of the purple sea; Over the rills, and the crags, and the hills, Over the lakes and the plains, Wherever he dream, under mountain or stream, The Spirit he loves remains; And I all the while bask in heaven's blue smile, Whilst he is dissolving in rains.

The sanguine sunrise, with his meteor eyes, And his burning plumes outspread, Leaps on the back of my sailing rack When the morning-star shines dead, As on the jag of a mountain crag, Which an earthquake rocks and swings, An eagle alit one moment may sit In the light of its golden wings. And when Sunset may breathe, from the lit sea beneath Its ardors of rest and of love, And the crimson pall of eve may fall From the depth of heaven above, With wings folded I rest, on mine airy nest, As still as a brooding dove.

That orbèd maiden with white fire laden, Whom mortals call the moon, Glides glimmering o'er my fleece-like floor, By the midnight breezes strewn; And wherever the beat of her unseen feet, Which only the angels hear, May have broken the woof of my tent's thin roof, The stars peep behind her and peer; And I laugh to see them whirl and flee, Like a swarm of golden bees, When I widen the rent in my wind-built tent, Till the calm rivers, lakes, and seas, Like strips of the sky fallen through me on high, Are each paved with the moon and these.

I bind the sun's throne with a burning zone, And the moon's with a girdle of pearl; The volcanoes are dim, and the stars reel and swim, When the whirlwinds my banner unfurl. From cape to cape, with a bridge-like shape, Over a torrent sea, Sunbeam-proof, I hang like a roof, The mountains its columns be. The triumphal arch through which I march With hurricane, fire, and snow, When the powers of the air are chained to my chair, Is the million-colored bow; The sphere-fire above its soft colors wove, While the moist earth was laughing below. I am the daughter of earth and water, And the nursling of the sky: I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores; I change, but I cannot die. For after the rain when with never a stain, The pavilion of heaven is bare, And the winds and sunbeams with their convex gleams, Build up the blue dome of air, I silently laugh at my own cenotaph, And out of the caverns of rain, Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb, I arise and unbuild it again.

Percy Bysshe Shelley.

Before the Rain

We knew it would rain, for all the morn, A spirit on slender ropes of mist Was lowering its golden buckets down Into the vapory amethyst

Of marshes and swamps and dismal fens— Scooping the dew that lay in the flowers, Dipping the jewels out of the sea, To sprinkle them over the land in showers.

We knew it would rain, for the poplars showed The white of their leaves, the amber grain Shrunk in the wind—and the lightning now Is tangled in tremulous skeins of rain!

Thomas Bailey Aldrich.

Rain in Summer

How beautiful is the rain! After the dust and heat, In the broad and fiery street, In the narrow lane, How beautiful is the rain! How it clatters along the roofs Like the tramp of hoofs! How it gushes and struggles out From the throat of the overflowing spout!

Across the window-pane It pours and pours; And swift and wide, With a muddy tide, Like a river down the gutter roars The rain, the welcome rain!

The sick man from his chamber looks At the twisted brooks; He can feel the cool Breath of each little pool; His fevered brain Grows calm again, And he breathes a blessing on the rain.

From the neighboring school Come the boys, With more than their wonted noise And commotion; And down the wet streets Sail their mimic fleets, Till the treacherous pool Engulfs them in its whirling And turbulent ocean.

In the country on every side, Where, far and wide, Like a leopard's tawny and spotted hide, Stretches the plain, To the dry grass and the drier grain How welcome is the rain!

In the furrowed land The toilsome and patient oxen stand, Lifting the yoke-encumbered head, With their dilated nostrils spread, They silently inhale The clover-scented gale, And the vapors that arise From the well-watered and smoking soil. For this rest in the furrow after toil, Their large and lustrous eyes Seem to thank the Lord, More than man's spoken word.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

Invocation to Rain in Summer

O gentle, gentle summer rain, Let not the silver lily pine, The drooping lily pine in vain To feel that dewy touch of thine— To drink thy freshness once again, O gentle, gentle summer rain!

In heat the landscape quivering lies; The cattle pant beneath the tree; Through parching air and purple skies The earth looks up, in vain, for thee; For thee—for thee, it looks in vain, O gentle, gentle summer rain!

Come, thou, and brim the meadow streams, And soften all the hills with mist, O falling dew! from burning dreams By thee shall herb and flower be kissed; And Earth shall bless thee yet again, O gentle, gentle summer rain!

William C. Bennett.

The Latter Rain

The latter rain,—it falls in anxious haste Upon the sun-dried fields and branches bare, Loosening with searching drops the rigid waste As if it would each root's lost strength repair; But not a blade grows green as in the spring; No swelling twig puts forth its thickening leaves; The robins only 'mid the harvests sing, Pecking the grain that scatters from the sheaves; The rain falls still,—the fruit all ripened drops, It pierces chestnut-bur and walnut-shell; The furrowed fields disclose the yellow crops; Each bursting pod of talents used can tell; And all that once received the early rain Declare to man it was not sent in vain.

Jones Very.

The Wind[4]

I saw you toss the kites on high And blow the birds about the sky; And all around I heard you pass, Like ladies' skirts across the grass— O wind, a-blowing all day long, O wind, that sings so loud a song!

I saw the different things you did, But always you yourself you hid, I felt you push, I heard you call, I could not see yourself at all— O wind, a-blowing all day long, O wind, that sings so loud a song!

O you that are so strong and cold, O blower, are you young or old? Are you a beast of field and tree Or just a stronger child than me? O wind, a-blowing all day long, O wind, that sings so loud a song!

Robert Louis Stevenson.

[4] From "A Child's Garden of Verses." By courtesy of Charles Scribner's Sons.

Ode to the Northeast Wind

Welcome, wild Northeaster! Shame it is to see Odes to every zephyr; Ne'er a verse to thee. Welcome, black Northeaster! O'er the German foam; O'er the Danish moorlands, From thy frozen home. Tired we are of summer, Tired of gaudy glare, Showers soft and steaming, Hot and breathless air. Tired of listless dreaming, Through the lazy day; Jovial wind of winter Turn us out to play! Sweep the golden reed-beds; Crisp the lazy dyke; Hunger into madness Every plunging pike. Fill the lake with wild-fowl; Fill the marsh with snipe; While on dreary moorlands Lonely curlew pipe. Through the black fir forest Thunder harsh and dry, Shattering down the snowflakes Off the curdled sky. Hark! the brave Northeaster! Breast-high lies the scent, On by holt and headland, Over heath and bent. Chime, ye dappled darlings, Through the sleet and snow, Who can override you? Let the horses go! Chime, ye dappled darlings, Down the roaring blast; You shall see a fox die Ere an hour be past. Go! and rest to-morrow, Hunting in your dreams, While our skates are ringing O'er the frozen streams. Let the luscious South-wind Breathe in lovers' sighs, While the lazy gallants Bask in ladies' eyes. What does he but soften Heart alike and pen? 'Tis the hard gray weather Breeds hard English men. What's the soft Southwester? 'Tis the ladies' breeze, Bringing home their true loves Out of all the seas; But the black Northeaster, Through the snowstorm hurled, Drives our English hearts of oak, Seaward round the world! Come! as came our fathers, Heralded by thee, Conquering from the eastward, Lords by land and sea. Come! and strong within us Stir the Vikings' blood; Bracing brain and sinew; Blow, thou wind of God!

Charles Kingsley.

The Windy Night[5]

Alow 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!

Alow and aloof, Over the roof, 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!

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! 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!

Thomas Buchanan Read.

[5] By courtesy of J. B. Lippincott & Co.

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.

*      *     *     *

I chatter over stony ways, In little sharps and trebles, I bubble into eddying bays, I babble on the pebbles.

With many a curve my 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, And 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.

*      *      *      *

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 sunbeams dance Against my sandy shallows.

I murmur under moon and stars In brambly wildernesses; I linger by my shingly bars; I loiter round my 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, Lord Tennyson.

The Brook in Winter

Down swept the chill wind from the mountain peak, From the snow five thousand summers old; On open wold and hill-top bleak It had gathered all the cold, And whirled it like sleet on the wanderer's cheek; It carried a shiver everywhere From the unleafed boughs and pastures bare; The little brook heard it and built a roof 'Neath which he could house him, winter-proof; All night by the white stars' frosty gleams He groined his arches and matched his beams; Slender and clear were his crystal spars As the lashes of light that trim the stars; He sculptured every summer delight In his halls and chambers out of sight; Sometimes his tinkling waters slipt Down through a frost-leaved forest crypt, Long, sparkling aisles of steel-stemmed trees Bending to counterfeit a breeze; Sometimes the roof no fretwork knew; But silvery mosses that downward grew; Sometimes it was carved in sharp relief With quaint arabesques of ice-fern leaf; Sometimes it was simply smooth and clear For the gladness of heaven to shine through, and here He had caught the nodding bulrush-tops And hung them thickly with diamond drops, That crystalled the beams of moon and sun, And made a star of every one: No mortal builder's most rare device Could match this winter-palace of ice; 'Twas as if every image that mirrored lay In his depths serene through the summer day, Each flitting shadow of earth and sky, Lest the happy model should be lost, Had been mimicked in fairy masonry By the elfin builders of the frost.

James Russell Lowell.

From "The Vision of Sir Launfal."

Clear and Cool

Clear and cool, clear and cool, By laughing shallow, and dreaming pool; Cool and clear, cool and clear, By shining shingle, and foaming wear; Under the crag where the ouzel sings, And the ivied wall where the church-bell rings, Undefiled, for the undefiled; Play by me, bathe in me, mother and child.

Dank and foul, dank and foul, By the smoky town in its murky cowl; Foul and dank, foul and dank, By wharf and sewer and slimy bank; Darker and darker the farther I go, Baser and baser the richer I grow; Who dare sport with the sin-defiled? Shrink from me, turn from me, mother and child. Strong and free, strong and free, The floodgates are open, away to the sea, Free and strong, free and strong, Cleansing my streams as I hurry along, To the golden sands, and the leaping bar, And the taintless tide that awaits me afar. As I lose myself in the infinite main, Like a soul that has sinned and is pardoned again. Undefiled, for the undefiled; Play by me, bathe in me, mother and child.

Charles Kingsley.

From "The Water-Babies."

Minnows

How silent comes the water round that bend; Not the minutest whisper does it send To the overhanging sallows; blades of grass Slowly across the chequer'd shadows pass,— Why, you might read two sonnets, ere they reach To where the hurrying freshnesses aye preach A natural sermon o'er their pebbly beds; Where swarms of minnows show their little heads, Staying their wavy bodies 'gainst the streams, To taste the luxury of sunny beams Tempered with coolness. How they ever wrestle With their own sweet delight, and ever nestle Their silver bellies on the pebbly sand. If you but scantily hold out the hand, That very instant not one will remain; But turn your eye, and they are there again. The ripples seem right glad to reach those cresses, And cool themselves among the em'rald tresses; The while they cool themselves, they freshness give, And moisture, that the bowery green may live.

John Keats.

Snow-Bound

(Extracts)

The sun that brief December day Rose cheerless over hills of gray, And, darkly circled, gave at noon A sadder light than waning moon. Slow tracing down the thickening sky Its mute and ominous prophecy, A portent seeming less than threat, It sank from sight before it set. A chill no coat, however stout, Of homespun stuff could quite shut out, A hard dull bitterness of cold, That checked, mid-vein, the circling race Of life-blood in the sharpened face, The coming of the snow-storm told. The wind blew east: we heard the roar Of ocean on his wintry shore, And felt the strong pulse throbbing there Beat with low rhythm our inland air.

*      *      *      *

Unwarmed by any sunset light The gray day darkened into night, A night made hoary with the swarm And whirl-dance of the blinding storm, As zig-zag wavering to and fro Crossed and recrossed the wingéd snow: And ere the early bedtime came The white drift piled the window-frame, And through the glass the clothes-line posts Looked in like tall and sheeted ghosts.

*      *      *      *

The old familiar sights of ours Took marvellous shapes; strange domes and towers Rose up where sty or corn-crib stood, Or garden wall, or belt of wood; A smooth white mound the brush-pile showed, A fenceless drift what once was road; The bridle-post an old man sat With loose-flung coat and high cocked hat; The well-curb had a Chinese roof; And even the long sweep, high aloof, In its slant splendor, seemed to tell Of Pisa's leaning miracle.

*      *      *      *

All day the gusty north wind bore The loosening drift its breath before; Low circling round its southern zone, The sun through dazzling snow-mist shone. No church-bell lent its Christian tone To the savage air, no social smoke Curled over woods of snow-hung oak. A solitude made more intense By dreary-voicéd elements, The shrieking of the mindless wind, The moaning tree-boughs swaying blind, And on the glass the unmeaning beat Of ghostly finger-tips of sleet. Beyond the circle of our hearth No welcome sound of toil or mirth Unbound the spell, and testified Of human life and thought outside. We minded that the sharpest ear The buried brooklet could not hear, The music of whose liquid lip Had been to us companionship, And in our lonely life, had grown To have an almost human tone. As night drew on, and, from the crest Of wooded knolls that ridged the west, The sun, a snow-blown traveller, sank From sight beneath the smothering bank, We piled with care, our nightly stack Of wood against the chimney-back,— The oaken log, green, huge and thick, And on its top the stout back-stick; The knotty fore-stick laid apart, And filled between with curious art The ragged brush; then hovering near, We watched the first red blaze appear, Heard the sharp crackle, caught the gleam On whitewashed wall and sagging beam, Until the old rude-fashioned room Burst flower-like into rosy bloom; While radiant with a mimic flame Outside the sparkling drift became, And through the bare-boughed lilac tree Our own warm hearth seemed blazing free. The crane and pendent trammels showed, The Turks' heads on the andirons glowed; While childish fancy, prompt to tell The meaning of the miracle, Whispered the old rhyme: "Under the tree, When fire outdoors burns merrily, There the witches are making tea."

*      *      *      *

Shut in from all the 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, 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.

*      *      *      *

John Greenleaf Whittier.

Highland Cattle

Down the wintry mountain Like a cloud they come, Not like a cloud in its silent shroud When the sky is leaden and the earth all dumb, But tramp, tramp, tramp, With a roar and a shock, And stamp, stamp, stamp, Down the hard granite rock, With the snow-flakes falling fair Like an army in the air Of white-winged angels leaving Their heavenly homes, half grieving, And half glad to drop down kindly upon earth so bare: With a snort and a bellow Tossing manes dun and yellow, Red and roan, black and gray, In their fierce merry play, Though the sky is all leaden and the earth all dumb— Down the noisy cattle come!

Throned on the mountain Winter sits at ease: Hidden under mist are those peaks of amethyst That rose like hills of heaven above the amber seas. While crash, crash, crash, Through the frozen heather brown, And dash, dash, dash, Where the ptarmigan drops down And the curlew stops her cry And the deer sinks, like to die— And the waterfall's loud noise Is the only living voice— With a plunge and a roar Like mad waves upon the shore, Or the wind through the pass Howling o'er the reedy grass— In a wild battalion pouring from the heights unto the plain, Down the cattle come again!

*      *      *      *

Dinah Maria Mulock.

A Scene in Paradise

Adam the goodliest man of men since born His sons; the fairest of her daughters Eve. Under a tuft of shade that on a green Stood whispering soft, by a fresh fountain-side, They sat them down;... ... About them frisking played All beasts of the earth, since wild, and of all chase In wood or wilderness, forest or den. Sporting the lion ramped, and in his paw Dandled the kid; bears, tigers, ounces, pards, Gamboled before them; the unwieldy elephant, To make them mirth, used all his might, and wreathed His lithe proboscis; close the serpent sly, Insinuating, wove with Gordian twine His braided train, and of his fatal guile Gave proof unheeded. Others on the grass Couched, and, now filled with pasture, gazing sat, Or bedward ruminating; for the sun, Declined, was hastening now with prone career To the Ocean Isles, and in the ascending scale Of Heaven the stars that usher evening rose.

John Milton.

From "Paradise Lost."

The Tiger

Tiger, tiger, burning bright In the forests of the night! What immortal hand or eye Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies Burnt the ardor of thine eyes? On what wings dare he aspire— What the hand dare seize the fire?

And what shoulder, and what art Could twist the sinews of thy heart? And when thy heart began to beat, What dread hand form'd thy dread feet?

What the hammer, what the chain, In what furnace was thy brain? What the anvil? What dread grasp Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears, And watered heaven with their tears, Did he smile his work to see? Did he who made the lamb make thee?

Tiger, tiger, burning bright In the forests of the night, What immortal hand or eye Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

William Blake.

The Spacious Firmament on High

The spacious firmament on high, With all the blue ethereal sky, And spangled heavens, a shining frame. Their great Original proclaim. The unwearied sun from day to day Does his Creator's power display, And publishes to every land The work of an Almighty hand.

Soon as the evening shades prevail, The moon takes up the wondrous tale, And nightly to the listening earth Repeats the story of her birth; Whilst all the stars that round her burn, And all the planets in their turn, Confirm the tidings as they roll, And spread the truth from pole to pole.

What though in solemn silence, all Move round this dark, terrestrial ball? What though nor real voice nor sound Amidst their radiant orbs be found? In Reason's ear they all rejoice, And utter forth a glorious voice, Forever singing as they shine: "The hand that made us is divine!"

Joseph Addison.

INTERLEAVES

Green Things Growing

"Oh, the fluttering and the pattering of those green things growing! How they talk each to each, when none of us are knowing;"

"Every clod feels a stir of might, An instinct within it that reaches and towers, And groping blindly above it for light, Climbs to a soul in grass and flowers;"

"... Lean against a streamlet's rushy banks, And watch intently Nature's gentle doings; They will be found softer than ringdoves' cooings."

"Dear, tell them, that if eyes were made for seeing, Then beauty is its own excuse for being."

"They know the time to go! The fairy clocks strike their inaudible hour In field and woodland, and each punctual flower Bows at the signal an obedient head And hastes to bed."

"If so the sweetness of the wheat Into my soul might pass, And the clear courage of the grass."

"Flower in the crannied wall, I pluck you out of the crannies; Hold you here, root and all, in my hand, Little flower—but if I could understand What you are, root and all, and all in all, I should know what God and man is."

III

GREEN THINGS GROWING

Green Things Growing

Oh, the green things growing, the green things growing, The faint sweet smell of the green things growing! I should like to live, whether I smile or grieve, Just to watch the happy life of my green things growing.

Oh, the fluttering and the pattering of those green things growing! How they talk each to each, when none of us are knowing; In the wonderful white of the weird moonlight Or the dim dreamy dawn when the cocks are crowing.

I love, I love them so,—my green things growing! And I think that they love me, without false showing; For by many a tender touch, they comfort me so much, With the soft mute comfort of green things growing.

Dinah Maria Mulock.

The Sigh of Silence

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.

John Keats.

