I will have hopes that cannot fade,
For flowers the valley yields !

I will have humble thoughts instead
Of silent, dewy fields !

My spirit and my God shall be

My sea-ward hill, my boundless sea.

E. B. BROWNING.

TO A SNOWDROP FOUND IN FEBRUARY.

I

KNOW not what among the grass thou art, Thy nature, nor thy substance, fairest flower, Nor what to other eyes thou hast of power To send thine image through them to the heart; But when I push the frosty leaves apart,

And see thee hiding in thy wintry bower, Thou growest up within me from that hour, And through the snow I with the spring depart.

I have no words. But fragrant is the breath,
Pale Beauty, of thy second life within.
There is a wind that cometh for thy death,
But thou a life immortal dost begin,

Where, in one soul, which is thy heaven, shall

dwell

Thy spirit, beautiful Unspeakable!

ANON. From "The Seaboard Parish."

THE VIOLET.

HOU tellest truths unspoken yet by man,

THOU

By this thy lonely home and modest look ; For he has not the eyes such truths to scan, Nor learns to read from such a lowly book. With him it is not life firm-fixed to grow Beneath the outspreading oaks and rising pines, Content this humble lot of thine to know, The nearest neighbor of the creeping vines ; Without fixed root he cannot trust like thee The rain will know the appointed hour to fall, But fears lest sun or shower may hurtful be, And would delay, or speed them with his call; Nor trust like thee, when wintry winds blow cold, Whose shrinking form the withered leaves enfold. JONES VERY.

THE DAISY.

EACH hath its place in the Eternal Plan:

Heaven whispers wisdom to the wayside flower,

Bidding it use its own peculiar dower,

And bloom its best within its little span.

We must each do, not what we will, but can ;
Nor have we duty to exceed our power.

To all things are marked out their place and hour:

The child must be a child, the man a man.
And surely He who metes, as we should mete
Could we His insight use, shall most approve,
Not that which fills most space in earthly eyes,
But what-though Time scarce note it as he flies
Fills, like this little daisy at my feet,
Its function best of diligence in love.

THE DAFFODILS.

THOMAS BUrb:dge.

I

WANDERED lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host of golden daffodils ;

Beside the lake, beneath the trees,

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the Milky Way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced, but they
Outdid the sparkling waves in glee :—
A poet could not but be gay,

In such a jocund company:

I gazed and gazed — but little thought

What wealth the show to me had brought.

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude,
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.

IN

THE RHODORA:

ON BEING Asked, Whence IS THE FLOWER?

N May, when sea-winds pierced our solitudes, I found the fresh Rhodora in the woods, Spreading its leafless blooms in a damp nook, To please the desert and the sluggish brook. The purple petals, fallen in the pool,

Made the black water with their beauty gay ;
Here might the red-bird come his plumes to cool,
And court the flower that cheapens his array.
Rhodora! if the sages ask thee why

This charm is wasted on the earth and sky,
Tell them, dear, that if eyes were made for seeing,
Then Beauty is its own excuse for being:

Why thou wert there, O rival of the rose !

I never thought to ask, I never knew ;

But, in my simple ignorance, suppose

The self-same Power that brought me there brought you.

R. W. EMERSON.

THE EVENING PRIMROSE

WHAT

HAT are you looking at?" the farmer said;
"That's nothing but a yellow-flowering
weed."

We turned, and saw our neighbor's grizzled head
Above the fence, but took of him no heed.

There stood the simple man, and wondered much
At us, who wondered at the twilight flowers
Bursting to life, as if a spirit's touch

Awoke their slumbering souls to answer ours.

"It grows all o'er the island, wild," said he.
"There's plenty in my field. I root 'em out;
But, for my life, it puzzles me to see

What you make such a wonderment about."

The good man turned, and to his supper went;
While kneeling on the grass, with mute delight,
Or whispered words, around the plant we bent
To watch the opening buds that love the night.

Slowly the rosy dusk of eve departed,

And one by one the pale stars bloomed on high; And one by one each folded calyx started,

And bared its golden petals to the sky.

One throb from star to flower seemed pulsing through The night; one living spirit blending all

In beauty and in mystery ever new;

One harmony divine through great and small.