HOARDED JOY.

SAID: "Nay, pluck not,―let the first fruit be;
Even as thou sayest, it is sweet and red,

But let it ripen still. The tree's bent head
Sees in the stream its own fecundity

And bides the day of fulness.

Shall not we

At the sun's hour that day possess the shade, And claim our fruit before its ripeness fade, And eat it from the branch and praise the tree?"

I say:

"Alas! our fruit hath wooed the sun

Too long, 'tis fallen and floats adown the stream. Lo, the last clusters! Pluck them every one,

And let us sup with summer; ere the gleam
Of autumn set the year's pent sorrow free,
And the woods wail like echoes from the sea."

DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI.

RURAL NATURE.

HERE art thou loveliest, O Nature, tell!

Oh where may be thy Paradise? Where

grow

Thy happiest groves? And down what woody dell
Do thy most fancy-winning waters flow?
Tell where thy softest breezes longest blow?

And where thy ever blissful mountains swell

Upon whose sides the cloudless sun may throw

Eternal summer, while the air may quell

His fury. Is it 'neath his morning car,

Where jewell'd palaces, and golden thrones, Have aw'd the eastern nations through all time?

Or o'er the western seas, or where afar

Our winter sun warms up the southern zones With summer? Where can be the happy climes?

WILLIAM BARNES.
R

HEN man alone, or leagued in governments, The works of Christian duty would fulfil, His faltering steps defeat his anxious will, As heights attain'd reveal but fresh ascents: How poor his efforts to his high intents! Fain would he uproot every human ill; But fields neglected open to him still, And woe on woe its piteous tale presents. Nature alone succeeds in all she tries:

She drops her dews, and not a flower is miss'd;
She bids the universal grass arise,

Till stony ways and wilds antagonist
Are into emerald beauty softly kiss'd,

To show the power in gentleness that lies.

JAMES HEDDERWICK.

HERE never yet was flower fair in vain,
Let classic poets rhyme it as they will:

The seasons toil that it may blow again,

And summer's heart doth feel its every ill;

Nor is a true soul ever born for naught;

Wherever any such hath lived and died,

There hath been something for true freedom wrought,
Some bulwark levelled on the evil side:
Toil on, then, Greatness! thou art in the right,
However narrow souls may call thee wrong;
Be as thou wouldst be in thine own clear sight
And so thou wilt in all the world's ere long;
For worldlings cannot, struggle as they may,
From man's great soul one great thought hide away.

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.

T may be that our homeward longings made That other lands were judged with partial eyes; But fairer in my sight the mottled skies, With pleasant interchange of sun and shade, And more desired the meadow and deep glade Of sylvan England, green with frequent showers, Than all the beauty which the vaunted bowers Of the parched South have in mine eyes displayed; Fairer and more desired !— this well might be, For let the South have beauty's utmost dower And yet my heart might well have turned to thee, My home, my country, when a delicate flower Within thy pleasant borders was for me Tended, and growing up thro' sun and shower.

RICHARD CHENEVIX TRENCH.