LOVE OF NATURE.

LAD sight wherever new with old

GLA

Is joined through some dear home-born tie;
The life of all that we behold

Depends upon that mystery.
Vain is the glory of the sky,

The beauty vain of field and grove,

Unless, while with admiring eye

We gaze, we also learn to love.

INSIGHT.

WORDSWORTH.

I

GRIEVE not that ripe knowledge takes away

The charm that Nature to my childhood wore,

For, with that insight, cometh, day by day,

A greater bliss than wonder was before;
The real doth not clip the poet's wings,-
To win the secret of a weed's plain heart
Reveals some clue to spiritual things,
And stumbling guess becomes firm-footed art.
Flowers are not flowers unto the poet's eyes;
Their beauty thrills him by an inward sense:
He knows that outward seemings are but lies,
Or, at the most, but earthly shadows, whence
The soul that looks within for truth may guess
The presence of some wondrous heavenliness.

JAMES RUSSELL Lowell.

LESSONS FROM THE GORSE.

'To win the secret of a weed's plain heart.'-Lowell,

OUNTAIN gorses, ever golden,

Μου

Cankered not the whole year long!

Do ye teach us to be strong,

Howsoever pricked and holden

Like your thorny blooms, and so

Trodden on by rain and snow,

Up the hill-side of this life, as bleak as where ye grow?

Mountain blossoms, shining blossoms,

Do ye teach us to be glad

When no summer can be had,
Blooming in our inward bosoms?
Ye, whom God preserveth still,
Set as lights upon a hill,

Tokens to the wintry earth that Beauty liveth still!

Mountain gorses, do ye teach us

From that academic chair

Canopied with azure air,

That the wisest word man reaches
Is the humblest he can speak?
Ye, who live on mountain peak,
Yet live low along the ground, beside the

grasses meek!

Mountain gorses, since Linnæus
Knelt beside you on the sod,
For your beauty thanking God,-

For your teaching, ye should see us
Bowing in prostration new!

Whence arisen,-if one or two

Drops be on our cheeks-O world, they are not tears

but dew.

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.

MY DOVES.

'O Weisheit! du red'st wie eine Taube!'-GOETHE,

MY little doves have left a nest

Upon an Indian tree,

Whose leaves fantastic take their rest,
Or motion, from the sea;
For, ever there the sea-winds go
With sun-lit paces to and fro.

The tropic flowers looked up to it,
The tropic stars looked down,
And there my little doves did sit,
With feathers softly brown,

And glittering eyes that showed their right
To general Nature's deep delight.

And God them taught, at every close
Of murmuring waves beyond
And green leaves round, to interpose
Their choral voices fond,
Interpreting that love must be

The meaning of the earth and sea.

Fit ministers! Of living loves

Theirs hath the calmest fashion,
Their living voice the likest moves
To lifeless intonation,

The lovely monotone of springs
And winds and such insensate things.

My little doves were ta'en away

From that glad nest of theirs,

Across an ocean rolling grey,
And tempest-clouded airs;

My little doves, who lately knew
The sky and wave by warmth and blue

And now, within the city prison,

In mist and chillness pent,

With sudden upward look they listen
For sounds of past content,

For lapse of water, swell of breeze,
Or nut-fruit falling from the trees.

The stir without the glow of passion,
The triumph of the mart,

The gold and silver as they clash on
Man's cold metallic heart,

The roar of wheels, the cry for bread,
These only sounds are heard instead.

Yet still, as on my human hand
Their fearless heads they lean,
And almost seem to understand
What human musings mean,

(Their eyes with such a plaintive shine Are fastened upwardly to mine!)

Soft falls their chant as on the nest
Beneath the sunny zone;

For love that stirred it in their breast
Has not aweary grown,

And 'neath the city's shade can keep The well of music clear and deep.

And love, that keeps the music, fills
With pastoral memories;
All echoings from out the hills,
All droppings from the skies,

All flowings from the wave and wind,
Remembered in their chant I find.

So teach ye me the wisest part,
My little doves! to move
Along the city ways with heart
Assured by holy love,

And vocal with such songs as own
A fountain to the world unknown.

'Twas hard to sing by Babel's stream -
More hard, in Babel's street:
But if the soulless creatures deem
Their music not unmeet

For sunless walls-let us begin,

Who wear immortal wings within!