How often in the chapel too,

The fresh-thrown reeds might lie;

While the tears and smiles of a bridal band

Went softly passing by!

And they were there when sorrow deep

Wept the untimely doom

Of young, and bright, and beautiful,
Borne to the ancestral tomb.

In sooth it is an ancient thing,
This new-found friend of mine,
And many a scene of joy and wo
Hath it known in days lang syne.

I love it for them all right well,
But yet I love it more

For the fairy scene that lay around
Its home on that lakeless shore:

Beside the bank the stately trees
Waved gently to and fro,
And flitting specks of sunlight fell

The leafy branches thro',

And danced among the tall keen reeds,

And on the water fell,

Where the merry fish were glancing swift; And the water snake, as well,

Came, gliding in a graceful curl
All silently and still,

Like a lord in his own dominions there,
Swimming about at will.

Now toward the margin where we stood

We saw him steering on,—

Then under groups of lily leaves
The happy thing was gone.

And wild-fowl, water-rats, and all,
Lived in that little lake;
Oh, what a pleasant picture now
My thoughts of it awake!

Its margent of smooth lawny turf

Was mossy, soft, and deep,

Where the shadows broad of the beech and oak Seemed quietly to sleep.

The rhododendrons, purple yet

With many a massive wreath,
Had seedling plants, a countless host,
Crowding the turf beneath.

I dearly love small relics brought
From spots where I have been,

That seem to certify the facts

Of memory's pictured scene;

But seeds and roots of flowers are
The pleasantest of all ;—

I've Broom-seeds from a heathy glen,
And ferns from an old stone wall.

Of wall-flower slips and roots I've got

So many, that I'm fain,

Dear as they are to me, to turn
Many adrift again.

My ivy-plant from Tintern's braved
Four winters' stormy weather;
I've scraps, too, from proud Kenilworth,
And here they grow together.

The feathery seeds of clematis
In Goodrich I have caught;
Hartstongue from Ragland's lofty keep,
With maiden-hair, I brought.

And so at Claremont, where the crowd
Of rhododendrons grew,

My whims were humoured, and I now
Am rearing one or two.

And e'en those little things can bring
Before me, passing well,

The very nook where the scented leaves

Of the graceful calamus dwell.

Louisa A. Twamley.

BROOM....Humility.

Thomas Miller thus speaks of the "bonny Broom," in his Romance of Nature:—

Beautiful art thou, O Broom! waving in all thy rich array of green and gold, on the breezy bosom of the bee-haunted heath. The sleeping sunshine, and the silver-footed showers, the clouds that for ever play about the face of Heaven, the homeless winds, and the crystal-globed dews, that settle upon thy blossoms like sleep on the veined eyelids of an infant, are ever beating above and around thee, as if to tell that they rejoice in thy companionship, and that, although a thousand years have strided by with silent steps, time hath not abated an atom of their love. Who can tell the thoughts of Saxon Alfred when, wandering alone, crownless and sceptreless, he stretched himself on the lonely moor beneath the shadow of thy golden blossoms, sighing for the fair queen he had left far behind? When he bowed his kingly head, and, musing on thy beauty, buried in a solitary wild, thought how even regal dignity would be enhanced by humility, and that, although thou didst grow there unmarked and unpruned, not a more princely flower waved in his own English garden.

Humility, that low, sweet root,

From which all heavenly virtues shoot.

Moore.

Oh the Broom, the bonny bonny Broom,
The Broom of the Cowden-knowes;

For sure so soft, so sweet a bloom,

Elsewhere there never grows.

Scottish Song.

Here is a precious jewel I have found
Among the filth and rubbish of the world.
I'll stoop for it, but when I wear it here,
Set on my forehead like the morning-star,
The world may wonder, but it will not laugh.

Longfellow.

Their groves of sweet myrtle, let foreign lands reckon,
Where bright beaming summers exalt the perfume;
Far dearer to me yon lone glen o' green breckan,
Wi' the burn stealing under the lang yellow Broom.
Burns.

But the publican stood afar off in his grief,
For he felt like a beggar who needed relief;
And he raised not his eyes, and he saw not the scorn
Which the lip of the Pharisee proudly had worn.
But he smote on his bosom, and deeply he sighed;
As a sinner, for mercy, sweet mercy, he cried.
It was all he could utter, but God hears a sigh,
And listens, no matter how feeble the cry.
Both unheard and unblest, the proud Pharisee then
Returned to the pomp of his riches again;

While the publican sinner, though loathed and oppressed,
Went joyfully homeward with peace in his breast.
MacKellar.