Under the Greenwood Tree

Under the greenwood tree, Who loves to lie with me, And tune his merry note Unto the sweet bird's throat, Come hither, come hither, come hither! Here shall he see No enemy But winter and rough weather.

Who doth ambition shun, And loves to live i' the sun, Seeking the food he eats, And pleased with what he gets, Come hither, come hither, come hither! Here shall he see No enemy But winter and rough weather.

William Shakespeare.

From "As You Like It."

The Planting of the Apple Tree[6]

Come, let us plant the apple tree. Cleave the tough greensward with the spade; Wide let its hollow bed be made; There gently lay the roots, and there Sift the dark mold with kindly care, And press it o'er them tenderly, As, round the sleeping infant's feet We softly fold the cradle sheet; So plant we the apple tree.

What plant we in this apple tree? Buds, which the breath of summer days Shall lengthen into leafy sprays; Boughs where the thrush, with crimson breast, Shall haunt and sing and hide her nest; We plant, upon the sunny lea, A shadow for the noontide hour, A shelter from the summer shower, When we plant the apple tree.

What plant we in this apple tree? Sweets for a hundred flowery springs To load the May wind's restless wings, When, from the orchard row, he pours Its fragrance through our open doors; A world of blossoms for the bee, Flowers for the sick girl's silent room, For the glad infant sprigs of bloom, We plant with the apple tree.

What plant we in this apple tree? Fruits that shall swell in sunny June, And redden in the August noon, And drop, when gentle airs come by, That fan the blue September sky, While children come, with cries of glee, And seek them where the fragrant grass Betrays their bed to those who pass, At the foot of the apple tree.

And when, above this apple tree, The winter stars are quivering bright, And winds go howling through the night, Girls, whose young eyes o'erflow with mirth, Shall peel its fruit by cottage hearth, And guests in prouder homes shall see, Heaped with the grape of Cintra's vine And golden orange of the line, The fruit of the apple tree.

The fruitage of this apple tree Winds, and our flag of stripe and star, Shall bear to coasts that lie afar, Where men shall wonder at the view, And ask in what fair groves they grew; And sojourners beyond the sea Shall think of childhood's careless day And long, long hours of summer play, In the shade of the apple tree.

Each year shall give this apple tree A broader flush of roseate bloom, A deeper maze of verdurous gloom, And loosen, when the frost clouds lower, The crisp brown leaves in thicker shower. The years shall come and pass, but we Shall hear no longer, where we lie, The summer's songs, the autumn's sigh, In the boughs of the apple tree.

And time shall waste this apple tree. Oh, when its aged branches throw Thin shadows on the ground below, Shall fraud and force and iron will Oppress the weak and helpless still? What shall the tasks of mercy be, Amid the toils, the strifes, the tears, Of those who live when length of years Is wasting this apple tree?

"Who planted this old apple tree?" The children of that distant day Thus to some aged man shall say; And, gazing on its mossy stem, The gray-haired man shall answer them: "A poet of the land was he, Born in the rude but good old times; 'Tis said he made some quaint old rhymes On planting the apple tree."

William Cullen Bryant.

[6] By courtesy of D. Appleton & Co., publishers of Bryant's Complete Poetical Works.

An Apple Orchard in the Spring

Have you seen an apple orchard in the spring? In the spring? An English apple orchard in the spring? When the spreading trees are hoary With their wealth of promised glory, And the mavis sings its story, In the spring.

Have you plucked the apple blossoms in the spring? In the spring? And caught their subtle odors in the spring? Pink buds pouting at the light, Crumpled petals baby white, Just to touch them a delight— In the spring.

Have you walked beneath the blossoms in the spring? In the spring? Beneath the apple blossoms in the spring? When the pink cascades are falling, And the silver brooklets brawling, And the cuckoo bird soft calling, In the spring.

If you have not, then you know not, in the spring, In the spring, Half the color, beauty, wonder of the spring, No sweet sight can I remember Half so precious, half so tender, As the apple blossoms render In the spring.

William Martin.

Mine Host of "The Golden Apple"

A goodly host one day was mine, A Golden Apple his only sign, That hung from a long branch, ripe and fine.

My host was the bountiful apple-tree; He gave me shelter and nourished me With the best of fare, all fresh and free.

And light-winged guests came not a few, To his leafy inn, and sipped the dew, And sang their best songs ere they flew.

I slept at night on a downy bed Of moss, and my Host benignly spread His own cool shadow over my head.

When I asked what reckoning there might be, He shook his broad boughs cheerily:— A blessing be thine, green Apple-tree!

Thomas Westwood.

The Tree

I love thee when thy swelling buds appear, And one by one their tender leaves unfold, As if they knew that warmer suns were near, Nor longer sought to hide from winter's cold; And when with darker growth thy leaves are seen To veil from view the early robin's nest, I love to lie beneath thy waving screen, With limbs by summer's heat and toil oppressed; And when the autumn winds have stripped thee bare, And round thee lies the smooth, untrodden snow, When naught is thine that made thee once so fair, I love to watch thy shadowy form below, And through thy leafless arms to look above On stars that brighter beam when most we need their love.

Jones Very.

A Young Fir-Wood

These little firs to-day are things To clasp into a giant's cap, Or fans to suit his lady's lap. From many winters, many springs Shall cherish them in strength and sap, Till they be marked upon the map, A wood for the wind's wanderings. All seed is in the sower's hands: And what at first was trained to spread Its shelter for some single head,— Yea, even such fellowship of wands,— May hide the sunset, and the shade Of its great multitude be laid Upon the earth and elder sands.

Dante G. Rossetti.

The Snowing of the Pines

Softer than silence, stiller than still air Float down from high pine-boughs the slender leaves. The forest floor its annual boon receives That comes like snowfall, tireless, tranquil, fair. Gently they glide, gently they clothe the bare Old rocks with grace. Their fall a mantle weaves Of paler yellow than autumnal sheaves Or those strange blossoms the witch-hazels wear. Athwart long aisles the sunbeams pierce their way; High up, the crows are gathering for the night; The delicate needles fill the air; the jay Takes through their golden mist his radiant flight; They fall and fall, till at November's close The snow-flakes drop as lightly—snows on snows.

Thomas Wentworth Higginson.

The Procession of the Flowers

First came the primrose, On the bank high. Like a maiden looking forth From the window of a tower When the battle rolls below, So look'd she, And saw the storms go by.

Then came the wind-flower In the valley left behind, As a wounded maiden, pale With purple streaks of woe, When the battle has roll'd by Wanders to and fro, So totter'd she, Dishevell'd in the wind.

Then came the daisies, On the first of May, Like a banner'd show's advance While the crowd runs by the way, With ten thousand flowers about them they came trooping through the fields.

As a happy people come, So came they, As a happy people come When the war has roll'd away, With dance and tabor, pipe and drum, And all make holiday.

Then came the cowslip, Like a dancer in the fair, She spread her little mat of green, And on it danced she. With a fillet bound about her brow, A fillet round her happy brow, A golden fillet round her brow, And rubies in her hair.

Sydney Dobell.

Sweet Peas

Here are sweet peas, on tiptoe for a flight: With wings of gentle flush o'er delicate white, And taper fingers catching at all things, To bind them all about with tiny rings. Linger awhile upon some bending planks That lean against a streamlet's rushy banks, And watch intently Nature's gentle doings: They will be found softer than ringdove's cooings. How silent comes the water round that bend! Not the minutest whisper does it send To the o'erhanging sallows: blades of grass Slowly across the chequer'd shadows pass.

John Keats.

A Snowdrop

Only a tender little thing, So velvet soft and white it is; But march himself is not so strong, With all the great gales that are his.

In vain his whistling storms he calls, In vain the cohorts of his power Ride down the sky on mighty blasts— He cannot crush the little flower.

Its white spear parts the sod, the snows Than that white spear less snowy are, The rains roll off its crest like spray, It lifts again its spotless star.

Harriet Prescott Spofford.

Almond Blossom

Blossom of the almond trees, April's gift to April's bees, Birthday ornament of spring, Flora's fairest daughterling; Coming when no flowerets dare Trust the cruel outer air; When the royal kingcup bold Dares not don his coat of gold; And the sturdy black-thorn spray Keeps his silver for the May;— Coming when no flowerets would, Save thy lowly sisterhood, Early violets, blue and white, Dying for their love of light. Almond blossom, sent to teach us That the spring-days soon will reach us, Lest, with longing over-tried, We die, as the violets died— Blossom, clouding all the tree With thy crimson broidery, Long before a leaf of green O'er the bravest bough is seen; Ah! when winter winds are swinging All thy red bells into ringing, With a bee in every bell, Almond blossom, we greet thee well.

Edwin Arnold.

Wild Rose

Some innocent girlish Kisses by a charm Changed to a flight of small pink Butterflies, To waver under June's delicious skies Across gold-sprinkled meads—the merry swarm A smiling powerful word did next transform To little Roses mesh'd in green, allies Of earth and air, and everything we prize For mirthful, gentle, delicate, and warm.

William Allingham.

Tiger-Lilies

I like not lady-slippers, Nor yet the sweet-pea blossoms, Nor yet the flaky roses, Red, or white as snow; I like the chaliced lilies, The heavy Eastern lilies, The gorgeous tiger-lilies, That in our garden grow!

For they are tall and slender; Their mouths are dashed with carmine, And when the wind sweeps by them, On their emerald stalks They bend so proud and graceful,— They are Circassian women, The favorites of the Sultan, Adown our garden walks!

And when the rain is falling, I sit beside the window And watch them glow and glisten,— How they burn and glow! O for the burning lilies, The tender Eastern lilies, The gorgeous tiger-lilies, That in our garden grow!

Thomas Bailey Aldrich.

To the Fringed Gentian[7]

Thou 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, 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.

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.

William Cullen Bryant.

[7] By courtesy of D. Appleton & Co., publishers of Bryant's Complete Poetical Works.

To a Mountain Daisy

On Turning One Down With the Plough in April.

Wee, modest, crimson-tipped flow'r, 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 pow'r, Thou bonnie gem!

Alas! it's no thy neebor sweet, The bonnie lark, companion meet! Bending thee 'mang the dewy weet, Wi' spreckl'd 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 rear'd above the parent earth Thy tender form. The flaunting flow'rs our gardens yield, High shelt'ring 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 sun-ward spread, Thou lifts thy unassuming head In humble guise; But now the share uptears thy bed, And low thou lies.

Robert Burns.

Bind-Weed

In the deep shadow of the porch A slender bind-weed springs, And climbs, like airy acrobat, The trellises, and swings And dances in the golden sun In fairy loops and rings.

Its cup-shaped blossoms, brimmed with dew, Like pearly chalices, Hold cooling fountains, to refresh The butterflies and bees; And humming-birds on vibrant wings Hover, to drink at ease.

And up and down the garden-beds, Mid box and thyme and yew, And spikes of purple lavender, And spikes of larkspur blue, The bind-weed tendrils win their way, And find a passage through.

With touches coaxing, delicate, And arts that never tire, They tie the rose-trees each to each, The lilac to the brier, Making for graceless things a grace, With steady, sweet desire.

Till near and far the garden growths, The sweet, the frail, the rude, Draw close, as if with one consent, And find each other good, Held by the bind-weed's pliant loops, In a dear brotherhood.

Like one fair sister, slender, arch, A flower in bloom and poise, Gentle and merry and beloved, Making no stir or noise, But swaying, linking, blessing all A family of boys.

Susan Coolidge.

The Rhodora

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 earth and sky, Dear, tell them, that if eyes were made for seeing, 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 selfsame Power that brought me there, brought you.

Ralph Waldo Emerson.

A Song of Clover

I wonder what the Clover thinks,— Intimate friend of Bob-o'-links, Lover of Daisies slim and white, Waltzer with Buttercups at night; Keeper of Inn for traveling Bees, Serving to them wine-dregs and lees, Left by the Royal Humming Birds, Who sip and pay with fine-spun words; Fellow with all the lowliest, Peer of the gayest and the best; Comrade of winds, beloved of sun, Kissed by the Dew-drops, one by one; Prophet of Good-Luck mystery By sign of four which few may see; Symbol of Nature's magic zone, One out of three, and three in one; Emblem of comfort in the speech Which poor men's babies early reach; Sweet by the roadsides, sweet by rills, Sweet in the meadows, sweet on hills, Sweet in its white, sweet in its red,— Oh, half its sweetness cannot be said;— Sweet in its every living breath, Sweetest, perhaps, at last, in death! Oh! who knows what the Clover thinks? No one! unless the Bob-o'-links!

"Saxe Holm."

To the Dandelion

(Extract)

Dear common flower, that grow'st beside the way, Fringing the dusty road with harmless gold, First pledge of blithesome May, Which children pluck, and, full of pride uphold, High-hearted buccaneers, o'erjoyed that they An Eldorado in the grass have found, Which not the rich earth's ample round May match in wealth, thou art more dear to me Than all the prouder summer-blooms may be.

James Russell Lowell.

To Daffodils

Fair Daffodils, we weep to see You haste away so soon; As yet the early-rising sun Has not attained his noon. Stay, stay, Until the hastening day Has run But to the even-song; And, having prayed together, we Will go with you along.

We have short time to stay, as you, We have as short a spring; As quick a growth to meet decay, As you, or anything. We die As your hours do, and dry Away, Like to the summer's rain; Or as the pearls of morning's dew, Ne'er to be found again.

Robert Herrick.

The Daffodils

I wandered lonely as a cloud That floats on high o'er vales and hills, When all at once I saw a crowd,— A host, of golden daffodils, Beside the lake, beneath the trees, Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine And twinkle on the milky way, They stretched in never-ending line Along the margin of a bay: Ten thousand saw I at a glance, Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced, but they Outdid the sparkling waves in glee; A poet could not but be gay In such a jocund company. I gazed, and gazed, but little thought What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie In vacant or in pensive mood, They flash upon that inward eye Which is the bliss of solitude; And then my heart with pleasure fills, And dances with the daffodils.

William Wordsworth.

The White Anemone

'Tis the white anemone, fashioned so Like to the stars of the winter snow, First thinks, "If I come too soon, no doubt I shall seem but the snow that stayed too long, So 'tis I that will be Spring's unguessed scout," And wide she wanders the woods among. Then, from out of the mossiest hiding-places, Smile meek moonlight-colored faces Of pale primroses puritan, In maiden sisterhood demure; Each virgin floweret faint and wan With the bliss of her own sweet breath so pure.

*      *      *      *

Owen Meredith.

(Edward Robert Bulwer-Lytton.)

The Grass

The grass so little has to do,— A sphere of simple green, With only butterflies to brood, And bees to entertain,

And stir all day to pretty tunes The breezes fetch along, And hold the sunshine in its lap And bow to everything;

And thread the dews all night, like pearls, And make itself so fine,— A duchess were too common For such a noticing.

And even when it dies, to pass In odors so divine, As lowly spices gone to sleep, Or amulets of pine.

And then to dwell in sovereign barns, And dream the days away,— The grass so little has to do, I wish I were the hay!

Emily Dickinson.

The Corn-Song

Heap high the farmer's wintry hoard! Heap high the golden corn! No richer gift has Autumn poured From out her lavish horn!

Let other lands, exulting, glean The apple from the pine, The orange from its glossy green, The cluster from the vine;

We better love the hardy gift Our rugged vales bestow, To cheer us when the storm shall drift Our harvest-fields with snow.

Through vales of grass and meads of flowers, Our ploughs their furrows made, While on the hills the sun and showers Of changeful April played.

We dropped the seed o'er hill and plain, Beneath the sun of May, And frightened from our sprouting grain The robber crows away.

All through the long, bright days of June Its leaves grew green and fair, And waved in hot midsummer's noon Its soft and yellow hair.

And now with autumn's moonlit eves, Its harvest-time has come, We pluck away the frosted leaves, And bear the treasure home.

There richer than the fabled gift Apollo showered of old, Fair hands the broken grain shall sift, And knead its meal of gold.

Let vapid idlers loll in silk Around their costly board; Give us the bowl of samp and milk, By homespun beauty poured!

Where'er the wide old kitchen hearth Sends up its smoky curls, Who will not thank the kindly earth, And bless our farmer girls!

Then shame on all the proud and vain, Whose folly laughs to scorn The blessing of our hardy grain, Our wealth of golden corn!

Let earth withhold her goodly root, Let mildew blight the rye, Give to the worm the orchard's fruit, The wheat field to the fly:

But let the good old crop adorn The hills our fathers trod; Still let us for his golden corn, Send up our thanks to God!

John Greenleaf Whittier.

Columbia's Emblem

Blazon Columbia's emblem The bounteous, golden Corn! Eons ago, of the great sun's glow And the joy of the earth, 'twas born. From Superior's shore to Chili, From the ocean of dawn to the west, With its banners of green and silken sheen It sprang at the sun's behest; And by dew and shower, from its natal hour, With honey and wine 'twas fed, Till on slope and plain the gods were fain To share the feast outspread: For the rarest boon to the land they loved Was the Corn so rich and fair, Nor star nor breeze o'er the farthest seas Could find its like elsewhere.

In their holiest temples the Incas Offered the heaven-sent Maize— Grains wrought of gold, in a silver fold, For the sun's enraptured gaze; And its harvest came to the wandering tribes As the gods' own gift and seal, And Montezuma's festal bread Was made of its sacred meal. Narrow their cherished fields; but ours Are broad as the continent's breast. And, lavish as leaves, the rustling sheaves Bring plenty and joy and rest; For they strew the plains and crowd the wains When the reapers meet at morn, Till blithe cheers ring and west winds sing A song for the garnered Corn.

The rose may bloom for England, The lily for France unfold; Ireland may honor the shamrock, Scotland her thistle bold; But the shield of the great Republic, The glory of the West, Shall bear a stalk of the tasseled Corn— The sun's supreme bequest! The arbutus and the golden rod The heart of the North may cheer, And the mountain laurel for Maryland Its royal clusters rear, And jasmine and magnolia The crest of the South adorn; But the wide Republic's emblem Is the bounteous, golden Corn!

Edna Dean Proctor.

Scythe Song[8]

Mowers, weary and brown, and blithe, What is the word methinks ye know, Endless over-word that the Scythe Sings to the blades of the grass below? Scythes that swing in the grass and clover, Something, still, they say as they pass; What is the word that, over and over, Sings the Scythe to the flowers and grass?

Hush, ah hush, the Scythes are saying, Hush, and heed not, and fall asleep; Hush, they say to the grasses swaying, Hush, they sing to the clover deep! Hush—'tis the lullaby Time is singing— Hush, and heed not, for all things pass, Hush, ah hush! and the Scythes are swinging Over the clover, over the grass!

Andrew Lang.

[8] By courtesy of Longmans, Green & Co.

Time to Go

They know the time to go! The fairy clocks strike their inaudible hour In field and woodland, and each punctual flower Bows at the signal an obedient head And hastes to bed.

