GARDENING.

EEST thou yon woodland child,
How amid flowerets wild,

Wilder himself, he plies his pleasure-task?
That ring of fragrant ground,

With its low woodbine bound,

He claims: no more as yet his little heart need ask.

There learns he flower and weed

To sort with careful heed:

He waits not for the weary noontide hour.

There with the soft night air

Comes his refreshing care:

Each tiny leaf looks up and thanks him for the shower.

Thus faithful found awhile,

He wins the joyous smile

Of friend or parent: glad and bright is he,

When for his garland gay

He hears the kind voice say,

"Well hast thou wrought, dear boy: the garden thine shall be."

And when long years are flown, And the proud word, Mine Own, Familiar sounds, what joy in field or bower

To view by Memory's aid

Again that garden glade,

And muse on all the lore there learned in each bright hour!

Is not a life well spent

A child's play-garden, lent

For Heaven's high trust to train young heart and limb ? When in yon field on high

Our hard-won powers we try,

Will no mild tones of earth blend with the adoring

hymn?

O fragrant, sure,

will prove

The breath of patient Love,

Even from these fading sweets by Memory cast,

As deepening evermore

To him our song we pour,

Who lent us Earth, that he might give us Heaven at last.

LYRA INNOCENTIUM.

The Evergreen.

123

LINES

WRITTEN IN EARLY SPRING.

ROM the sod no crocus peeps,

And the snow-drop scarce seen,
And the daffodil yet sleeps

In its radiant sheath of green;
Yet the naked groves among
Is an homeless music heard,
And a welcoming is sung,

Till the leafless boughs are stirred
With a spirit and a life

Which is floating all around;
And the covert glades are rife
With the new awakened sound
Of the birds, whose voices pour
To an interrupted strain,
As they scarcely were secure

That the spring was come again.

Soon the seasonable flowers
Will a glad assurance bring,
To their fresh and leafy bowers,
Of the presence of the Spring:
And these snatches of delight
Are the prelude of a song,
That will daily gather might,
And endure the summer long.

R. TRENCH.

YEW-TREES.

HERE is a Yew-tree, pride of Lorton Vale,
Which to this day stands single, in the midst
Of its own darkness, as it stood of yore:

Not loth to furnish weapons for the bands
Of Umfraville or Percy ere they marched

To Scotland's heaths; or those that crossed the sea
And drew their sounding bows at Azincour,
Perhaps at earlier Crecy, or Poictiers.
Of vast circumference and gloom profound
This solitary Tree! a living thing
Produced too slowly ever to decay;
Of form and aspect too magnificent
To be destroyed. But worthier still of note
Are those fraternal Four of Borrowdale,
Joined in one solemn and capacious grove;
Huge trunks! and each particular trunk a growth
Of intertwisted fibres serpentine

Up-coiling, and inveterately convolved;

Nor uninformed with Phantasy, and looks
That threaten the profane;-a pillared shade,