BUTTERCUPS AND DAISIES. Springing with bold and gleesome bound, Are there, I ask, beneath the sky There seems a bright and fairy spell Is, that the one who raises 199 Eliza Cook. THE ORPHAN BALLAD-SINGERS. OH, weary, weary are our feet, And weary, weary is our way; She is too tender and too young She was our mother's favorite child, She cannot do what I can do. She never met her father's eyes, Although they were so like her own; In some far distant sea he lies, A father to his child unknown. The first time that she lisp'd his name, How proud we were - yet that night came The tale how he had sunk at sea. My mother never raised her head How strange, how white, how cold she grew! It was a broken heart, they said· I wish our hearts were broken too. PRECIOUS TRUTHS. We have no home - we have no friends; They said our home no more was ours — The garden we had fill'd with flowers; We wandered forth 'mid wind and rain; I only wish to see again My mother's grave, and rest, and die. To sing our ballads o'er and o'er- PRECIOUS TRUTHS. THEY serve God well, Who serve His creatures. 201 Miss Landon. GOOD is not a shapely mass of stone, Hewn by man's hands and worked by him alone; Many to reap; and when the harvest grows, ALL that our wisdom knows, or ever can, Hon. Mrs. Norton. A BIRTHDAY WALK. To the meadows, to the meadows, love, the birds Το are on the trees, And the scent of springing violets comes stealthy on the breeze, And the pulse of early love is warm, on the cheek and in the eye, And the heart is beating tunefully, it cannot tell thee why. And we are young, my well-beloved, and life is yet to be, And many a spring has birthdays yet, to decorate for thee, Then let us to the meadows, love, the woodlands and the vale, And when we've found the "white thorn bush " I 'll listen to thy tale. I wakened from the pleasant dream a dream of vanished years! And time upon my cheek had traced a pathway for the tears, A BIRTHDAY WALK. 203 And silver were the locks, my love, that o'er thy forehead strayed, And thou a staff hadst chosen thee, from out the hazel shade. Yet let us to the meadows, love, e'en altered though we go, For still, to all things beautiful, the mellowed heart can glow, And few and brief the summer-tides that yet to us remain, And when we've taken leave of them, we see them not again. E'en now, in some green churchyard way, the dews of night may lave A daisy root, like that we love from thy young mother's grave, Which ere some pleasant spring or two hath made its leafy stir, Shall blossom over us my love, as that did over her. Then let us to the meadows, to the woodlands, to the vale, Ere the golden bowl be broken, and the silver cord shall fail; Green earth shall still be beautiful, when closed our little day, And we'll enjoy her loveliness, as twilight sinks away. Ann Taylor. |