The pale Anemone Glides on her way with scarcely a good-night; The Violets tie their purple nightcaps tight; Hand clasped in hand, the dancing Columbines, In blithesome lines,

Drop their last courtesies, Flit from the scene, and couch them for their rest; The Meadow Lily folds her scarlet vest And hides it 'neath the Grasses' lengthening green; Fair and serene,

Her sister Lily floats On the blue pond, and raises golden eyes To court the golden splendor of the skies,— The sudden signal comes, and down she goes To find repose

In the cool depths below. A little later, and the Asters blue Depart in crowds, a brave and cheery crew; While Golden-rod, still wide awake and gay, Turns him away,

Furls his bright parasol, And, like a little hero, meets his fate. The Gentians, very proud to sit up late, Next follow. Every Fern is tucked and set 'Neath coverlet, Downy and soft and warm. No little seedling voice is heard to grieve Or make complaints the folding woods beneath; No lingerer dares to stay, for well they know The time to go.

Teach us your patience, brave, Dear flowers, till we shall dare to part like you, Willing God's will, sure that his clock strikes true, That his sweet day augurs a sweeter morrow, With smiles, not sorrow.

Susan Coolidge.

The Death of the Flowers[9]

The melancholy days have come, the saddest of the year, Of wailing winds, and naked woods, and meadows brown and sere. Heaped in the hollows of the grove, the withered leaves lie dead; They rustle to the eddying gust, and to the rabbit's tread. The robin and the wren are flown, and from the shrubs the jay, And from the wood-top calls the crow, through all the gloomy day.

Where are the flowers, the fair young flowers, that lately sprang and stood In brighter light and softer airs, a beauteous sisterhood? Alas! they all are in their graves, the gentle race of flowers Are lying in their lowly beds, with the fair and good of ours. The rain is falling where they lie, but the cold, November rain, Calls not, from out the gloomy earth, the lovely ones again.

The wind-flower and the violet, they perished long ago, And the brier-rose and the orchids died amid the summer glow; But on the hill the golden-rod, and the aster in the wood, And the yellow sun-flower by the brook in autumn beauty stood, Till fell the frost from the clear, cold heaven, as falls the plague on men, And the brightness of their smile was gone, from upland, glade, and glen.

And now, when comes the calm, mild day, as still such days will come, To call the squirrel and the bee from out their winter home; When the sound of dropping nuts is heard, though all the trees are still, And twinkle in the smoky light the waters of the rill, The south wind searches for the flowers whose fragrance late he bore, And sighs to find them in the wood and by the stream no more.

William Cullen Bryant.

[9] By courtesy of D. Appleton & Co., publishers of Bryant's Complete Poetical Works.

Autumn's Mirth

'Tis all a myth that Autumn grieves, For, watch the rain among the leaves; With silver fingers dimly seen It makes each leaf a tambourine, And swings and leaps with elfin mirth To kiss the brow of mother earth; Or, laughing 'mid the trembling grass, It nods a greeting as you pass. Oh! hear the rain amid the leaves, 'Tis all a myth that Autumn grieves!

'Tis all a myth that Autumn grieves, For, list the wind among the sheaves; Far sweeter than the breath of May, Or storied scents of old Cathay, It blends the perfumes rare and good Of spicy pine and hickory wood And with a voice in gayest chime, It prates of rifled mint and thyme. Oh! scent the wind among the sheaves, 'Tis all a myth that Autumn grieves!

'Tis all a myth that Autumn grieves, Behold the wondrous web she weaves! By viewless hands her thread is spun Of evening vapors shyly won. Across the grass from side to side A myriad unseen shuttles glide Throughout the night, till on the height Aurora leads the laggard light. Behold the wondrous web she weaves, 'Tis all a myth that Autumn grieves!

Samuel Minturn Peck.

INTERLEAVES

On the Wing

Our "little brothers of the air," have you named them all without a gun, as Emerson asks in "Forbearance"? Shy, glancing eyes peer from nests half-hidden in leaves; the forest is vocal with melody, the air is tremulous with the whirr of tiny wings.

Poet-singers have written undying lines about their brother minstrels of the wood, and the "blithe lark," especially, has a proud place in poetry, apostrophized as he is by Shakespeare, Shelley, Frederick Tennyson, Wordsworth, and The Ettrick Shepherd.

As the skylark's note dies away we hear the saucy chatter of Cranch's Bobolink, the twitter of Keats's Goldfinches, the mournful cry of Celia Thaxter's Sandpiper, and the revolving wheel of Emily Dickinson's Humming-bird, with its resonance of emerald, its rush of cochineal. The feathered warblers, Robin, Bluebird, Swallow, speed their southern flight, but there are other songs of summer, voices of sweet and tiny cousins, heard at the lazy noontide; chirpings, rustlings of the green little vaulters in the sunny grass. And if the wee grasshoppers and those warm little housekeepers the crickets, have served as themes for Keats and Leigh Hunt, so has the humble bee provoked his tribute from the poets:

"His feet are shod with gauze, His helmet is of gold; His breast a single onyx With chrysophrase inlaid."

Come within earshot of his drowsy hum, his breezy bass,—Father Tabb's publican bee,

"Collecting the tax On honey and wax,"

or Emerson's yellow-breeched philosopher,

"Seeing only what is fair, Sipping only what is sweet."

IV

ON THE WING

Sing On, Blithe Bird!

I've plucked the berry from the bush, the brown nut from the tree, But heart of happy little bird ne'er broken was by me. I saw them in their curious nests, close couching, slyly peer With their wild eyes, like glittering beads, to note if harm were near; I passed them by, and blessed them all; I felt that it was good To leave unmoved the creatures small whose home was in the wood.

And here, even now, above my head, a lusty rogue doth sing; He pecks his swelling breast and neck, and trims his little wing. He will not fly; he knows full well, while chirping on that spray, I would not harm him for a world, or interrupt his lay. Sing on, sing on, blithe bird! and fill my heart with summer gladness; It has been aching many a day with measures full of sadness!

William Motherwell.

To a Skylark

Hail to thee, blithe spirit! Bird thou never wert— That from heaven or near it Pourest thy full heart In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.

Higher still and higher From the earth thou springest Like a cloud of fire; The blue deep thou wingest, And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.

In the golden light'ning Of the sunken sun, O'er which clouds are bright'ning, Thou dost float and run, Like an embodied joy whose race is just begun.

The pale purple even Melts around thy flight; Like a star of heaven In the broad daylight, Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight—

Keen as are the arrows Of that silver sphere Whose intense lamp narrows In the white dawn clear, Until we hardly see, we feel, that it is there.

All the earth and air With thy voice is loud, As, when night is bare, From one lonely cloud The moon rains out her beams, and heaven is overflow'd.

What thou art we know not; What is most like thee? From rainbow clouds there flow not Drops so bright to see As from thy presence showers a rain of melody:—

Like a poet hidden In the light of thought, Singing hymns unbidden, Till the world is wrought To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not:

Like a high-born maiden In a palace tower, Soothing her love-laden Soul in secret hour With music sweet as love which overflows her bower:

Like a glow-worm golden In a dell of dew, Scattering unbeholden Its aërial hue Among the flowers and grass which screen it from the view:

Like a rose embow'red By its own green leaves, By warm winds deflow'red, Till the scent it gives Makes faint with too much sweet these heavy-wingèd thieves.

Sound of vernal showers On the twinkling grass, Rain-awak'ned flowers,— All that ever was, Joyous and clear and fresh,—thy music doth surpass.

Teach us, sprite or bird, What sweet thoughts are thine: I have never heard Praise of love or wine That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine.

Chorus hymeneal Or triumphal chant, Matched with thine, would be all But an empty vaunt— A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want.

What objects are the fountains Of thy happy strain? What fields, or waves, or mountains? What shapes of sky or plain? What love of thine own kind? what ignorance of pain?

With thy clear keen joyance Languor cannot be: Shadow of annoyance Never came near thee: Thou lovest, but ne'er knew love's sad satiety.

Waking or asleep, Thou of death must deem Things more true and deep Than we mortals dream, Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream?

We look before and after, And pine for what is not: Our sincerest laughter With some pain is fraught; Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.

Yet, if we could scorn Hate and pride and fear, If we were things born Not to shed a tear, I know not how thy joy we ever should come near.

Better than all measures Of delightful sound, Better than all treasures That in books are found, Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground!

Teach me half the gladness That thy brain must know; Such harmonious madness From my lips would flow The world should listen then as I am listening now.

Percy Bysshe Shelley.

Sir Lark and King Sun: A Parable

"Good morrow, my lord!" in the sky alone, Sang the lark as the sun ascended his throne. "Shine on me, my lord; I only am come, Of all your servants, to welcome you home. I have flown right up, a whole hour, I swear, To catch the first shine of your golden hair."

"Must I thank you then," said the king, "Sir Lark, For flying so high and hating the dark? You ask a full cup for half a thirst: Half was love of me, and half love to be first. There's many a bird makes no such haste, But waits till I come: that's as much to my taste."

And King Sun hid his head in a turban of cloud, And Sir Lark stopped singing, quite vexed and cowed; But he flew up higher, and thought, "Anon The wrath of the king will be over and gone; And his crown, shining out of its cloudy fold, Will change my brown feathers to a glory of gold."

So he flew—with the strength of a lark he flew; But, as he rose, the cloud rose too; And not one gleam of the golden hair Came through the depths of the misty air; Till, weary with flying, with sighing sore, The strong sun-seeker could do no more.

His wings had had no chrism of gold; And his feathers felt withered and worn and old; He faltered, and sank, and dropped like a stone. And there on his nest, where he left her, alone Sat his little wife on her little eggs, Keeping them warm with wings and legs.

Did I say alone? Ah, no such thing! Full in her face was shining the king. "Welcome, Sir Lark! You look tired," said he; "Up is not always the best way to me. While you have been singing so high and away, I've been shining to your little wife all day."

He had set his crown all about the nest, And out of the midst shone her little brown breast; And so glorious was she in russet gold, That for wonder and awe Sir Lark grew cold. He popped his head under her wing, and lay As still as a stone, till King Sun was away.

George MacDonald.

The Skylark[10]

How the blithe Lark runs up the golden stair That leans thro' cloudy gates from Heaven to Earth, And all alone in the empyreal air Fills it with jubilant sweet songs of mirth; How far he seems, how far With the light upon his wings, Is it a bird or star That shines and sings?

*      *      *      *

And now he dives into a rainbow's rivers; In streams of gold and purple he is drown'd; Shrilly the arrows of his song he shivers, As tho' the stormy drops were turned to sound: And now he issues thro', He scales a cloudy tower; Faintly, like falling dew, His fast notes shower.

*      *      *      *

Frederick Tennyson.

[10] By courtesy of John Lane.

The Skylark

Bird of the wilderness, Blithesome and cumberless, Sweet be thy matin o'er moorland and lea! Emblem of happiness, Blest is thy dwelling-place,— Oh, to abide in the desert with thee! Wild is thy lay and loud Far in the downy cloud, Love gives it energy, love gave it birth! Where, on thy dewy wing, Where art thou journeying? Thy lay is in heaven, thy love is on earth.

O'er fell and fountain sheen, O'er moor and mountain green, O'er the red streamer that heralds the day, Over the cloudlet dim, Over the rainbow's rim, Musical cherub, soar, singing, away! Then, when the gloaming comes, Low in the heather blooms Sweet will thy welcome and bed of love be! Emblem of happiness, Blest is thy dwelling-place— Oh, to abide in the desert with thee!

James Hogg.

(The Ettrick Shepherd.)

The Bobolinks

When Nature had made all her birds, With no more cares to think on, She gave a rippling laugh, and out There flew a Bobolinkon.

She laughed again; out flew a mate; A breeze of Eden bore them Across the fields of Paradise, The sunrise reddening o'er them.

Incarnate sport and holiday, They flew and sang forever; Their souls through June were all in tune, Their wings were weary never.

Their tribe, still drunk with air and light, And perfume of the meadow, Go reeling up and down the sky, In sunshine and in shadow.

One springs from out the dew-wet grass; Another follows after; The morn is thrilling with their songs And peals of fairy laughter.

From out the marshes and the brook, They set the tall reeds swinging, And meet and frolic in the air, Half prattling and half singing.

When morning winds sweep meadow-lands In green and russet billows. And toss the lonely elm-tree's boughs. And silver all the willows,

I see you buffeting the breeze, Or with its motion swaying, Your notes half drowned against the wind, Or down the current playing.

When far away o'er grassy flats, Where the thick wood commences, The white-sleeved mowers look like specks, Beyond the zigzag fences,

And noon is hot, and barn-roofs gleam White in the pale blue distance, I hear the saucy minstrels still In chattering persistence.

When eve her domes of opal fire Piles round the blue horizon, Or thunder rolls from hill to hill A Kyrie Eleison,

Still merriest of the merry birds, Your sparkle is unfading,— Pied harlequins of June,—no end Of song and masquerading.

*      *      *      *

Hope springs with you: I dread no more Despondency and dulness; For Good Supreme can never fail That gives such perfect fulness.

The life that floods the happy fields With song and light and color Will shape our lives to richer states, And heap our measures fuller.

Christopher Pearse Cranch.

To a Waterfowl[11]

Whither 'midst falling dew, While glow the heavens with the last steps of day, Far, through their rosy depths, dost thou pursue Thy solitary way?

Vainly the fowler's eye Might mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong, As, darkly painted on the crimson sky, Thy figure floats along.

Seek'st thou the plashy brink Of weedy lake, or marge of river wide, Or where the rocky billows rise and sink On the chafed ocean-side?

There is a Power whose care Teaches thy way along that pathless coast,— The desert and illimitable air,— Lone wandering, but not lost.

All day thy wings have fanned, At that far height, the cold, thin atmosphere, Yet stoop not, weary, to the welcome land, Though the dark night is near.

And soon that toil shall end; Soon shalt thou find a summer home, and rest, And scream among thy fellows; reeds shall bend, Soon, o'er thy sheltered nest.

Thou'rt gone, the abyss of heaven Hath swallowed up thy form; yet, on my heart Deeply hath sunk the lesson thou hast given, And shall not soon depart.

He who, from zone to zone, Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight, In the long way that I must tread alone, Will lead my steps aright.

William Cullen Bryant.

[11] By courtesy of D. Appleton & Co., publishers of Bryant's Complete Poetical Works.

Goldfinches

Sometimes goldfinches one by one will drop From low-hung branches; little space they stop, But sip, and twitter, and their feathers sleek, Then off at once, as in a wanton freak; Or perhaps, to show their black and golden wings, Pausing upon their yellow flutterings. Were I in such a place, I sure should pray That naught less sweet might call my thoughts away Than the soft rustle of a maiden's gown Fanning away the dandelion's down.

John Keats.

The Sandpiper

Across the narrow beach we flit, One little sandpiper and I; And fast I gather, bit by bit, The scattered driftwood, 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 I.

Above our heads the sullen clouds Scud black and swift across the sky; Like silent ghosts in misty shrouds Stand out the white lighthouses high. Almost as far as eye can reach I see the close-reefed vessels fly, As fast we flit along the beach,— One little sandpiper and I.

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; Stanch friends are we, well tried and strong, The little sandpiper and I.

Comrade, where wilt thou be to-night When the loosed storm breaks furiously? My driftwood 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 sandpiper, and I?

Celia Thaxter.

The Eagle

(Fragment)

He clasps the crag with hookèd hands; Close to the sun in lonely lands, Ring'd with the azure world, he stands.

The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls; He watches from his mountain walls; And like a thunderbolt he falls.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson.

Child's Talk in April

I wish you were a pleasant wren, And I your small accepted mate; How we'd look down on toilsome men! We'd rise and go to bed at eight Or it may be not quite so late.

Then you should see the nest I'd build, The wondrous nest for you and me; The outside rough perhaps, but filled With wool and down; ah, you should see The cosy nest that it would be.

We'd have our change of hope and fear, Some quarrels, reconcilements sweet: I'd perch by you to chirp and cheer, Or hop about on active feet, And fetch you dainty bits to eat.

We'd be so happy by the day. So safe and happy through the night, We both should feel, and I should say, It's all one season of delight, And we'll make merry whilst we may.

Perhaps some day there'd be an egg When spring had blossomed from the snow: I'd stand triumphant on one leg; Like chanticleer I'd almost crow To let our little neighbours know.

Next you should sit and I would sing Through lengthening days of sunny spring; Till, if you wearied of the task, I'd sit; and you should spread your wing From bough to bough; I'd sit and bask.

Fancy the breaking of the shell, The chirp, the chickens wet and bare, The untried proud paternal swell; And you with housewife-matron air Enacting choicer bills of fare.

Fancy the embryo coats of down, The gradual feathers soft and sleek; Till clothed and strong from tail to crown, With virgin warblings in their beak, They too go forth to soar and seek.

So would it last an April through And early summer fresh with dew, Then should we part and live as twain: Love-time would bring me back to you And build our happy nest again.

Christina G. Rossetti.

The Flight of the Birds

Whither away, Robin, Whither away? Is it through envy of the maple-leaf, Whose blushes mock the crimson of thy breast, Thou wilt not stay? The summer days were long, yet all too brief The happy season thou hast been our guest: Whither away?

Whither away, Bluebird, Whither away? The blast is chill, yet in the upper sky Thou still canst find the color of thy wing, The hue of May. Warbler, why speed thy southern flight? ah, why, Thou too, whose song first told us of the Spring? Whither away?

Whither away, Swallow, Whither away? Canst thou no longer tarry in the North, Here, where our roof so well hath screened thy nest? Not one short day? Wilt thou—as if thou human wert—go forth And wanton far from them who love thee best? Whither away?

Edmund Clarence Stedman.

The Shepherd's Home

My banks they are furnished with bees, Whose murmur invites one to sleep; My grottoes are shaded with trees, And my hills are white over with sheep. I seldom have met with a loss, Such health do my fountains bestow; My fountains all bordered with moss, Where the harebells and violets blow.

Not a pine in the grove is there seen, But with tendrils of woodbine is bound; Not a beech's more beautiful green, But a sweetbrier entwines it around. Not my fields in the prime of the year, More charms than my cattle unfold; Not a brook that is limpid and clear, But it glitters with fishes of gold.

I have found out a gift for my fair, I have found where the wood pigeons breed, But let me such plunder forbear, She will say 'twas a barbarous deed; For he ne'er could be true, she averred, Who would rob a poor bird of its young; And I loved her the more when I heard Such tenderness fall from her tongue.

William Shenstone.

To a Cricket

Voice of Summer, keen and shrill, Chirping round my winter fire, Of thy song I never tire, Weary others as they will; For thy song with Summer's filled— Filled with sunshine, filled with June; Firelight echo of that noon Heard in fields when all is stilled In the golden light of May, Bringing scents of new-mown hay, Bees, and birds, and flowers away: Prithee, haunt my fireside still, Voice of Summer, keen and shrill!

William C. Bennett.

