Like an actual colour bright
Flushing from the paper's white.
If the rains that do us wrong
Come to keep the winter long,
And deny us thy sweet looks.
I can love thee, sweet in books;
Love thee in the poet's pages,
Where they keep thee green for ages;
May's in Milton, May's in Prior,
May's in Chaucer, Thomson, Dyer;
May's in all the Italian books;
She has old and modern nooks,
Where she sleeps with nymphs and elves
In happy places they call shelves,
With a drapery thick with blooms,
And will rise and dress your rooms.
Come, ye rains, then, if you will,
May's at home, and with me still;
But come rather thou, good weather,
And find us in the fields together.

LEIGH HUNT.

VI. FIELD FLOWERS.

"SHAKSPEARE, Homer, Dante, and Chaucer, saw the splendour of meaning that plays over the visible world; knew that a tree had another use than for apples, and corn another than for meal, and the ball of the earth, than for tillage and roads: and these things bore a second and finer harvest to the mind, being emblems of its thoughts, and conveying in all their natural history a certain mute commentary on human life."-Emerson's "Representative Men."

YE field flowers! the gardens eclipse you, 'tis true,
Yet, wildings of Nature, I doat upon you,

For ye waft me to summers of old,

When the earth teemed around me with fairy delight,
And when daisies and buttercups gladdened my sight,
Like treasures of silver and gold.

I love you for lulling me back into dreams
Of the blue Highland mountains and echoing streams-
And of birchen glades breathing their balm,
While the deer was seen glancing in sunshine remote,
And the deep mellow crush of the wood-pigeon's note,
Made music that sweetened the calm.

THE VOICE OF SPRING.

Not a pastoral song has a pleasanter tune

Than ye speak to my heart, little wildings of June;
Of old ruinous castles ye tell,

Where I thought it delightful your beauties to find,
When the magic of Nature first breathed on my mind,
And your blossoms were part of her spell.

Even now what affections the violet awakes!
What loved little islands, twice seen in their lakes,
Can the wild water lily restore!

What landscapes I read in the primrose's looks,
And what pictures of pebbled and minnowy brook3,
In the vetches that tangled the shore.

Earth's cultureless buds, to my heart ye were dear,
Ere the fever of passion, or ague of fear,

Had scathed my existence's bloom;

Once I welcome you more, in life's passionless stage;
With the visions of youth to revisit my age,
And I wish you to grow on my tomb.

231

CAMPBELL..

VII. THE VOICE OF SPRING.

"THE change of seasons well deserves our admiration. It cannot be attributed to chance, for in fortuitous events there can be neither order nor stability. Now in all countries of the earth, the seasons succeed each other with the same regularity as the nights do the days, and change the appearance of the earth precisely at the appointed times. We see it successively adorned, sometimes with herbs and leaves, sometimes with flowers, and sometimes with fruits. Afterwards, it is deprived of its ornaments, and appears in a state of death till spring comes, and gives it, so to speak, a resurrection. Spring, summer, and autumn, nourish men and animals, by an abundant provision of fruits; and although nature appears dead in winter, yet that season is not without its blessings, for it moistens and fertilizes the earth; and by that preparation the ground becomes capable of producing plants and fruits in due season."- -Sturm.

I COME, I come! ye have called me long

I come o'er the mountains with light and song;
Ye may trace my step o'er the waking earth,
By the winds which tell of the violet's birth,
By the primrose stars in the shadowy grass,
By the green leaves opening as I pass.

I have breathed on the South, and the chestnut flowers,
By thousands, have burst from the forest-bowers.
And the ancient graves, and the fallen fanes,
Are veiled with wreaths on Italian plains.
-But it is not for me, in my hour of bloom,
To speak of the ruin or the tomb!

I have passed o'er the hill of the stormy North,
And the larch has hung all his tassels forth,
The fisher is out on the sunny sea,

And the rein-deer bounds through the pasture free,
And the pine has a fringe of softer green,

And the moss looks bright where my step has been.

