"And ever from my hidden bowers,"
Said Spring, "it first of all shall go,
And be the herald of the flowers,
To warn away the sheeted snow:
Its mission done, then by thy side

All summer long it shall remain.
While other flowers I scatter wide,

O'er every hill, and wood, and plain,
This shall return, and ever be
A sweet companion, Hope, for thee."

Hope stooped and kissed her sister Spring, And said, "For hours, when thou art gone, I'm left alone without a thing

That I can fix my heart upon;

'Twill cheer me many a lonely hour,

And in the future I shall see

Those who would sink, raised by that flower, They'll look on it, then think of thee;

And many a weary heart shall sing,

The Snowdrop bringeth Hope and Spring."

The Evergreen.

THE COMMON BROOM.

AM I not

In truth a favoured plant?

On me such bounty summer showers
That I am covered o'er with flowers.
And when the frost is in the sky,

My branches are so fresh and gay
That you might look on me and say,
"This plant can never die."

WORDSWORTH.

THE STONECROP.

(A Plant growing on old walls or rocks.)

THERE from his rocky pulpit I heard cry

The Stonecrop: "See how loose to earth I grow,

And draw my juicy nurture from the sky;

So place not thou, fond man, thy root too low,
But closely clinging here,

From God's supernal sphere
Draw Life's unearthly food-catch

Heaven's undying glow.

REV. R. W. EVANS.

41

THE FALL OF THE LEAF.

EE, the leaves around us falling,
Dry and wither'd to the ground;
Thus to thoughtless mortals calling,
In a sad and solemn sound.

Sons of Adam! once in Eden,
When like us you blighted fell;
Hear the lecture we are reading,
'Tis, alas! a truth we tell!

Griping misers! nightly waking,
See the end of all your care,
Fled on wings of our own making,
We have left our owners bare.

Sons of honour! fed on praises, Fluttering high in fancied worth;

Lo, the fickle air that raises,

Brings us down to parent earth!

The Fall of the Leaf.

Virgins! much-too much presuming,
On your boasted white and red;
View us, late in beauty blooming,
Numbered now among the dead.

Youths! though yet no losses grieve you,
Gay with health and many a grace,
Let not cloudless skies deceive you,
Summer gives to Autumn place.

Yearly in our course returning,
Messengers of shortest stay;
Thus we preach the truth concerning
Heaven and earth, and pass away.

On the tree of life eternal,

Man, let all thy hopes be stay'd; Which alone for ever vernal,

Bears a leaf which shall not fade.

BISHOP HORNE.

43

FROM THE ITALIAN.

HE other morn I took my round
Within my garden's sweet retreat;
The time when sunbeams touch the ground
With their first soft reviving heat.

There, on my favourite flowery bed
I cast my contemplative eye,
Where mingled roses white and red,
In all the bloom of beauty vie.

Some, leaf by leaf, their filmy folds
I saw expanded to the sun;
First close compress'd, then half unroll'd,
Till all the tender task was done.

And some had drank the early sky,
And fell to earth a vernal shower;

And thus I saw them rise and die

In the brief limits of an hour.