On the Grasshopper and Cricket

The poetry of earth is never dead: When all the birds are faint with the hot sun, And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead; That is the Grasshopper's—he takes the lead In summer luxury,—he has never done With his delights; for when tired out with fun, He rests at ease beneath some pleasant weed. The poetry of earth is ceasing never: On a lone winter evening, when the frost Has wrought a silence, from the stove there shrills The Cricket's song, in warmth increasing ever, And seems to one, in drowsiness half lost, The Grasshopper's among some grassy hills.

John Keats.

The Tax-Gatherer

"And pray, who are you?" Said the violet blue To the Bee, with surprise At his wonderful size, In her eye-glass of dew.

"I, madam," quoth he, "Am a publican Bee, Collecting the tax Of honey and wax. Have you nothing for me?"

John B. Tabb.

To the Grasshopper and the Cricket

Green little vaulter in the sunny grass, Catching your heart up at the feel of June,— Sole voice that's heard amidst the lazy noon, When even the bees lag at the summoning brass; And you, warm little housekeeper, who class With those who think the candles come too soon, Loving the fire, and with your tricksome tune Nick the glad silent moments as they pass! O sweet and tiny cousins, that belong, One to the fields, the other to the hearth, Both have your sunshine; both, though small, are strong At your clear hearts; and both seem given to earth To sing in thoughtful ears their natural song,— In doors and out, summer and winter, Mirth.

Leigh Hunt.

The Bee

Like trains of cars on tracks of plush I hear the level bee: A jar across the flowers goes, Their velvet masonry

Withstands until the sweet assault Their chivalry consumes, While he, victorious, tilts away To vanquish other blooms.

His feet are shod with gauze, His helmet is of gold; His breast, a single onyx With chrysoprase, inlaid.

His labor is a chant, His idleness a tune; Oh, for a bee's experience Of clovers and of noon!

Emily Dickinson.

The Humble-Bee

Burly, dozing humble-bee, Where thou art is clime for me. Let them sail for Porto Rique, Far-off heats through seas to seek; I will follow thee alone, Thou animated torrid zone! Zigzag steerer, desert cheerer, Let me chase thy waving lines; Keep me nearer, me thy hearer, Singing over shrubs and vines.

Insect lover of the sun, Joy of thy dominion! Sailor of the atmosphere; Swimmer through the waves of air; Voyager of light and noon; Epicurean of June,— Wait, I prithee, till I come Within earshot of thy hum,— All without is martyrdom.

When the south wind, in May days, With a net of shining haze Silvers the horizon wall, And with softness touching all, Tints the human countenance With a color of romance, And, infusing subtle heats, Turns the sod to violets, Thou, in sunny solitudes, Rover of the underwoods, The green silence dost displace With thy mellow, breezy bass.

Hot midsummer's petted crone, Sweet to me thy drowsy tone Tells of countless sunny hours, Long days, and solid banks of flowers; Of gulfs of sweetness without bound In Indian wildernesses found; Of Syrian peace, immortal leisure, Firmest cheer, and bird-like pleasure.

Aught unsavory or unclean Hath my insect never seen; But violets and bilberry bells, Maple-sap and daffodels, Grass with green flag half-mast high, Succory to match the sky, Columbine with horn of honey, Scented fern, and agrimony, Clover, catchfly, adder's-tongue And brier-roses, dwelt among; All beside was unknown waste, All was picture as he passed.

Wiser far than human seer, Yellow-breeched philosopher! Seeing only what is fair, Sipping only what is sweet, Thou dost mock at fate and care, Leave the chaff and take the wheat; When the fierce northwestern blast Cools sea and land so far and fast, Thou already slumberest deep; Woe and want thou canst outsleep: Want and woe, which torture us, Thy sleep makes ridiculous.

Ralph Waldo Emerson.

All Things Wait Upon Thee

Innocent eyes not ours And made to look on flowers, Eyes of small birds, and insects small; Morn after summer morn The sweet rose on her thorn Opens her bosom to them all. The last and least of things, That soar on quivering wings, Or crawl among the grass blades out of sight, Have just as clear a right To their appointed portion of delight As queens or kings.

Christina G. Rossetti.

Providence

Lo, the lilies of the field, How their leaves instruction yield! Hark to Nature's lesson given By the blessed birds of heaven! Every bush and tufted tree Warbles sweet philosophy: Mortal, fly from doubt and sorrow, God provideth for the morrow.

Say, with richer crimson glows The kingly mantle than the rose? Say, have kings more wholesome fare Than we citizens of air? Barns nor hoarded grain have we, Yet we carol merrily. Mortal, fly from doubt and sorrow, God provideth for the morrow.

One there lives, whose guardian eye Guides our humble destiny; One there lives, who, Lord of all, Keeps our feathers lest they fall. Pass we blithely then the time, Fearless of the snare and lime, Free from doubt and faithless sorrow: God provideth for the morrow.

Reginald Heber.

INTERLEAVES

The Inglenook

"With his flute of reeds a stranger Wanders piping through the village, Beckons to the fairest maiden, And she follows where he leads her, Leaving all things for the stranger."

The ancient arrowmaker is left standing lonely at the door of his wigwam, but Laughing Water and Hiawatha have gone to make a new household among the myriad homes of earth.

It matters not whether the inglenook be in wigwam or cabin, cottage or palace, if Love Dwells Within be graven upon the threshold, for "where a true wife comes, there home is always around her." She is the Domina or House Lady, and under the benediction of her gaze arise sweet order, peace, and restful charm. The "gudeman," too; "his very foot has music in't when he comes up the stair," and like the fire on the hearth he diffuses warmth and comfort and good cheer. By and by a cradle swings to and fro in the sheltered corner of the fireside; baby feet have come to stray on life's untrodden brink; baby eyes whose speech make dumb the wise smile up into the mother's as she sings her lullaby:

"The Queen has sceptre, crown, and ball, You are my sceptre, crown, and all. And it's O! sweet, sweet, and a lullaby."

The dog and the cat snooze peacefully on the hearth, the kettle hums, the kitchen clock ticks drowsily. The circle of love widens to take in all who are helping to make home beautiful—the farm boy, the milkmaid, and even the whinnying mare and friendly cow.

The poetry of the inglenook is simple, unpretentious, humble, but it has a tender charm of its own because it sings of a heaven far on this side of the stars:

"By men called home."

V

THE INGLENOOK

A New Household

O Fortunate, O happy day, When a new household finds its place Among the myriad homes of earth, Like a new star just sprung to birth, And rolled on its harmonious way Into the boundless realms of space!

*      *      *      *

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

From "The Hanging of the Crane."

Two Heavens

For there are two heavens, sweet, Both made of love,—one, inconceivable Ev'n by the other, so divine it is; The other, far on this side of the stars, By men called home.

Leigh Hunt.

A Song of Love

Say, what is the spell, when her fledglings are cheeping, That lures the bird home to her nest? Or wakes the tired mother, whose infant is weeping, To cuddle and croon it to rest? What the magic that charms the glad babe in her arms, Till it cooes with the voice of the dove? 'Tis a secret, and so let us whisper it low— And the name of the secret is Love! For I think it is Love, For I feel it is Love, For I'm sure it is nothing but Love!

Say, whence is the voice that when anger is burning, Bids the whirl of the tempest to cease? That stirs the vexed soul with an aching—a yearning For the brotherly hand-grip of peace? Whence the music that fills all our being—that thrills Around us, beneath, and above? 'Tis a secret: none knows how it comes, or it goes— But the name of the secret is Love! For I think it is Love, For I feel it is Love, For I'm sure it is nothing but Love!

Say, whose is the skill that paints valley and hill, Like a picture so fair to the sight? That flecks the green meadow with sunshine and shadow, Till the little lambs leap with delight? 'Tis a secret untold to hearts cruel and cold, Though 'tis sung, by the angels above, In notes that ring clear for the ears that can hear— And the name of the secret is Love! For I think it is Love, For I feel it is Love, For I'm sure it is nothing but Love!

Lewis Carroll.

Mother's Song

My heart is like a fountain true That flows and flows with love to you. As chirps the lark unto the tree So chirps my pretty babe to me. And it's O! sweet, sweet! and a lullaby.

There's not a rose where'er I seek, As comely as my baby's cheek. There's not a comb of honey-bee, So full of sweets as babe to me. And it's O! sweet, sweet! and a lullaby.

There's not a star that shines on high, Is brighter than my baby's eye. There's not a boat upon the sea, Can dance as baby does to me. And it's O! sweet, sweet! and a lullaby.

No silk was ever spun so fine As is the hair of baby mine— My baby smells more sweet to me Than smells in spring the elder tree. And it's O! sweet, sweet! and a lullaby.

A little fish swims in the well, So in my heart does baby dwell. A little flower blows on the tree, My baby is the flower to me. And it's O! sweet, sweet! and a lullaby.

The Queen has sceptre, crown and ball, You are my sceptre, crown and all. For all her robes of royal silk, More fair your skin, as white as milk. And it's O! sweet, sweet! and a lullaby.

Ten thousand parks where deer run, Ten thousand roses in the sun, Ten thousand pearls beneath the sea, My baby more precious is to me. And it's O! sweet, sweet! and a lullaby.

West of England Lullaby.

The Bonniest Bairn in a' the Warl'

The bonniest bairn in a' the warl' Has skin like the drifted snaw, An' rosy wee cheeks sae saft an' sleek— There never was ither sic twa; Its een are just bonnie wee wander'd stars, Its leggies are plump like a farl, An' ilk ane maun see't, an' a' maun declare't The cleverest bairn, The daintiest bairn, The rosiest, cosiest, cantiest bairn, The dearest, queerest, Rarest, fairest, Bonniest bairn in a' the warl'.

The bonniest bairn in a' the warl' Ye ken whaur the ferlie lives? It's doon in yon howe, it's owre yon knowe— In the laps o' a thousand wives; It's up an' ayont in yon castle brent, The heir o' the belted earl; It's sookin' its thoomb in yon gipsy tent— The cleverest bairn, The daintiest bairn, The rosiest, cosiest, cantiest bairn, The dearest, queerest, Rarest, fairest, Bonniest bairn in a' the warl'.

*      *      *      *

Robert Ford.

Cuddle Doon

The bairnies cuddle doon at nicht, Wi' muckle faucht an' din; Oh, try an' sleep, ye waukrife rogues, Your father's comin' in. They never heed a word I speak; I try to gi'e a froon, But aye I hap them up, an' cry, "O, bairnies, cuddle doon."

Wee Jamie wi' the curly heid— He aye sleeps neist the wa', Bangs up an' cries, "I want a piece"; The rascal starts them a'. I rin an' fetch them pieces, drinks, They stop awee the soun'; Then draw the blankets up and cry, "Noo, weanies, cuddle doon."

But ere five minutes gang, wee Rab Cries oot frae 'neath the claes, "Mither, mak' Tam gie ower at ance— He's kittlin' wi' his taes." The mischief's in that Tam for tricks, He'd bother half the toon: But aye I hap them up an' cry, "O, bairnies, cuddle doon."

At length they hear their father's fit, An', as he steeks the door, They turn their faces to the wa', While Tam pretends to snore. "Hae a' the weans been gude?" he asks, As he pits aff his shoon; "The bairnies, John, are in their beds, An' lang since cuddled doon."

An' just afore we bed oorsel's, We look at oor wee lambs; Tam has his airm roun' wee Rab's neck, An' Rab his airm roun' Tam's. I lift wee Jamie up the bed, An', as I straik each croon, I whisper, till my heart fills up, "O, bairnies, cuddle doon."

The bairnies cuddle doon at nicht, Wi' mirth that's dear to me; But sune the big warl's cark an' care Will quaten doon their glee. Yet come what will to ilka ane, May He who sits aboon Aye whisper, though their pows be bauld, "O, bairnies, cuddle doon."

Alexander Anderson.

I Am Lonely

The world is great: the birds all fly from me, The stars are golden fruit upon a tree All out of reach: my little sister went, And I am lonely.

The world is great: I tried to mount the hill Above the pines, where the light lies so still, But it rose higher: little Lisa went And I am lonely.

The world is great: the wind comes rushing by, I wonder where it comes from; sea birds cry And hurt my heart: my little sister went, And I am lonely.

The world is great: the people laugh and talk, And make loud holiday: how fast they walk! I'm lame, they push me: little Lisa went, And I am lonely.

George Eliot.

From "The Spanish Gypsy."

Brother and Sister

But were another childhood-world my share, I would be born a little sister there.

I

I cannot choose but think upon the time When our two lives grew like two buds that kiss At lightest thrill from the bee's swinging chime, Because the one so near the other is.

He was the elder and a little man Of forty inches, bound to show no dread, And I the girl that puppy-like now ran, Now lagged behind my brother's larger tread.

I held him wise, and when he talked to me Of snakes and birds, and which God loved the best, I thought his knowledge marked the boundary Where men grew blind, though angels knew the rest.

If he said "Hush!" I tried to hold my breath; Wherever he said "Come!" I stepped in faith.

II

Long years have left their writing on my brow, But yet the freshness and the dew-fed beam Of those young mornings are about me now, When we two wandered toward the far-off stream With rod and line. Our basket held a store Baked for us only, and I thought with joy That I should have my share, though he had more, Because he was the elder and a boy.

The firmaments of daisies since to me Have had those mornings in their opening eyes, The bunchéd cowslip's pale transparency Carries that sunshine of sweet memories,

And wild-rose branches take their finest scent From those blest hours of infantine content.

III

Our mother bade us keep the trodden ways, Stroked down my tippet, set my brother's frill, Then with the benediction of her gaze Clung to us lessening, and pursued us still

Across the homestead to the rookery elms, Whose tall old trunks had each a grassy mound, So rich for us, we counted them as realms With varied products: here were earth-nuts found,

And here the Lady-fingers in deep shade; Here sloping toward the Moat the rushes grew, The large to split for pith, the small to braid; While over all the dark rooks cawing flew, And made a happy strange solemnity, A deep-toned chant from life unknown to me.

*      *      *      *

IX

We had the selfsame world enlarged for each By loving difference of girl and boy: The fruit that hung on high beyond my reach He plucked for me, and oft he must employ

A measuring glance to guide my tiny shoe Where lay firm stepping-stones, or call to mind "This thing I like my sister may not do, For she is little, and I must be kind."

Thus boyish Will the nobler mastery learned Where inward vision over impulse reigns, Widening its life with separate life discerned, A Like unlike, a Self that self restrains.

His years with others must the sweeter be For those brief days he spent in loving me.

*      *      *      *

George Eliot.

Home

O Falmouth is a fine town with ships in the bay, And I wish from my heart it's there I was to-day; I wish from my heart I was far away from here, Sitting in my parlour and talking to my dear. For it's home, dearie, home—it's home I want to be. Our topsails are hoisted, and we'll away to sea. O the oak and the ash and the bonnie birken tree They're all growing green in the old countree.

In Baltimore a-walking a lady I did meet With her babe on her arm as she came down the street; And I thought how I sailed, and the cradle standing ready For the pretty little babe that has never seen its daddie. And it's home, dearie, home,—

O, if it be a lass, she shall wear a golden ring; And if it be a lad, he shall fight for his king; With his dirk and his hat and his little jacket blue He shall walk the quarter-deck as his daddie used to do. And it's home, dearie, home,—

O, there's a wind a-blowing, a-blowing from the west, And that of all the winds is the one I like the best, For it blows at our backs, and it shakes our pennon free, And it soon will blow us home to the old countree. For it's home, dearie, home—it's home I want to be. Our topsails are hoisted, and we'll away to sea. O the oak and the ash and the bonnie birken tree They're all growing green in the old countree.

William Ernest Henley.

Love Will Find Out the Way

Over the mountains And over the waves, Under the fountains And under the graves; Under floods that are deepest, Which Neptune obey, Over rocks that are steepest, Love will find out the way.

Where there is no place For the glow-worm to lie, Where there is no space For receipt of a fly; Where the midge dares not venture Lest herself fast she lay, If Love come, he will enter And will find out the way.

*      *      *      *

Old English.

The Sailor's Wife

And are ye sure the news is true? And are ye sure he's weel? Is this a time to think o' wark? Ye jades, lay by your wheel; Is this the time to spin a thread. When Colin's at the door? Reach down my cloak, I'll to the quay, And see him come ashore. For there's nae luck about the house, There's nae luck at a'; There's little pleasure in the house When our gudeman's awa.

And gie to me my bigonet, My bishop's satin gown; For I maun tell the baillie's wife That Colin's in the town. My Turkey slippers maun gae on, My stockins pearly blue; It's a' to pleasure our gudeman, For he's baith leal and true.

Rise, lass, and mak a clean fireside, Put on the muckle pot; Gie little Kate her button gown And Jock his Sunday coat; And mak their shoon as black as slaes, Their hose as white as snaw; It's a' to please my ain gudeman, For he's been long awa.

There's twa fat hens upo' the coop Been fed this month and mair; Mak haste and thraw their necks about, That Colin weel may fare; And spread the table neat and clean, Gar ilka thing look braw, For wha can tell how Colin fared When he was far awa?

Sae true his heart, sae smooth his speech, His breath like caller air; His very foot has music in't As he comes up the stair. And will I see his face again? And will I hear him speak? I'm downright dizzy wi' the thought, In troth I'm like to greet!

If Colin's weel, and weel content, I hae nae mair to crave; And gin I live to keep him sae, I'm blest aboon the lave: And will I see his face again? And will I hear him speak? I'm downright dizzy wi' the thought, In troth I'm like to greet. For there's nae luck about the house, There's nae luck at a'; There's little pleasure in the house When our gudeman's awa.

William J. Mickle.

Evening at the Farm

Over the hill the farm-boy goes. His shadow lengthens along the land, A giant staff in a giant hand; In the poplar-tree, above the spring, The katydid begins to sing; The early dews are falling;— Into the stone-heap darts the mink; The swallows skim the river's brink; And home to the woodland fly the crows, When over the hill the farm-boy goes, Cheerily calling, "Co', boss! co', boss! co'! co'! co'!" Farther, farther, over the hill, Faintly calling, calling still, "Co', boss! co', boss! co'! co'!"

Into the yard the farmer goes, With grateful heart, at the close of day: Harness and chain are hung away; In the wagon-shed stand yoke and plough, The straw's in the stack, the hay in the mow, The cooling dews are falling;— The friendly sheep his welcome bleat, The pigs come grunting to his feet, And the whinnying mare her master knows, When into the yard the farmer goes, His cattle calling,— "Co', boss! co', boss! co'! co'! co'!" While still the cow-boy, far away, Goes seeking those that have gone astray,— "Co', boss! co', boss! co'! co'!"

Now to her task the milkmaid goes. The cattle come crowding through the gate, Lowing, pushing, little and great; About the trough, by the farm-yard pump, The frolicsome yearlings frisk and jump, While the pleasant dews are falling;— The new milch heifer is quick and shy, But the old cow waits with tranquil eye, And the white stream into the bright pail flows, When to her task the milkmaid goes, Soothingly calling, "So, boss! so, boss! so! so! so!" The cheerful milkmaid takes her stool, And sits and milks in the twilight cool. Saying "So! so, boss! so! so!"