I have sent through the wood-paths a gentle sigh,
And call'd out each voice of the deep-blue sky,
From the night-bird's lay through the starry-time,
In the groves of the soft Hesperian clime,
To the swan's wild note by the Iceland lakes,
When the dark fir-bough into verdure breaks.

From the streams and founts I have loosed the chain;
They are sweeping on to the silvery main,
They are flashing down from the mountain-brows,
They are flinging spray on the forest boughs,
They are bursting fresh from their sparry caves,
And the earth resounds with the joy of waves.

Come forth, O ye children of gladness, come!
Where the violets lie may now be your home.
Ye of the rose-cheek and dew-bright eye,
And the bounding footstep to meet me fly,
With the lyre, and the wreath, and the joyous lay,
Come forth to the sunshine, I may not stay.

Away from the dwellings of care-worn men,
The waters are sparkling in wood and glen;
Away from the chamber and dusky hearth,
The young leaves are dancing in breezy mirth;
Their light stems thrill to the wild wood strains,
And youth is abroad in my green domains.

MRS. HEMANS

TO THE CUCKOO.

233

VIII. TO THE CUCKOO.

"THE Cuckoo arrives in our island early in spring; in White's 'Naturalist's Calendar,' it is noted as being first heard April the 7th; and in Markwick's,' April the 15th, and last heard June 28th. By the first of July it has generally taken its departure for Northern Africa. In Ireland, according to Mr. Thompson, the cuckoo is usually heard from the 16th to the 20th of April, and departs at the end of June, but he adds that, in the year 1838, the stay of the cuckoo was remarkably prolonged, and the period of its arrival later than ordinary, and that one was heard at the Falls, near Belfast, on the 7th of July. The young birds of the year generally remain till towards the end of August, so late as the 27th of which month they have been observed in Antrim.' The Bishop of Norwich, in his Familiar History of Birds,' records an instance of about forty cuckoos being congregated in a garden, in the county of Down, from the 18th to the 22nd of July, and with the exception of two, which were smaller than the rest, taking their departure at that time."-Museum of Animated Nature.

HAIL beauteous stranger of the grove!

Thou messenger of spring!

Now heaven repairs thy rural seat,1
And woods thy welcome sing.

What time the daisy decks the green,
Thy certain voice we hear;
Hast thou a star to guide thy path,
Or mark the rolling year?

Delightful visitant! with thee

I hail the time of flowers,

And hear the sound of music sweet

From birds among the bowers.

The school-boy, wandering through the wood

To pluck the primrose gay,

Starts, thy curious voice to hear,

And imitates thy lay.

What time the pea puts on the bloom,"

Thou fliest the vocal vale,"

An annual guest, in other lands

Another spring to hail.

Sweet bird! thy bower is ever green,
Thy sky is ever clear;

Thou hast no sorrow in thy song,
No winter in thy year.

O! could I fly, I'd fly with thee;
We'd make, with joyful wing,
Our annual visit o'er the globe,
Companions of the spring.

1. What is the meaning of this line? 2. What time is this?

LOGAN.

3. In what case is vale, and how governed?

IX. THE CHARMS OF NATURE.

"In those vernal seasons of the year, when the air is calm and pleasant, it were an injury and sullenness against nature not to go out and see her riches and partake in her rejoicing with heaven and earth."-Milton.

O HOW canst thou renounce the boundless store
Of charms which Nature to her votaries yields?
The warbling woodland, the resounding shore,
The pomp of groves and garniture of fields;
All that the genial ray of morning gilds,
And all that echoes to the song of even:

All that the mountain's sheltering bosom shields,
And all the dread magnificence of heaven,

O how canst thou renounce, and hope to be forgiven?

BEATTIE.

X. SOLITUDE.

"CATO used to say, that he was never less alone than when alone, nor less at leisure than when at leisure."- Cicero.

"It had been hard for him that spake it to have put more truth and untruth together in few words than in that speech- Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god;' for it is most true that a natural and secret hatred and aversion towards society, in any man, hath somewhat of the savage beast; but it is most untrue that