Your game is losing,

Though amusing.

Pray, have you seen an early bud

In spring unfold,

Then shrink with cold

And hide its blushing flower-blood?

In such a season

There's small reason;

And, though we sport with laughing May,

'Tis constant June

So fair and boon

That wins the flower and makes it stay.

Once overdo it,

And you 'll rue it :

Too sharp a frost will kill, I fear.

The bloom you waste

Can't be replaced,

At least, until another year!

THAT

LOVE'S DAY.

my heart were the rose of the garden Love is the Lord of, and Summer the Warden, Where you would come for the cool of the air, With eyes full of pleading, with lips full of pardon, And take me and break me and scatter me there, Raining in rose leaves, ruined away,

Where none can know of and none can say,

And my heart, my heart, should have had its day.

O that my heart were the breezes that sigh for you
Over the passionate flowers that die for you,
Beating against your window at night-

O like a flame I would quiver and fly for you,
Fast to your dream, as you lay there white,
Lost in the moonlight, wafted away,

Where none can know of and none can say,

And my heart, my heart, should have had its day.

O my poor heart, and where can I throw it?
Love as I love - 'twere a sin to show it,

For years have changed and the hour gone by
My heart must break, you must never know it ;
The love I love can but dream and die,

Weeping by night and wasting by day,

Where none can know of, and none can say,

And my heart, my heart, shall have had its day.

O

GARDEN-PERIL.

VER a garden paling

In a soft midsummer day

A butterfly went sailing,

Went he, as who should say,

"There's nought in this world ailing,

So let the world be gay."

Went he from pink to posy,
But had no mind to sip,
The blossoms all were rosy,

With dew upon their lip;

So snug felt he and cosy,

The whole parterre would skip.

So often had it flaunted,

The scent was growing stale ;

The same old roses panted,

The same old lilies pale

Their honey-flavor vaunted,

The summer's tedious tale.

Heart-whole, the jaunty sailor
Cruised, all his canvas set,
Deigned not a rose to hail, or
In one his thirst to wet;
No bud shall be his jailer,
No coy cup make him fret.

Ha! up his colors flaring
He nailed them to the mast,
And down the garden bearing,

His reef he found at last :

Too late, too late for wearing,

Too late the lead to cast.

So sudden, so secluded,

So mantled in a mist,

Her violet-temper brooded,
Not waiting to be kissed,
But not to be eluded: -

His wreck became a tryst !