To supper at last the farmer goes. The apples are pared, the paper read, The stories are told, then all to bed. Without, the crickets' ceaseless song Makes shrill the silence all night long; The heavy dews are falling. The housewife's hand has turned the lock; Drowsily ticks the kitchen clock; The household sinks to deep repose, But still in sleep the farm-boy goes Singing, calling,— "Co', boss! co', boss! co'! co'! co'!" And oft the milkmaid, in her dreams, Drums in the pail with the flashing streams, Murmuring "So, boss! so!"

John Townsend Trowbridge.

Home Song

Stay, stay at home, my heart, and rest; Home-keeping hearts are happiest, For those that wander they know not where Are full of trouble and full of care, To stay at home is best.

Weary and homesick and distressed, They wander east, they wander west, And are baffled, and beaten and blown about By the winds of the wilderness of doubt; To stay at home is best.

Then stay at home, my heart, and rest; The bird is safest in its nest: O'er all that flutter their wings and fly A hawk is hovering in the sky; To stay at home is best.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

Etude Rêaliste

I

A baby's feet, like seashells pink, Might tempt, should heaven see meet, An angel's lips to kiss, we think,— A baby's feet.

Like rose-hued sea-flowers toward the heat They stretch and spread and wink Their ten soft buds that part and meet.

No flower-bells that expand and shrink Gleam half so heavenly sweet, As shine on life's untrodden brink,— A baby's feet.

II

A baby's hands, like rosebuds furled, Where yet no leaf expands, Ope if you touch, though close upcurled,— A baby's hands.

Then, even as warriors grip their brands When battle's bolt is hurled, They close, clenched hard like tightening bands.

No rose-buds yet by dawn impearled Match, even in loveliest lands, The sweetest flowers in all the world,— A baby's hands.

III

A baby's eyes, ere speech begin, Ere lips learn words or sighs, Bless all things bright enough to win A baby's eyes.

Love while the sweet thing laughs and lies, And sleep flows out and in, Sees perfect in them Paradise!

Their glance might cast out pain and sin, Their speech make dumb the wise, By mute glad godhead felt within A baby's eyes. Algernon Charles Swinburne.

We Are Seven

———A simple child, That lightly draws its breath, And feels its life in every limb, What should it know of death?

I met a little cottage girl: She was eight years old, she said; Her hair was thick with many a curl That clustered round her head.

She had a rustic, woodland air, And she was wildly clad: Her eyes were fair, and very fair;— Her beauty made me glad.

"Sisters and brothers, little Maid, How many may you be?" "How many? Seven in all," she said, And wondering looked at me.

"And where are they? I pray you tell." She answered, "Seven are we; And two of us at Conway dwell, And two are gone to sea.

"Two of us in the churchyard lie, My sister and my brother; And, in the churchyard cottage, I Dwell near them with my mother."

"You say that two at Conway dwell, And two are gone to sea, Yet ye are seven! I pray you tell, Sweet Maid, how this may be."

Then did the little maid reply, "Seven boys and girls are we; Two of us in the churchyard lie, Beneath the churchyard tree."

"You run about, my little Maid, Your limbs they are alive; If two are in the churchyard laid Then ye are only five."

"Their graves are green, they may be seen," The little Maid replied, "Twelve steps or more from my mother's door, And they are side by side.

"My stockings there I often knit, My kerchief there I hem; And there upon the ground I sit And sing a song to them.

"And often after sunset, Sir, When it is light and fair, I take my little porringer And eat my supper there.

"The first that died was sister Jane; In bed she moaning lay, Till God released her of her pain; And then she went away.

"So in the churchyard she was laid; And, when the grass was dry, Together round her grave we played, My brother John and I.

"And when the ground was white with snow And I could run and slide, My brother John was forced to go, And he lies by her side."

"How many are you, then," said I, "If they two are in heaven?" Quick was the little Maid's reply, "O Master! we are seven."

"But they are dead; those two are dead! Their spirits are in heaven!" 'Twas throwing words away: for still The little Maid would have her will, And said, "Nay, we are seven!"

William Wordsworth.

INTERLEAVES

Fairy Songs and Songs of Fancy

Most of these songs come to you from the masters of English poetry. Nations, like individuals, have their "play-spells," and Shakespeare, Drayton, and "rare Ben Jonson" belong to that wonderful age of Elizabeth when more than ten score of poets were making England a veritable nest of singing-birds.

Dowden says of the exquisite songs scattered through Shakespeare's plays, that if they do not make their own way, like the notes in the wildwood, no words will open the dull ear to take them in. Of Drayton we give you here "The Arming of Pigwiggen," from "Nymphidia," and later on "The Battle of Agincourt," called, respectively, the best fantastic poem and the best war poem in the language.

Then comes Milton the sublime; Milton set apart among poets; so that the adjective Miltonic has come to be a synonym for gravity, loftiness, and majesty. After Milton, Dryden, often called the greatest poet of a little age; but if he lacked the true sublimity he reverenced in the great Puritan, he was still the first, and perhaps the greatest, master of satirical poetry. Then, more than half a century afterward, comes Coleridge with his dreamy grace and his touch of the supernatural; his marvellous poetic gift, of sudden blossoming and sad and premature decay. Contemporary with Coleridge was Shelley, the master singer of his time, pouring out, like his own skylark, "his full heart in profuse strains of unpremeditated art."

When these two voices were hushed the Victorian era was dawning and the laurel worn by Wordsworth was placed on the brow of a poet who, by his perfect grace of manner, melody of rhythm, finished skill, clear insight, and nobility of thought, gave his name to the Tennysonian age.

VI

FAIRY SONGS AND SONGS OF FANCY

FAIRY LAND

I

Puck and the Fairy

Puck. How now, spirit! whither wander you?

Fairy. Over hill, over dale, Thorough bush, thorough brier, Over park, over pale, Thorough flood, thorough fire, I do wander everywhere, Swifter than the moonè's sphere; And I serve the fairy queen, To dew her orbs upon the green; The cowslips tall her pensioners be; In their gold coats, spots you see; Those be rubies, fairy favors, In those freckles live their savors; I must go seek some dewdrops here, And hang a pearl in every cowslip's ear. Farewell, thou lob of spirits; I'll be gone: Our queen and all her elves come here anon.

From "Midsummer-Night's Dream."

II

Lullaby for Titania

You spotted snakes with double tongue, Thorny hedgehogs, be not seen; Newts and blind-worms, do no wrong; Come not near our fairy queen.

Philomel, with melody, Sing in our sweet lullaby; Lulla, lulla, lullaby; lulla, lulla, lullaby! Never harm, Nor spell nor charm, Come our lovely lady nigh; So, good-night, with lullaby.

Weaving spiders, come not here; Hence, you long-legg'd spinners, hence! Beetles black, approach not near; Worm nor snail, do no offence.

Philomel, with melody, Sing in our sweet lullaby; Lulla, lulla, lullaby; lulla, lulla, lullaby! Never harm, Nor spell nor charm, Come our lovely lady nigh; So, good-night, with lullaby.

From "Midsummer-Night's Dream."

III

Oberon and Titania to the Fairy Train

Oberon. Through the house give glimmering light, By the dead and drowsy fire; Every elf and fairy sprite, Hop as light as bird from brier; And this ditty after me Sing, and dance it trippingly. Titania. First, rehearse your song by rote, To each word a warbling note: Hand in hand with fairy grace Will we sing and bless this place.

From "Midsummer-Night's Dream."

William Shakespeare.

IV

Ariel's Songs

I

Come unto these yellow sands, And then take hands: Court'sied when you have and kiss'd, (The wild waves whist) Foot it featly here and there; And sweet Sprites, the burthen bear. Hark, hark! Bow, wow, The watch-dog's bark: Bow, wow, Hark, hark! I hear The strain of strutting chanticleer Cry, Cock-a-diddle-dow!

II

Where the bee sucks, there suck I: In a cowslip's bell I lie; There I couch when owls do cry. On the bat's back I do fly, After summer merrily. Merrily, merrily, shall I live now, Under the blossom that hangs on the bough!

III

Full fathom five thy father lies; Of his bones are coral made; Those are pearls that were his eyes: Nothing of him that doth fade But doth suffer a sea-change Into something rich and strange. Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell: Ding-dong. Hark! now I hear them— Ding-dong, bell!

William Shakespeare.

From "The Tempest."

Orpheus With His Lute

Orpheus with his lute made trees, And the mountain tops that freeze, Bow themselves when he did sing: To his music, plants and flowers Ever sprung; as sun and showers There had made a lasting spring.

Every thing that heard him play, Even the billows of the sea, Hung their heads, and then lay by. In sweet music is such art, Killing care and grief of heart Fall asleep or hearing, die.

William Shakespeare.

From "King Henry VIII."

The Arming of Pigwiggen

(He) quickly arms him for the field, A little cockle-shell his shield, Which he could very bravely wield, Yet could it not be piersed: His spear a bent both stiff and strong, And well near of two inches long; The pile was of a horsefly's tongue, Whose sharpness naught reversed.

And put him on a coat of mail, Which was of a fish's scale, That when his foe should him assail, No point should be prevailing. His rapier was a hornet's sting, It was a very dangerous thing; For if he chanc'd to hurt the king, It would be long in healing.

His helmet was a beetle's head, Most horrible and full of dread, That able was to strike one dead, Yet it did well become him: And for a plume a horse's hair, Which being tosséd by the air, Had force to strike his foe with fear, And turn his weapon from him.

Himself he on an earwig set, Yet scarce he on his back could get, So oft and high he did curvet Ere he himself could settle: He made him turn, and stop, and bound, To gallop, and to trot the round, He scarce could stand on any ground, He was so full of mettle.

Michael Drayton.

From "Nymphidia."

Hesperus' Song

Queen and huntress, chaste and fair, Now the sun is laid to sleep, Seated in thy silver chair, State in wonted manner keep. Hesperus entreats thy light, Goddess, excellently bright.

Earth, let not thy envious shade Dare itself to interpose; Cynthia's shining orb was made Heaven to clear, when day did close; Bless us then with wishèd sight, Goddess, excellently bright.

Lay thy bow of pearl apart, And thy crystal-shining quiver; Give unto the flying hart Space to breathe, how short soever: Thou that mak'st a day of night, Goddess, excellently bright.

Ben Jonson.

From "Cynthia's Revels."

L'Allegro

(Extracts)

*      *      *      *

Haste thee, nymph, and bring with thee Jest and youthful Jollity, Quips, and Cranks, and wanton Wiles, Nods, and Becks, and Wreathèd Smiles. Such as hang on Hebe's cheek, And love to live in dimple sleek; Sport that wrinkled Care derides, And Laughter holding both his sides. Come, and trip it as you go On the light fantastic toe, And in thy right hand lead with thee The Mountain Nymph, sweet Liberty; And if I give thee honor due, Mirth, admit me of thy crew, To live with her, and live with thee, In unreprovèd pleasures free; To hear the Lark begin his flight, And singing startle the dull night, From his watch-tower in the skies, Till the dappled dawn doth rise; Then to come in spite of sorrow, And at my window bid good-morrow, Through the Sweet-Briar, or the Vine, Or the twisted Eglantine: While the Cock with lively din Scatters the rear of darkness thin, And to the stack, or the Barn-door, Stoutly struts his Dames before: Oft listening how the Hounds and horn Cheerly rouse the slumb'ring morn, From the side of some hoar hill, Through the high wood echoing shrill: Some time walking not unseen By Hedgerow Elms, on Hillocks green, Right against the Eastern gate, Where the great Sun begins his state, Robed in flames and Amber light, The clouds in thousand liveries dight. While the Plowman near at hand Whistles o'er the furrowed land, And the Milkmaid singeth blithe, And the Mower whets his scythe, And every Shepherd tells his tale Under the Hawthorn in the dale. Straight mine eye hath caught new pleasures Whilst the landskip round it measures, Russet Lawns, and Fallows gray, Where the nibbling flock do stray, Mountains on whose barren breast The laboring clouds do often rest, Meadows trim with Daisies pied, Shallow Brooks, and Rivers wide. Towers and Battlements it sees Bosomed high in tufted Trees, Where perhaps some beauty lies, The Cynosure of neighboring eyes. Hard by, a Cottage chimney smokes, From betwixt two aged Oaks, Where Corydon and Thyrsis met, Are at their savory dinner set Of Herbs, and other Country Messes, Which the neat-handed Phillis dresses; And then in haste her Bower she leaves With Thestylis to bind the Sheaves; Or, if the earlier season lead, To the tanned Haycock in the Mead. Sometimes with secure delight The upland Hamlets will invite, When the merry Bells ring round, And the jocund rebecks sound To many a youth, and many a maid, Dancing in the Checkered shade; And young and old come forth to play On a Sunshine Holy-day Till the livelong daylight fail; Then to the Spicy Nut-brown Ale, With stories told of many a feat, How Fairy Mab the junkets eat, She was pinched, and pulled, she said, And he by Friars' Lanthorn led, Tells how the drudging Goblin sweat, To earn his Cream-bowl duly set, When in one night, ere glimpse of morn, His shadowy Flail hath threshed the Corn, That ten day-laborers could not end; Then lies him down the Lubbar Fiend, And stretched out all the Chimney's length, Basks at the fire his hairy strength, And Crop-full out of doors he flings, Ere the first Cock his Matin rings. Thus done the Tales, to bed they creep By whispering Winds soon lulled asleep. Towered Cities please us then, And the busy hum of men, Where throngs of Knights and Barons bold In weeds of Peace high triumphs hold, With store of Ladies, whose bright eyes Rain influence, and judge the prize Of Wit, or Arms, while both contend To win her Grace, whom all commend. There let Hymen oft appear In Saffron robe, with Taper clear, And pomp, and feast, and revelry, With mask, and antique Pageantry; Such sights as youthful Poets dream On summer eves by haunted stream. Then to the well-trod stage anon, If Jonson's learnèd sock be on, Or sweetest Shakespeare, fancy's child. Warble his native Wood-notes wild. And ever against eating Cares, Lap me in soft Lydian airs, Married to immortal verse, Such as the meeting soul may pierce In notes, with many a winding bout Of linkèd sweetness long drawn out, With wanton heed, and giddy cunning, The melting voice through mazes running, Untwisting all the chains that tie The hidden soul of harmony; That Orpheus' self may heave his head From golden slumber on a bed Of heaped Elysian flowers, and hear Such strains as would have won the ear Of Pluto, to have quite set free His half-regained Eurydice. These delights, if thou canst give, Mirth, with thee I mean to live.

John Milton.

Sabrina Fair

The Spirit sings: Sabrina fair, Listen where thou art sitting Under the glassy, cool, translucent wave, In twisted braids of lilies knitting The loose train of thy amber-dropping hair; Listen for dear honor's sake, Goddess of the silver lake, Listen, and save! Listen, and appear to us, In name of great Oceanus;

*      *      *      *

By all the Nymphs that Nightly dance Upon thy streams with wily glance, Rise, rise, and heave thy rosy head From thy coral-paven bed, And bridle in thy headlong wave, Till thou our summons answered have. Listen, and save.

[Sabrina rises, attended by water-nymphs, and sings.]

By the rushy-fringèd bank, Where grows the Willow and the Osier dank, My sliding Chariot stays, Thick set with agate, and the azure sheen Of turkis blue, and emerald green, That in the channel strays; Whilst from off the waters fleet Thus I set my printless feet O'er the Cowslip's Velvet head, That bends not as I tread; Gentle swain, at thy request I am here.

John Milton.

From "Comus."

Alexander's Feast

'Twas at the royal feast, for Persia won By Philip's warlike son: Aloft in awful state The godlike hero sate On his imperial throne: His valiant peers were placed around; Their brows with roses and with myrtles bound: (So should desert in arms be crowned.) The lovely Thais, by his side, Sate like a blooming Eastern bride In flower of youth and beauty's pride. Happy, happy, happy pair! None but the brave, None but the brave, None but the brave deserves the fair.

Chorus.

Happy, happy, happy pair! None but the brave, None but the brave, None but the brave deserves the fair.

Timotheus, placed on high Amid the tuneful quire, With flying fingers touched the lyre: The trembling notes ascend the sky, And heavenly joys inspire. The song began from Jove, Who left his blissful seats above, (Such is the power of mighty love.) A dragon's fiery form belied the god: Sublime on radiant spires he rode. The listening crowd admire the lofty sound, A present deity, they shout around; A present deity, the vaulted roofs rebound: With ravish'd ears The monarch hears, Assumes the god, Affects to nod, And seems to shake the spheres.

Chorus.

With ravish'd ears The monarch hears, Assumes the god, Affects to nod, And seems to shake the spheres.

John Dryden.

From "Ode on St. Cecilia's Day."

Kubla Khan

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan A stately pleasure-dome decree: Where Alph, the sacred river, ran Through caverns measureless to man, Down to a sunless sea. So twice five miles of fertile ground With walls and towers were girdled round: And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree; And here were forests ancient as the hills, Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

But O! that deep romantic chasm which slanted Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover! A savage place! as holy and enchanted As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted By woman wailing for her demon-lover! And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething, As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing, A mighty fountain momently was forced: Amid whose swift, half-intermitted burst Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail, Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail: And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever It flung up momently the sacred river. Five miles meandering with a mazy motion Through wood and dale, the sacred river ran, Then reached the caverns measureless to man, And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean: And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far Ancestral voices prophesying war!

The shadow of the dome of pleasure Floated midway on the waves; Where was heard the mingled measure From the fountain and the caves. It was a miracle of rare device, A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice! A damsel with a dulcimer In a vision once I saw: It was an Abyssinian maid, And on her dulcimer she played, Singing of Mount Abora. Could I revive within me Her sympathy and song, To such a deep delight 'twould win me, That with music loud and long, I would build that dome in air, That sunny dome! Those caves of ice! And all who heard should see them there, And all should cry, Beware! Beware! His flashing eyes, his floating hair! Weave a circle round him thrice, And close your eyes with holy dread, For he on honey-dew hath fed, And drunk the milk of Paradise.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

The Magic Car Moved On

The Fairy and the Soul proceeded; The silver clouds disparted; And, as the car of magic they ascended, Again the speechless music swelled, Again the coursers of the air Unfurled their azure pennons, and the Queen, Shaking the beamy reins, Bade them pursue their way.

The magic car moved on. The night was fair, and countless stars Studded heaven's dark-blue vault,— The eastern wave grew pale With the first smile of morn. The magic car moved on. From the celestial hoofs The atmosphere in flaming sparkles flew; And, where the burning wheels Eddied above the mountain's loftiest peak, Was traced a line of lightning. Now far above a rock, the utmost verge Of the wide earth, it flew— The rival of the Andes, whose dark brow Loured o'er the silver sea.

Far far below the chariot's path, Calm as a slumbering babe, Tremendous Ocean lay. The mirror of its stillness showed The pale and waning stars, The chariot's fiery track, And the grey light of morn Tingeing those fleecy clouds That cradled in their folds the infant dawn. The chariot seemed to fly Through the abyss of an immense concave, Radiant with million constellations, tinged With shades of infinite colour, And semicircled with a belt Flashing incessant meteors.

The magic car moved on. As they approached their goal, The coursers seemed to gather speed. The sea no longer was distinguished; earth Appeared a vast and shadowy sphere; The sun's unclouded orb Rolled through the black concave; Its rays of rapid light Parted around the chariot's swifter course, And fell like ocean's feathery spray Dashed from the boiling surge Before a vessel's prow. The magic car moved on. Earth's distant orb appeared The smallest light that twinkles in the heavens Whilst round the chariot's way Innumerable systems rolled, And countless spheres diffused An ever-varying glory. It was a sight of wonder: some Were hornèd like the crescent moon; Some shed a mild and silver beam Like Hesperus o'er the western sea; Some dashed athwart with trains of flame, Like worlds to death and ruin driven; Some shone like stars, and, as the chariot passed, Bedimmed all other light.

Percy Bysshe Shelley.

From "Queen Mab."

Arethusa

Arethusa arose From her couch of snows In the Acroceraunian mountains,— From cloud and from crag, With many a jag, Shepherding her bright fountains. She leapt down the rocks With her rainbow locks Streaming among the streams; Her steps paved with green The downward ravine Which slopes to the western gleams: And gliding and springing, She went, ever singing, In murmurs as soft as sleep; The Earth seemed to love her, And Heaven smiled above her, As she lingered towards the deep.

Then Alpheus bold, On his glacier cold, With his trident the mountains strook And opened a chasm In the rocks;—with the spasm All Erymanthus shook. And the black south wind It concealed behind The urns of the silent snow, And earthquake and thunder Did rend in sunder The bars of the springs below. The beard and the hair Of the River-god were Seen through the torrent's sweep, As he followed the light Of the fleet nymph's flight To the brink of the Dorian deep.

"Oh! save me! Oh! guide me! And bid the deep hide me! For he grasps me now by the hair!" The loud Ocean heard, To its blue depth stirred, And divided at her prayer; And under the water The Earth's white daughter Fled like a sunny beam, Behind her descended, Her billows unblended With the brackish Dorian stream. Like a gloomy stain On the emerald main, Alpheus rushed behind,— As an eagle pursuing A dove to its ruin Down the streams of the cloudy wind. Under the bowers Where the Ocean Powers Sit on their pearlèd thrones; Through the coral woods Of the weltering floods; Over heaps of unvalued stones; Through the dim beams Which amid the streams Weave a network of colored light; And under the caves Where the shadowy waves Are as green as the forest's night; Outspeeding the shark, And the swordfish dark,— Under the ocean foam, And up through the rifts Of the mountain clifts,— They passed to their Dorian home.

And now from their fountains In Enna's mountains, Down one vale where the morning basks, Like friends once parted Grown single-hearted, They ply their watery tasks. At sunrise they leap From their cradles steep In the cave of the shelving hill; At noontide they flow Through the woods below And the meadows of asphodel; And at night they sleep In the rocking deep Beneath the Ortygian shore;— Like the spirits that lie In the azure sky, When they love but live no more.

Percy Bysshe Shelley.

The Culprit Fay

(Extracts)

III

Fairy Dawn

*      *      *      *

'Tis the hour of fairy ban and spell: The wood-tick has kept the minutes well; He has counted them all with click and stroke, Deep in the heart of the mountain oak, And he has awakened the sentry elve Who sleeps with him in the haunted tree, To bid him ring the hour of twelve, And call the fays to their revelry; Twelve small strokes on his tinkling bell— ('Twas made of the white snail's pearly shell)— "Midnight comes, and all is well! Hither, hither, wing your way! 'Tis the dawn of the fairy-day."

IV

The Assembling of the Fays

They come from beds of lichen green, They creep from the mullein's velvet screen; Some on the backs of beetles fly From the silver tops of moon-touched trees, Where they swung in their cobweb hammocks high, And rocked about in the evening breeze; Some from the humbird's downy nest— They had driven him out by elfin power, And, pillowed on plumes of his rainbow breast, Had slumbered there till the charmèd hour; Some had lain in the scoop of the rock, With glittering ising-stars inlaid; And some had opened the four-o'clock, And stole within its purple shade. And now they throng the moonlight glade, Above—below—on every side, Their little minim forms arrayed, In the tricksy pomp of fairy pride.

VI

The Throne of the Lily-King

The throne was reared upon the grass, Of spice-wood and of sassafras; On pillars of mottled tortoise-shell Hung the burnished canopy— And over it gorgeous curtains fell Of the tulip's crimson drapery. The monarch sat on his judgment-seat, On his brow the crown imperial shone, The prisoner Fay was at his feet, And his peers were ranged around the throne, He waved his sceptre in the air, He looked around and calmly spoke; His brow was grave and his eye severe, But his voice in a softened accent broke:

VII

The Fay's Crime

Fairy! Fairy! list and mark: Thou hast broke thine elfin chain; Thy flame-wood lamp is quenched and dark, And thy wings are dyed with a deadly stain— Thou hast sullied thine elfin purity In the glance of a mortal maiden's eye, Thou hast scorned our dread decree, And thou shouldst pay the forfeit high, But well I know her sinless mind Is pure as the angel forms above, Gentle and meek, and chaste and kind, Such as a spirit well might love; Fairy! had she spot or taint, Bitter had been thy punishment.

VIII

The Fay's Sentence

"Thou shalt seek the beach of sand Where the water bounds the elfin land; Thou shalt watch the oozy brine Till the sturgeon leaps in the bright moonshine, Then dart the glistening arch below, And catch a drop from his silver bow. The water-sprites will wield their arms And dash around, with roar and rave, And vain are the woodland spirits' charms, They are the imps that rule the wave. Yet trust thee in thy single might: If thy heart be pure and thy spirit right, Thou shalt win the warlock fight.

IX

"If the spray-bead gem be won, The stain of thy wing is washed away: But another errand must be done Ere thy crime be lost for aye; Thy flame-wood lamp is quenched and dark, Thou must reillume its spark. Mount thy steed and spur him high To the heaven's blue canopy; And when thou seest a shooting star, Follow it fast, and follow it far— The last faint spark of its burning train Shall light the elfin lamp again. Thou hast heard our sentence, Fay; Hence! to the water-side, away!"

X

The Fay's Departure

The goblin marked his monarch well; He spake not, but he bowed him low, Then plucked a crimson colen-bell, And turned him round in act to go. The way is long, he cannot fly, His soiléd wing has lost its power, And he winds adown the mountain high, For many a sore and weary hour. Through dreary beds of tangled fern, Through groves of nightshade dark and dern, Over the grass and through the brake, Where toils the ant and sleeps the snake; Now over the violet's azure flush He skips along in lightsome mood; And now he thrids the bramble-bush, Till its points are dyed in fairy blood. He has leaped the bog, he has pierced the brier, He has swum the brook, and waded the mire, Till his spirits sank, and his limbs grew weak, And the red waxed fainter in his cheek. He had fallen to the ground outright, For rugged and dim was his onward track, But there came a spotted toad in sight, And he laughed as he jumped upon her back: He bridled her mouth with a silkweed twist, He lashed her sides with an osier thong; And now, through evening's dewy mist, With leap and spring they bound along, Till the mountain's magic verge is past, And the beach of sand is reached at last.

Joseph Rodman Drake.

A Myth

A floating, a floating Across the sleeping sea, All night I heard a singing bird Upon the topmast tree.

"Oh, came you from the isles of Greece Or from the banks of Seine? Or off some tree in forests free That fringe the western main?"

"I came not off the old world, Nor yet from off the new; But I am one of the birds of God Which sing the whole night through."

"Oh, sing and wake the dawning! Oh, whistle for the wind! The night is long, the current strong, My boat it lags behind."

"The current sweeps the old world, The current sweeps the new; The wind will blow, the dawn will glow, Ere thou hast sailed them through."

Charles Kingsley.

The Fairy Folk

Up the airy mountain, Down the rushy glen We daren't go a-hunting, For fear of little men; Wee folk, good folk, Trooping all together; Green jacket, red cap, And white owl's feather.

Down along the rocky shore Some make their home, They live on crispy pancakes Of yellow tide-foam; Some in the reeds Of the black mountain-lake, With frogs for their watch-dogs, All night awake.

High on the hill-top The old King sits; He is now so old and gray He's nigh lost his wits. With a bridge of white mist Columbkill he crosses, On his stately journeys From Slieveleague to Rosses; Or going up with music, On cold starry nights, To sup with the Queen Of the gay Northern Lights.

They stole little Bridget For seven years long; When she came down again Her friends were all gone. They took her lightly back, Between the night and morrow; They thought that she was fast asleep, But she was dead with sorrow. They have kept her ever since Deep within the lakes, On a bed of flag leaves, Watching till she wakes.

By the craggy hillside, Through the mosses bare, They have planted thorn-trees For pleasure here and there. Is any man so daring As dig one up in spite? He shall find the thornies set In his bed at night.

Up the airy mountain, Down the rushy glen, We daren't go a-hunting For fear of little men; Wee folk, good folk, Trooping all together; Green jacket, red cap, And white owl's feather.

William Allingham.

The Merman

I

Who would be A merman bold, Sitting alone, Singing alone Under the sea, With a crown of gold, On a throne?

II

I would be a merman bold, I would sit and sing the whole of the day; I would fill the sea-halls with a voice of power; But at night I would roam abroad and play With the mermaids in and out of the rocks, Dressing their hair with the white sea-flower; And holding them back by their flowing locks I would kiss them often under the sea, And kiss them again till they kiss'd me Laughingly, laughingly; And then we would wander away, away, To the pale-green sea-groves straight and high, Chasing each other merrily.

III

There would be neither moon nor star; But the wave would make music above us afar— Low thunder and light in the magic night— Neither moon nor star. We would call aloud in the dreamy dells, Call to each other and whoop and cry All night, merrily, merrily. They would pelt me with starry spangles and shells, Laughing and clapping their hands between, All night, merrily, merrily, But I would throw to them back in mine Turkis and agate and almondine; Then leaping out upon them unseen I would kiss them often under the sea, And kiss them again till they kiss'd me Laughingly, laughingly. O, what a happy life were mine Under the hollow-hung ocean green! Soft are the moss-beds under the sea; We would live merrily, merrily.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson.

The Mermaid

I

Who would be A mermaid fair, Singing alone, Combing her hair Under the sea, In a golden curl With a comb of pearl, On a throne?

II

I would be a mermaid fair; I would sing to myself the whole of the day; With a comb of pearl I would comb my hair; And still as I combed I would sing and say, "Who is it loves me? who loves not me?" I would comb my hair till my ringlets would fall Low adown, low adown, From under my starry sea-bud crown Low adown and around, And I should look like a fountain of gold Springing alone With a shrill inner sound, Over the throne In the midst of the hall; Till that great sea-snake under the sea From his coiled sleeps in the central deeps Would slowly trail himself sevenfold Round the hall where I sate, and look in at the gate With his large calm eyes for the love of me. And all the mermen under the sea Would feel their immortality Die in their hearts for the love of me.

III

But at night I would wander away, away, I would fling on each side my low-flowing locks, And lightly vault from the throne and play With the mermen in and out of the rocks; We would run to and fro, and hide and seek, On the broad sea-wolds in the crimson shells, Whose silvery spikes are nearest the sea. But if any came near I would call and shriek, And adown the steep like a wave I would leap From the diamond ledges that jut from the dells; For I would not be kiss'd by all who would list, Of the bold merry mermen under the sea; They would sue me, and woo me, and flatter me, In the purple twilights under the sea; But the king of them all would carry me, Woo me, win me, and marry me, In the branching jaspers under the sea; Then all the dry pied things that be In the hueless mosses under the sea Would curl round my silver feet silently, All looking up for the love of me. And if I should carol aloud from aloft All things that are forked and horned and soft Would lean out from the hollow sphere of the sea, All looking down for the love of me.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson.

Bugle Song

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.

Oh hark! oh hear! how thin and clear, And thinner, clearer, farther going! Oh sweet and far from cliff and scar The horns of Elfland 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, Lord Tennyson.

From "The Princess."

The Raven

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore, While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door. "'Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door— Only this, and nothing more."

Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December, And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor. Eagerly I wished the morrow;—vainly I had sought to borrow From my books surcease of sorrow—sorrow for the lost Lenore— For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore— Nameless here for evermore.

And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain Thrilled me—filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before; So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating "'Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door— Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door;— This it is, and nothing more."

Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer, "Sir," said I, "or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore; But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping, And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door, That I scarce was sure I heard you"—here I opened wide the door;—— Darkness there, and nothing more.

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing, Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before; But the silence was unbroken, and the darkness gave no token, And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, "Lenore!" This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, "Lenore!" Merely this, and nothing more.

Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning, Soon again I heard a tapping somewhat louder than before. "Surely," said I, "surely that is something at my window lattice; Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore— Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore;— 'Tis the wind, and nothing more!"

Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter, In there stepped a stately raven of the saintly days of yore. Not the least obeisance made he; not an instant stopped or stayed he; But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door— Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door— Perched, and sat, and nothing more.

Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling, By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore, "Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou," I said, "art sure no craven, Ghastly grim and ancient raven wandering from the Nightly shore— Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night's Plutonian shore!" Quoth the raven, "Nevermore."

Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly, Though its answer little meaning—little relevancy bore; For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his chamber door— Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door, With such name as "Nevermore."

But the raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour. Nothing further then he uttered—not a feather then he fluttered— Till I scarcely more than muttered "Other friends have flown before— On the morrow he will leave me, as my hopes have flown before." Then the bird said "Nevermore."

Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken, "Doubtless," said I, "what it utters is its only stock and store, Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful disaster Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore— Till the dirges of his hope that melancholy burden bore Of 'Never—nevermore.'"

But the raven still beguiling all my sad soul into smiling, Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird and bust and door; Then, upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore— What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt and ominous bird of yore Meant in croaking "Nevermore."

This I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom's core; This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining On the cushion's velvet lining that the lamp-light gloated o'er, But whose velvet violet lining with the lamp-light gloating o'er, She shall press, ah, nevermore!

Then, methought, the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer Swung by angels whose faint foot-falls tinkled on the tufted floor. "Wretch," I cried, "thy God hath lent thee—by these angels he hath sent thee Respite—respite and nepenthe from thy memories of Lenore! Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe, and forget this lost Lenore!" Quoth the raven, "Nevermore."

"Prophet," said I, "thing of evil!—prophet still, if bird or devil!— Whether Tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore, Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted— On this home by Horror haunted—tell me truly, I implore— Is there—is there balm in Gilead?—tell me—tell me, I implore! Quoth the raven, "Nevermore."

"Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil—prophet still, if bird or devil! By that Heaven that bends above us—by that God we both adore— Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn, It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore— Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore?" Quoth the raven, "Nevermore."

"Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend!" I shrieked, upstarting— "Get thee back into the tempest and the Night's Plutonian shore! Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken! Leave my loneliness unbroken! quit the bust above my door! Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!" Quoth the raven, "Nevermore."

And the raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting On the pallid bust of Pallas, just above my chamber door; And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming, And the lamp-light o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor; And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor Shall be lifted—nevermore!

Edgar Allan Poe.

The Bells

I

Hear the sledges with the bells— Silver bells! What a world of merriment their melody foretells! How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle, In the icy air of night! While the stars, that oversprinkle All the heavens, seem to twinkle With a crystalline delight; Keeping time, time, time, In a sort of Runic rhyme, To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells From the bells, bells, bells, bells, Bells, bells, bells— From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells.

II

Hear the mellow wedding bells, Golden bells! What a world of happiness their harmony foretells! Through the balmy air of night How they ring out their delight! From the molten-golden notes, And all in tune, What a liquid ditty floats To the turtle-dove that listens, while she gloats On the moon! Oh, from out the sounding cells, What a gush of euphony voluminously wells! How it swells! How it dwells On the Future! how it tells Of the rapture that impels To the swinging and the ringing Of the bells, bells, bells, Of the bells, bells, bells, bells, Bells, bells, bells— To the rhyming and the chiming of the bells!

III

Hear the loud alarum bells— Brazen bells! What a tale of terror, now, their turbulency tells! In the startled ear of night How they scream out their affright! Too much horrified to speak, They can only shriek, shriek, Out of tune, In the clamorous appealing to the mercy of the fire, In a mad expostulation with the deaf and frantic fire, Leaping higher, higher, higher, With a desperate desire, And a resolute endeavor Now—now to sit or never, By the side of the pale-faced moon. Oh, the bells, bells, bells! What a tale their terror tells Of despair! How they clang, and clash, and roar! What a horror they outpour On the bosom of the palpitating air! Yet the ear it fully knows, By the twanging, And the clanging, How the danger ebbs and flows; Yet the ear distinctly tells, In the jangling And the wrangling, How the danger sinks and swells, By the sinking or the swelling in the anger of the bells— Of the bells— Of the bells, bells, bells, bells, Bells, bells, bells,— In the clamor and the clangor of the bells.

IV

Hear the tolling of the bells— Iron bells! What a world of solemn thought their monody compels! In the silence of the night, How we shiver with affright At the melancholy menace of their tone! For every sound that floats From the rust within their throats Is a groan.

And the people—ah, the people— They that dwell up in the steeple, All alone, And who tolling, tolling, tolling, In that muffled monotone, Feel a glory in so rolling On the human heart a stone— They are neither man nor woman— They are neither brute or human— They are Ghouls: And their king it is who tolls; And he rolls, rolls, rolls, Rolls A pæan from the bells! And his merry bosom swells With the pæan of the bells! And he dances and he yells; Keeping time, time, time In a sort of Runic rhyme, To the pæan of the bells— Of the bells: Keeping time, time, time In a sort of Runic rhyme, To the throbbing of the bells, Of the bells, bells, bells,— To the sobbing of the bells; Keeping time, time, time, As he knells, knells, knells, In a happy Runic rhyme, To the rolling of the bells,— Of the bells, bells, bells,— To the tolling of the bells, Of the bells, bells, bells, bells, Bells, bells, bells,— To the moaning and the groaning of the bells.

Edgar Allan Poe.

INTERLEAVES

Sports and Pastimes

In ancient tapestries, centuries old, you sometimes see, wrought in delicate needlework that is faded with the lapse of years, pictures of the sports of the period. There will be quaint scenes showing otter and bear hunting, swans' nesting, hawking, chasing the deer, and the like; in-door scenes, too, depicting pretty pages strumming musical instruments, and lovely ladies at their tambour or 'broidery frames.

The poetry of each passing age preserves pictures of its plays and diversions still more perfectly than worn and tattered tapestry, and the verses we have chosen cover a bewildering variety of pastimes and recreations. The poets have sounded the praises of almost every kind of sport: angling, swimming, skating, bubble-blowing, going a-Maying, walking, riding, whittling, nutting, the country pleasures of "the barefoot boy," the joys of reading, the delights of music, and the exhilarations of cruising and travelling. One poem of the immediate present, Beeching's "Bicycling Song," shows us that the sport of the moment need not of necessity be too commonplace to be wrought into verse. At first thought the amusements of these latter days are so swift and breathless, so complicated with steam, electricity, and other great forces of the new era, that they seem less poetic than the picturesque frolics of milkmaids and shepherds, the games of the old Greeks or the gay sports of the days of chivalry. But after all, as Lowell said, "there is as much poetry in the iron horses that eat fire as in those of Diomed that fed on men. If you cut an apple across, you may trace in it the lines of the blossom that the bee hummed around in May; and so the soul of poetry survives in things prosaic."

VII

SPORTS AND PASTIMES

Blowing Bubbles

See, the pretty Planet! Floating sphere! Faintest breeze will fan it Far or near;

World as light as feather; Moonshine rays, Rainbow tints together, As it plays;

Drooping, sinking, failing, Nigh to earth, Mounting, whirling, sailing, Full of mirth;

Life there, welling, flowing, Waving round; Pictures coming, going, Without sound.

Quick now, be this airy Globe repell'd! Never can the fairy Star be held.

Touch'd—it in a twinkle Disappears! Leaving but a sprinkle, As of tears.

William Allingham.

Bicycling Song

With lifted feet, hands still, I am poised, and down the hill Dart, with heedful mind; The air goes by in a wind.

Swifter and yet more swift, Till the heart with a mighty lift Makes the lungs laugh, the throat cry:— "O bird, see; see, bird, I fly.

"Is this, is this your joy? O bird, then I, though a boy, For a golden moment share Your feathery life in air!"

Say, heart, is there aught like this In a world that is full of bliss? 'Tis more than skating, bound Steel-shod to the level ground.

Speed slackens now, I float Awhile in my airy boat; Till, when the wheels scarce crawl, My feet to the treadles fall.

Alas, that the longest hill Must end in a vale; but still, Who climbs with toil, wheresoe'er, Shall find wings waiting there.

Henry Charles Beeching.

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 colours through the air: Get up, sweet-slug-a-bed, and see The dew-bespangled herb and tree! Each flower has wept and bowed toward the east, Above an hour since, yet you not drest, 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, Whenas a thousand virgins on this day, Spring, sooner than the lark, to fetch in May.

Rise, and put on your foliage, and be seen To come forth, like the Spring-time fresh and green, And sweet as Flora. Take no care For jewels for your gown or hair: Fear not; the leaves will strew Gems in abundance upon you: Besides, the childhood of the day has kept, Against you come, some orient pearls unwept. Come, and receive them while the light Hangs on the dew-locks of the night. And Titan on the eastern hill Retires himself, or else stands still Till you come forth! Wash, dress, be brief in praying: Few beads are best, when once we go a Maying.

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 white-thorn 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.

There's not a budding boy or girl, this day, But is got up, and gone to bring in May. A deal of youth, ere this is come Back and with white-thorn laden home. Some have despatched their cakes and cream, Before that we have left to dream: And some have wept, and woo'd, and plighted troth, And chose their priest, ere we can cast off sloth: Many a green-gown has been given, Many a kiss, both odd and even: Many a glance, too, has been sent From out the eye, love's firmament: Many a jest told of the keys betraying This night, and locks picked: yet we're not 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 vapour, 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.

Jog On, Jog On[12]

Jog on, jog on the foot path-way, And merrily hent the stile-a, Your merry heart goes all the day, Your sad tires in a mile-a.

Your paltry money-bags of gold— What need have we to stare for, When little or nothing soon is told, And we have the less to care for.

Then cast away care, let sorrow cease, A fig for melancholy; Let's laugh and sing, or, if you please, We'll frolic with sweet Dolly.

From The Winter's Tale.

[12] First stanza by William Shakespeare. Last two stanzas by unknown author in "Antidote Against Melancholy," 1661.

A Vagabond Song

There is something in the Autumn that is native to my blood— Touch of manner, hint of mood; And my heart is like a rhyme, With the yellow and the purple and the crimson keeping time.

The scarlet of the maples can shake me like a cry Of bugles going by. And my lonely spirit thrills To see the frosty asters like smoke upon the hills.

There is something in October sets the gipsy blood astir; We must rise and follow her, When from every hill of flame She calls and calls each vagabond by name.

Bliss Carman.

Swimming

And mightier grew the joy to meet full-faced Each wave, and mount with upward plunge, and taste The rapture of its rolling strength, and cross Its flickering crown of snows that flash and toss Like plumes in battle's blithest charge, and thence To match the next with yet more strenuous sense; Till on his eyes the light beat hard and bade His face turn west and shoreward through the glad Swift revel of the waters golden-clad, And back with light reluctant heart he bore Across the broad-backed rollers in to shore.

Algernon C. Swinburne.

From "Tristram of Lyonesse."

Swimming

How many a time have I Cloven, with arm still lustier, breast more daring, The wave all roughened; with a swimmer's stroke Flinging the billows back from my drenched hair, And laughing from my lip the audacious brine, Which kissed it like a wine-cup, rising o'er The waves as they arose, and prouder still The loftier they uplifted me; and oft, In wantonness of spirit, plunging down Into their green and glassy gulfs, and making My way to shells and seaweed, all unseen By those above, till they waxed fearful; then Returning with my grasp full of such tokens As showed that I had searched the deep; exulting, With a far-dashing stroke, and drawing deep The long suspended breath, again I spurned The foam which broke around me, and pursued My track like a sea-bird.—I was a boy then.

George Gordon, Lord Byron.

From "The Two Foscari."

The Angler's Reveille[13]

What time the rose of dawn is laid across the lips of night, And all the drowsy little stars have fallen asleep in light; 'Tis then a wandering wind awakes, and runs from tree to tree, And borrows words from all the birds to sound the reveille.

This is the carol the Robin throws Over the edge of the valley; Listen how boldly it flows, Sally on sally:

Tirra-lirra, Down the river, Laughing water All a-quiver. Day is near, Clear, clear. Fish are breaking, Time for waking. Tup, tup, tup! Do you hear? All clear— Wake up!

The phantom flood of dreams has ebbed and vanished with the dark, And like a dove the heart forsakes the prison of the ark; Now forth she fares through friendly woods and diamond-fields of dew, While every voice cries out "Rejoice!" as if the world were new.

This is the ballad the Bluebird sings, Unto his mate replying, Shaking the tune from his wings While he is flying:

Surely, surely, surely, Life is dear Even here. Blue above, You to love, Purely, purely, purely.

There's wild azalea on the hill, and roses down the dell, And just one spray of lilac still abloom beside the well; The columbine adorns the rocks, the laurel buds grow pink, Along the stream white arums gleam, and violets bend to drink.

This is the song of the Yellowthroat, Fluttering gaily beside you; Hear how each voluble note Offers to guide you:

Which way, sir? I say, sir, Let me teach you, I beseech you! Are you wishing Jolly fishing? This way, sir! I'll teach you.

Then come, my friend, forget your foes, and leave your fears behind, And wander forth to try your luck, with cheerful, quiet mind; For be your fortune great or small, you'll take what God may give, And all the day your heart shall say, "'Tis luck enough to live."

This is the song the Brown Thrush flings, Out of his thicket of roses; Hark how it warbles and rings, Mark how it closes:

Luck, luck, What luck? Good enough for me! I'm alive, you see. Sun shining, No repining; Never borrow Idle sorrow; Drop it! Cover it up! Hold your cup! Joy will fill it, Don't spill it, Steady, be ready, Good luck!

Henry van Dyke.

[13] From "The Toiling of Felix." By permission of Charles Scribner's Sons.

The Angler's Invitation

Come when the leaf comes, angle with me, Come when the bee hums over the lea, Come with the wild flowers— Come with the wild showers— Come when the singing bird calleth for thee!

Then to the stream side, gladly we'll hie, Where the grey trout glide silently by, Or in some still place Over the hill face Hurrying onward, drop the light fly.

Then, when the dew falls, homeward we'll speed To our own loved walls down on the mead, There, by the bright hearth, Holding our night mirth, We'll drink to sweet friendship in need and in deed.

Thomas Tod Stoddart.

Skating

And in the frosty season, when the sun Was set, and, visible, for many a mile, The cottage-windows through the twilight blazed, I heeded not the summons. Happy time It was indeed for all of us: for me It was a time of rapture! Clear and loud The village clock tolled six. I wheeled about, Proud and exulting, like an untired horse That cares not for its home. All shod with steel, We hissed along the polished ice, in games Confederate, imitative of the chase And woodland pleasures,—the resounding horn, The pack loud bellowing, and the hunted hare. So through the darkness and the cold we flew, And not a voice was idle. With the din Meanwhile the precipices rang aloud. The leafless trees and every icy crag Tinkled like iron; while the distant hills Into the tumult sent an alien sound Of melancholy, not unnoticed; while the stars Eastward were sparkling clear, and in the west The orange sky of evening died away.

Not seldom from the uproar I retired Into a silent bay; or sportively Glanced sideways, leaving the tumultuous throng, To cut across the reflex of a star,— Image, that, flying still before me, gleamed Upon the glassy plain. And oftentimes, When we had given our bodies to the wind, And all the shadowy banks on either side Came sweeping through the darkness, spinning still The rapid line of motion, then at once Have I, reclining back upon my heels, Stopped short; yet still the solitary cliffs Wheeled by me, even as if the earth had rolled With visible motion her diurnal round. Behind me did they stretch in solemn train, Feebler and feebler; and I stood and watched Till all was tranquil as a summer sea.

William Wordsworth.

From "The Prelude."

Reading

... We get no good By being ungenerous, even to a book, And calculating profits ... so much help By so much reading. It is rather when We gloriously forget ourselves and plunge Soul-forward, headlong, into a book's profound, Impassioned for its beauty and salt of truth— 'Tis then we get the right good from a book.

Elizabeth B. Browning.

From "Aurora Leigh."

On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer

Much have I travelled in the realms of gold, And many goodly states and kingdoms seen; Round many western islands have I been Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold. Oft of one wide expanse had I been told That deep-browed Homer ruled as his demesne: Yet did I never breathe its pure serene Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold; Then felt I like some watcher of the skies When a new planet swims into his ken; Or like stout Cortez, when with eagle eyes He stared at the Pacific—and all his men Looked at each other with a wild surmise— Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

John Keats.

Music's Silver Sound

When griping grief the heart doth wound, And doleful dump the mind oppress, Then music, with her silver sound, With speedy help doth lend redress.

William Shakespeare.

From "Romeo and Juliet."

The Power of Music

For do but note a wild and wanton herd, Or race of youthful and unhandled colts, Fetching mad bounds, bellowing and neighing loud, Which is the hot condition of their blood; If they but hear perchance a trumpet sound, Or any air of music touch their ears, You shall perceive them make a mutual stand, Their savage eyes turn'd to a modest gaze, By the sweet power of music: therefore the poet Did feign that Orpheus drew trees, stones and floods; Since naught so stockish, hard, and full of rage, But music for the time doth change his nature. The man that hath no music in himself, Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds, Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils; The motions of his spirit are dull as night, And his affections dark as Erebus: Let no such man be trusted.

William Shakespeare.

From "The Merchant of Venice."

Descend, Ye Nine

Descend, ye Nine! descend and sing; The breathing instruments inspire, Wake into voice each silent string, And sweep the sounding lyre! In a sadly pleasing strain, Let the warbling lute complain: Let the loud trumpet sound, Till the roofs all around The shrill echoes rebound; While in more lengthen'd notes and slow, The deep, majestic, solemn organs blow. Hark! the numbers soft and clear Gently steal upon the ear; Now louder, and yet louder rise, And fill with spreading sounds the skies; Exulting in triumph now swell the bold notes, In broken air, trembling, the wild music floats; Till, by degrees, remote and small, The strains decay, And melt away, In a dying, dying fall. By music, minds an equal temper know, Nor swell too high, nor sink too low. If in the breast tumultuous joys arise, Music her soft, assuasive voice applies; Or, when the soul is press'd with cares, Exalts her in enlivening airs. Warriors she fires with animated sounds; Pours balm into the bleeding lover's wounds: Melancholy lifts her head, Morpheus rouses from his bed, Sloth unfolds her arms and wakes, Listening Envy drops her snakes; Intestine war no more our passions wage, And giddy factions bear away their rage.

Alexander Pope.

From "Ode on St. Cecilia's Day."

Old Song

'Tis a dull sight To see the year dying, When winter winds Set the yellow wood sighing: Sighing, O sighing!

When such a time cometh I do retire Into an old room Beside a bright fire: O, pile a bright fire!

And there I sit Reading old things, Of knights and lorn damsels, While the wind sings— O, drearily sings!

I never look out Nor attend to the blast; For all to be seen Is the leaves falling fast: Falling, falling!

But close at the hearth, Like a cricket, sit I Reading of summer And chivalry— Gallant chivalry!

*      *      *      *

Then the clouds part, Swallows soaring between; The spring is alive, And the meadows are green!

I jump up like mad, Break the old pipe in twain, And away to the meadows, The meadows again!

Edward Fitzgerald.

The Barefoot Boy

Blessings on thee, little man, Barefoot boy, with cheek of tan! With thy upturned pantaloons, And thy merry whistled tunes; With thy red lip, redder still Kissed by strawberries on the hill; With the sunshine on thy face, Through thy torn brim's jaunty grace; From my heart I give thee joy,— I was once a barefoot boy! Prince thou art,—the grown-up man Only is republican. Let the million-dollared ride! Barefoot, trudging at his side, Thou hast more than he can buy In the reach of ear and eye,— Outward sunshine, inward joy: Blessings on thee, barefoot boy!

O for boyhood's painless play, Sleep that wakes in laughing day, Health that mocks the doctor's rules, Knowledge never learned of schools, Of the wild bee's morning chase, Of the wild-flower's time and place, Flight of fowl and habitude Of the tenants of the wood; How the tortoise bears his shell, How the woodchuck digs his cell, And the ground-mole sinks his well; How the robin feeds her young, How the oriole's nest is hung; Where the whitest lilies blow, Where the freshest berries grow, Where the groundnut trails its vine, Where the wood-grape's clusters shine: Of the black wasp's cunning way, Mason of his walls of clay, And the architectural plans Of gray hornet artisans!— For, eschewing books and tasks, Nature answers all he asks; Hand in hand with her he walks, Face to face with her he talks, Part and parcel of her joy,— Blessings on the barefoot boy!

O for boyhood's time of June, Crowding years in one brief moon, When all things I heard or saw, Me, their master, waited for. I was rich in flowers and trees, Humming-birds and honey-bees; For my sport the squirrel played, Plied the snouted mole his spade; For my taste the blackberry cone Purpled over hedge and stone; Laughed the brook for my delight Through the day and through the night, Whispering at the garden wall, Talked with me from fall to fall; Mine the sand-rimmed pickerel pond, Mine the walnut slopes beyond, Mine, on bending orchard trees, Apples of Hesperides! Still as my horizon grew, Larger grew my riches too; All the world I saw or knew Seemed a complex Chinese toy, Fashioned for a barefoot boy!

O for festal dainties spread, Like my bowl of milk and bread,— Pewter spoon and bowl of wood, On the door-stone, gray and rude! O'er me like a regal tent, Cloudy ribbed, the sunset bent, Purple-curtained, fringed with gold, Looped in many a wind-swung fold; While for music came the play Of the pied frogs' orchestra; And to light the noisy choir, Lit the fly his lamp of fire. I was monarch: pomp and joy Waited on the barefoot boy!

Cheerily, then, my little man, Live and laugh as boyhood can! Though the flinty slopes be hard, Stubble-speared the new-mown sward, Every morn shall lead thee through Fresh baptisms of the dew; Every evening from thy feet Shall the cool wind kiss the heat: All too soon these feet must hide In the prison cells of pride, Lose the freedom of the sod, Like a colt's for work be shod, Made to tread the mills of toil, Up and down in ceaseless moil: Happy if their track be found Never on forbidden ground; Happy if they sink not in Quick and treacherous sands of sin. Ah! that thou couldst know thy joy, Ere it passes, barefoot boy!

John Greenleaf Whittier.

Leolin and Edith

These had been together from the first, Leolin's first nurse was, five years after, hers; So much the boy foreran: but when his date Doubled her own, for want of playmates he

*      *      *      *

Had tost his ball and flown his kite, and roll'd His hoop to pleasure Edith, with her dipt Against the rush of the air in the prone swing, Made blossom-ball or daisy-chain, arranged Her garden, sow'd her name and kept it green In living letters, told her fairy-tales, Show'd her the fairy footings on the grass, The little dells of cowslip, fairy palms, The petty marestail forest, fairy pines, Or from the tiny pitted target blew What looked a flight of fairy arrows aim'd All at one mark, all hitting: make-believes For Edith and himself.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson.

From "Aylmer's Field."

Going A-Nutting

No clouds are in the morning sky, The vapors hug the stream,— Who says that life and love can die In all this northern gleam? At every turn the maples burn, The quail is whistling free, The partridge whirs, and the frosted burs Are dropping for you and me. Ho! hilly ho! heigh O! Hilly ho! In the clear October morning.

Along our path the woods are bold, And glow with ripe desire; The yellow chestnut showers its gold, The sumachs spread their fire; The breezes feel as crisp as steel, The buckwheat tops are red: Then down the lane, love, scurry again, And over the stubble tread! Ho! hilly ho! heigh O! Hilly ho! In the clear October morning.

Edmund Clarence Stedman.

Whittling

The Yankee boy, before he's sent to school, Well knows the mysteries of that magic tool, The pocket-knife. To that his wistful eye Turns, while he hears his mother's lullaby; His hoarded cents he gladly gives to get it, Then leaves no stone unturned till he can whet it; And in the education of the lad No little part that implement hath had. His pocket-knife to the young whittler brings A growing knowledge of material things.

Projectiles, music, and the sculptor's art, His chestnut whistle and his shingle cart, His elder pop-gun, with its hickory rod, Its sharp explosion and rebounding wad, His corn-stalk fiddle, and the deeper tone That murmurs from his pumpkin-stalk trombone, Conspire to teach the boy. To these succeed His bow, his arrow of a feathered reed, His windmill, raised the passing breeze to win, His water-wheel, that turns upon a pin, Or, if his father lives upon the shore, You'll see his ship, "beam ends upon the floor," Full rigged, with raking masts, and timbers staunch, And waiting, near the wash-tub, for a launch. Thus, by his genius and his jack-knife driven Ere long he'll solve you any problem given; Make any gimcrack, musical or mute, A plough, a couch, an organ, or a flute; Make you a locomotive or a clock, Cut a canal, or build a floating-dock, Or lead forth beauty from a marble block;— Make anything, in short, for sea or shore, From a child's rattle to a seventy-four;— Make it, said I?—Ay, when he undertakes it, He'll make the thing and the machine that makes it.

And when the thing is made,—whether it be To move on earth, in air, or on the sea; Whether on water, o'er the waves to glide, Or, upon land to roll, revolve, or slide; Whether to whirl or jar, to strike or ring, Whether it be a piston or a spring, Wheel, pulley, tube sonorous, wood or brass, The thing designed shall surely come to pass; For, when his hand's upon it, you may know That there's go in it, and he'll make it go.

John Pierpont.

Hunting Song

Waken, lords and ladies gay, On the mountain dawns the day; All the jolly chase is here With hawk and horse and hunting-spear! Hounds are in their couples yelling, Hawks are whistling, horns are knelling. Merrily, merrily mingle they, "Waken, lords and ladies gay."

Waken, lords and ladies gay, The mist has left the mountain gray, Springlets in the dawn are steaming, Diamonds on the brake are gleaming, And foresters have busy been To track the buck in thicket green; Now we come to chant our lay "Waken, lords and ladies gay."

Waken, lords and ladies gay, To the greenwood haste away; We can show you where he lies, Fleet of foot and tall of size; We can show the marks he made When 'gainst the oak his antlers fray'd; You shall see him brought to bay; "Waken, lords and ladies gay."

Louder, louder chant the lay Waken, lords and ladies gay! Tell them youth and mirth and glee Run a course as well as we; Time, stern huntsman! who can balk, Stanch as hound and fleet as hawk; Think of this, and rise with day, Gentle lords and ladies gay!

Sir Walter Scott.

The Hunter's Song

Rise! Sleep no more! 'Tis a noble morn! The dews hang thick on the fringéd thorn, And the frost shrinks back like a beaten hound, Under the steaming, steaming ground. Behold where the billowy clouds flow by, And leave us alone in the clear gray sky! Our horses are ready and steady,—So, ho! I'm gone like a dart from the Tartar's bow. Hark, hark!—who calleth the maiden Morn From her sleep in the woods and the stubble corn? The horn—the horn! The merry sweet ring of the hunter's horn!

Now through the copse where the fox is found And over the stream at a mighty bound, And over the high lands and over the low, O'er furrows, o'er meadows the hunters go! Away! as the hawk flies full at his prey So flieth the hunter,—away, away! From the burst at the corn till set of sun, When the red fox dies, and the day is done! Hark, hark!—What sound on the wind is borne? 'Tis the conquering voice of the hunter's horn. The horn,—the horn! The merry bold voice of the hunter's horn!

Sound, sound the horn! To the hunter good What's the gully deep, or the roaring flood? Right over he bounds, as the wild stag bounds, At the heels of his swift, sure, silent hounds. O what delight can a mortal lack When he once is firm on his horse's back, With his stirrups short and his snaffle strong, And the blast of the horn for his morning song! Hark, hark! Now home! and dream till morn Of the bold sweet sound of the hunter's horn! The horn, the horn! Oh, the sound of all sounds is the hunter's horn!

Barry Cornwall.

(Bryan Waller Procter.)

The Blood Horse

Gamarra is a dainty steed, Strong, black, and of a noble breed, Full of fire, and full of bone, With all his line of fathers known; Fine his nose, his nostrils thin, But blown abroad by the pride within! His mane is like a river flowing, And his eyes like embers glowing In the darkness of the night, And his pace as swift as light.

Look—how 'round his straining throat Grace and shifting beauty float; Sinewy strength is in his reins, And the red blood gallops through his veins; Richer, redder, never ran Through the boasting heart of man. He can trace his lineage higher Than the Bourbon dare aspire,— Douglas, Guzman, or the Guelph, Or O'Brien's blood itself!

He, who hath no peer, was born, Here, upon a red March morn; But his famous fathers dead Were Arabs all, and Arab bred, And the last of that great line Trod like one of a race divine! And yet,—he was but friend to one, Who fed him at the set of sun, By some lone fountain fringed with green: With him, a roving Bedouin, He lived (none else would he obey Through all the hot Arabian day),— And died untamed upon the sands Where Balkh amidst the desert stands!

Barry Cornwall.

(Bryan Waller Procter.)

The Northern Seas

Up! up! let us a voyage take; Why sit we here at ease? Find us a vessel tight and snug, Bound for the Northern Seas.

I long to see the Northern Lights, With their rushing splendors, fly, Like living things, with flaming wings, Wide o'er the wondrous sky.

I long to see those icebergs vast, With heads all crowned with snow; Whose green roots sleep in the awful deep, Two hundred fathoms low.

I long to hear the thundering crash Of their terrific fall; And the echoes from a thousand cliffs, Like lonely voices call.

There shall we see the fierce white bear, The sleepy seals aground, And the spouting whales that to and fro Sail with a dreary sound.

There may we tread on depths of ice, That the hairy mammoth hide; Perfect as when, in times of old, The mighty creature died.

And while the unsetting sun shines on Through the still heaven's deep blue, We'll traverse the azure waves, the herds Of the dread sea-horse to view.

We'll pass the shores of solemn pine, Where wolves and black bears prowl, And away to the rocky isles of mist To rouse the northern fowl.

Up there shall start ten thousand wings, With a rushing, whistling din; Up shall the auk and fulmar start,— All but the fat penguin.

And there, in the wastes of the silent sky, With the silent earth below, We shall see far off to his lonely rock The lonely eagle go.

Then softly, softly will we tread By island streams, to see Where the pelican of the silent North Sits there all silently.

William Howitt.

The Needle

The gay belles of fashion may boast of excelling In waltz or cotillion, at whist or quadrille; And seek admiration by vauntingly telling Of drawing, and painting, and musical skill; But give me the fair one, in country or city, Whose home and its duties are dear to her heart, Who cheerfully warbles some rustical ditty, While plying the needle with exquisite art: The bright little needle—the swift-flying needle, The needle directed by beauty and art. If Love have a potent, a magical token, A talisman, ever resistless and true— A charm that is never evaded or broken, A witchery certain the heart to subdue— 'T is this—and his armory never has furnished So keen and unerring, or polished a dart; Let Beauty direct it, so pointed and burnished, And, oh! it is certain of touching the heart: The bright little needle—the swift-flying needle, The needle directed by beauty and art.

Be wise, then, ye maidens, nor seek admiration By dressing for conquest, and flirting with all; You never, whate'er be your fortune or station, Appear half so lovely at rout or at ball, As gayly convened at a work-covered table, Each cheerfully active and playing her part, Beguiling the task with a song or a fable, And plying the needle with exquisite art: The bright little needle—the swift-flying needle, The needle directed by beauty and art.

Samuel Woodworth.

INTERLEAVES

A Garden of Girls

Enter a procession of charming girls; wee ones like Nikolina and Jessie, others, like Peggy, just entering their teens. Some are so saintly we can almost see the halos above their lovely heads—like Mrs. Browning's human angel in the first poem, or like Shakespeare's Silvia, who excels each mortal thing; others are just happy children, like Little Bell.

The poets, as you will see, have delighted to paint the beauties of this rosebud garden. There is sweet Phyllis, the little dairymaid, whose hand seemed milk, in milk it was so white; Annie Laurie, with her brow like the snowdrift and her voice like wind in summer sighing; merry Margaret, like midsummer flower; but you will note that in all of them sunny hair and dewy eyes are not where the beauty lies. "Love deep and kind" leaves good gifts behind, with Bell and with Mally, too, who is rare and fair and every way complete, and who is also modest and discreet. On the other hand, Burns does not describe Nannie by so much as a single word, but it is easy to conjure up her picture, so eloquently he paints the dreariness of the world "when Nannie's awa'."

Will you not add to this garden of girls others whom you would like to see blooming beside them? Remember, it is a rosebud garden, and the new-comers must be not only beautiful, but sweet and fragrant with pretty, womanly virtues.

"She walks—the lady of my delight A shepherdess of sheep. Her flocks are thoughts. She keeps them white; She guards them from the steep. She feeds them on the fragrant height, And folds them in for sleep."

VIII

A GARDEN OF GIRLS

A Portrait

"One Name is Elizabeth."—Jonson.

I will paint her as I see her: Ten times have the lilies blown, Since she looked upon the sun.

And her face is lily-clear— Lily-shaped, and drooped in duty To the law of its own beauty.

Oval cheeks encolored faintly, Which a trail of golden hair Keeps from fading off to air:

And a forehead fair and saintly, Which two blue eyes undershine, Like meek prayers before a shrine.

Face and figure of a child,— Though too calm, you think, and tender, For the childhood you would lend her.

Yet child-simple, undefiled, Frank, obedient,—waiting still On the turnings of your will.

Moving light, as all young things— As young birds, or early wheat When the wind blows over it.

Only free from flutterings Of loud mirth that scorneth measure— Taking love for her chief pleasure:

Choosing pleasures (for the rest) Which come softly—just as she, When she nestles at your knee.

Quiet talk she liketh best, In a bower of gentle looks,— Watering flowers, or reading books.

And her voice, it murmurs lowly, As a silver stream may run, Which yet feels, you feel, the sun.

And her smile, it seems half holy, As if drawn from thoughts more fair Than our common jestings are.

And if any poet knew her, He would sing of her with falls Used in lovely madrigals.

And if any painter drew her, He would paint her unaware With a halo round her hair.

And if reader read the poem, He would whisper—"You have done a Consecrated little Una!"

And a dreamer (did you show him That same picture) would exclaim, "'Tis my angel, with a name!"

And a stranger,—when he sees her In the street even—smileth stilly, Just as you would at a lily.

And all voices that address her, Soften, sleeken every word, As if speaking to a bird.

And all fancies yearn to cover The hard earth whereon she passes. With the thymy scented grasses.

And all hearts do pray, "God love her!" Ay, and always, in good sooth, We may all be sure he doth.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

Little Bell

Piped the blackbird on the beechwood spray: "Pretty maid, slow wandering this way, What's your name?" quoth he— "What's your name? Oh, stop and straight unfold, Pretty maid with showery curls of gold,"— "Little Bell," said she.

Little Bell sat down beneath the rocks— Tossed aside her gleaming golden locks— "Bonny bird," quoth she, "Sing me your best song before I go." "Here's the very finest song I know, Little Bell," said he.

And the blackbird piped; you never heard Half so gay a song from any bird;— Full of quips and wiles, Now so round and rich, now soft and slow, All for love of that sweet face below, Dimpled o'er with smiles.

And the while the bonny bird did pour His full heart out freely o'er and o'er, 'Neath the morning skies, In the little childish heart below, All the sweetness seemed to grow and grow, And shine forth in happy overflow From the blue, bright eyes.

Down the dell she tripped; and through the glade Peeped the squirrel from the hazel shade, And from out the tree Swung and leaped and frolicked, void of fear, While bold blackbird piped, that all might hear, "Little Bell!" piped he.

Little Bell sat down amid the fern: "Squirrel, squirrel, to your task return; Bring me nuts!" quoth she. Up, away, the frisky squirrel hies, Golden wood lights glancing in his eyes; And adown the tree, Great ripe nuts, kissed brown by July sun, In the little lap drop, one by one: Hark, how blackbird pipes to see the fun! "Happy Bell!" pipes he.

Little Bell looked up and down the glade: "Squirrel, squirrel, if you're not afraid, Come and share with me!" Down came squirrel, eager for his fare, Down came bonny blackbird, I declare. Little Bell gave each his honest share, Ah the merry three!

And the while these frolic playmates twain Piped and frisked from bough to bough again, 'Neath the morning skies, In the little childish heart below, All the sweetness seemed to grow and grow, And shine out in happy overflow, From her blue, bright eyes.

By her snow-white cot at close of day, Knelt sweet Bell, with folded palms to pray: Very calm and clear Rose the praying voice to where, unseen, In blue heaven, an angel shape serene Paused awhile to hear.

"What good child is this," the angel said, "That, with happy heart, beside her bed Prays so lovingly?" Low and soft, oh! very low and soft, Crooned the blackbird in the orchard croft, "Bell, dear Bell!" crooned he.

"Whom God's creatures love," the angel fair Murmured, "God doth bless with angels' care; Child, thy bed shall be Folded safe from harm. Love, deep and kind, Shall watch around, and leave good gifts behind, Little Bell, for thee."

Thomas Westwood.

A Child of Twelve

A child most infantine Yet wandering far beyond that innocent age In all but its sweet looks and mien divine.

*      *      *      *

She moved upon this earth a shape of brightness, A power, that from its objects scarcely drew One impulse of her being—in her lightness Most like some radiant cloud of morning dew, Which wanders through the waste air's pathless blue, To nourish some far desert; she did seem Beside me, gathering beauty as she grew, Like the bright shade of some immortal dream Which walks, when tempest sleeps, the wave of life's dark stream. As mine own shadow was this child to me.

*      *      *      *

This playmate sweet, This child of twelve years old.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

From "The Revolt of Islam."

Chloe

It was the charming month of May, When all the flowers were fresh and gay, One morning by the break of day, The youthful charming Chloe From peaceful slumbers she arose, Girt on her mantle and her hose, And o'er the flowery mead she goes, The youthful charming Chloe. Lovely was she by the dawn, Youthful Chloe, charming Chloe, Tripping o'er the pearly lawn, The youthful charming Chloe.

The feather'd people you might see, Perch'd all around on every tree, In notes of sweetest melody They hail the charming Chloe; Till painting gay the eastern skies, The glorious sun began to rise, Out-rivall'd by the radiant eyes Of youthful, charming Chloe. Lovely was she by the dawn, Youthful Chloe, charming Chloe, Tripping o'er the pearly lawn, The youthful, charming Chloe.

Robert Burns.

O Mally's Meek, Mally's Sweet

As I was walking up the street, A barefit maid I chanced to meet; But O the road was very hard For that fair maiden's tender feet. O Mally's meek, Mally's sweet, Mally's modest and discreet, Mally's rare, Mally's fair, Mally's every way complete.

It were more meet that those fine feet Were weel laced up in silken shoon, And 'twere more fit that she should sit Within yon chariot gilt aboon.

Her yellow hair, beyond compare, Comes trinkling down her swan-white neck, And her two eyes, like stars in skies, Would keep a sinking ship frae wreck. O Mally's meek, Mally's sweet, Mally's modest and discreet, Mally's rare, Mally's fair, Mally's every way complete.

Robert Burns.

Who Is Silvia?

Who is Silvia? What is she, That all our swains commend her? Holy, fair, and wise is she; The heaven such grace did lend her, That she might admirèd be.

Is she kind as she is fair? For beauty lives with kindness: Love doth to her eyes repair, To help him of his blindness; And, being helped, inhabits there.

Then to Silvia let us sing, That Silvia is excelling; She excels each mortal thing Upon the dull earth dwelling; To her let us garlands bring.

William Shakespeare.

From "The Two Gentlemen of Verona."

To Mistress Margaret Hussey

Merry Margaret As midsummer flower— Gentle as falcon, Or hawk of the tower; With solace and gladness, Much mirth and no madness, All good and no badness; So joyously, So maidenly, So womanly Her demeaning,— In everything Far, far passing That I can indite Or suffice to write, Of merry Margaret, As midsummer flower, Gentle as falcon Or hawk of the tower; As patient and as still, And as full of good-will, As fair Isiphil, Coliander, Sweet Pomander, Good Cassander; Steadfast of thought, Well made, well wrought; Far may be sought Ere you can find So courteous, so kind, As merry Margaret, This midsummer flower— Gentle as falcon Or hawk of the tower.

John Skelton.

Ruth

She stood breast-high amid the corn, Clasp'd by the golden light of morn, Like the sweetheart of the sun, Who many a glowing kiss had won.

On her cheek an autumn flush. Deeply ripened;—such a blush In the midst of brown was born, Like red poppies grown with corn.

Round her eyes her tresses fell, Which were blackest none could tell, But long lashes veil'd a light That had else been all too bright.

And her hat, with shady brim, Made her tressy forehead dim;— Thus she stood amid the stooks, Praising God with sweetest looks.

"Sure," I said, "Heav'n did not mean Where I reap thou shouldst but glean; Lay thy sheaf adown and come, Share my harvest and my home."

Thomas Hood.

My Peggy

My Peggy is a young thing, Just entered in her teens, Fair as the day, and sweet as May, Fair as the day, and always gay, My Peggy is a young thing, And I'm not very auld, Yet well I like to meet her at The wauking of the fauld.

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My Peggy sings sae saftly, When on my pipe I play; By a' the rest it is confest, By a' the rest, that she sings best. My Peggy sings sae saftly, And in her sangs are tauld, With innocence, the wale of sense, At wauking of the fauld.

Allan Ramsay.

From "The Gentle Shepherd."

Annie Laurie

Maxwelton braes are bonnie Where early fa's the dew, And it's there that Annie Laurie Gie'd me her promise true,— Gie'd me her promise true, Which ne'er forgot will be; And for bonnie Annie Laurie I'd lay me doune and dee.

Her brow is like the snawdrift, Her throat is like the swan, Her face it is the fairest That e'er the sun shone on,— That e'er the sun shone on; And dark blue is her e'e; And for bonnie Annie Laurie I'd lay me doune and dee.

Like dew on the gowan lying Is the fa' o' her fairy feet; Like the winds in summer sighing, Her voice is low and sweet,— Her voice is low and sweet; And she's a' the world to me; And for bonnie Annie Laurie I'd lay me doune and dee.

William Douglas of Fingland.

Lucy

Three years she grew in sun and shower; Then Nature said, "A lovelier flower On earth was never sown: This child I to myself will take; She shall be mine, and I will make A lady of my own.

"Myself will to my darling be Both law and impulse: and with me The girl, in rock and plain, In earth and heaven, in glade and bower, Shall feel an overseeing power To kindle or restrain.

"She shall be sportive as the fawn That, wild with glee, across the lawn, Or up the mountain springs; And hers shall be the breathing balm, And hers the silence and the calm Of mute, insensate things.

"The floating clouds their state shall lend To her; for her the willow bend; Nor shall she fail to see E'en in the motions of the storm Grace that shall mold the maiden's form By silent sympathy.

"The stars of midnight shall be dear To her; and she shall lean her ear In many a secret place Where rivulets dance their wayward round, And beauty born of murmuring sound Shall pass into her face.

"And vital feelings of delight Shall rear her form to stately height, Her virgin bosom swell; Such thoughts to Lucy I will give While she and I together live Here in this happy dell."

Thus Nature spake—the work was done— How soon my Lucy's race was run! She died, and left to me This heath, this calm and quiet scene; The memory of what has been, And nevermore will be.

William Wordsworth.

Jessie