LONDON:
HENRY J. DRANE & CO.
Paternoster Row
E.C.
New York: E.P. Dutton
& Co.
I.
What
dreams the flower cups enfold
Within
their fragrant leaves,
Of
meadow-ways grown fair with spring,
Soft
mists that April weaves;
And
cottage gardens where the scent
Of
flowers is with the wood-smoke blent.
The
ceaseless ripple of the brook,
Babbling
against the broken arch,
The
little firwood's tasselled spires,
The
cloud of verdure on the larch;
The
gold-green glimmer of the woods,
Where
tender twilight always broods.
C. Brooke.
II.
There is dew for the flow'ret,
And honey for the bee,
And bowers for the wild bird,
And love for you and me.
There are tears for the many,
And pleasures for the few,
But let the world pass on, dear,
There's love for me and you.
Hood.
III.
THE ROSE IN OCTOBER.
O late and sweet, too sweet, too
late!
What nightingale
will sing to thee?
The empty nest,
the shivering tree,
The dead leaves by the garden
gate,
And cawing crows for thee will
wait,
O sweet and late!
Where wert thou when the soft June
nights
Were faint with
perfume, glad with song?
Where wert thou
when the days were long
And steeped in Summer's young
delights?
What hopest thou now but checks and
slights,
Brief days, lone nights?
Stay, there's a gleam of Winter
wheat
Far on the hill;
down in the woods
A very heaven of
stillness broods;
And through the mellow sun's worn
heat,
Lo! tender pulses round thee
beat,
O late and sweet!
IV.
There's beauty all around our paths, if but our
watchful eyes
Can trace it midst familiar things and through
their lowly guise;
We may find it when a hedgerow showers its
blossoms o'er our
way,
Or a cottage window sparkles forth in the last
red light of day.
F. Hemans.
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The great bare branches of the
trees The hedge looked barren and prickly,
The violet's fragile petals |
It stole the familiar scent,
To give to the burdened heart
With only a cold north wind
In the world to take its part;
The flower died in the bleak March air,
And the heart went on its way;
The violet's life was blooming there,
And melting the snows away.
Caris Brooke.
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Yet nature holds a gracious hand, Here her long crests of fringèd crag |
Here its
calm strength her hillside rears,
From heaving slopes of clover;
Here still
the pewit pipes and flits
Within his furzy cover.
Here hums
the wild-bee in the thyme,
Here glows the royal heather;
And youth
comes back upon the breeze,
And youth's unclouded weather.
F.T. Palgrave.
VII.
AN APPEAL.
Dear, do not die!
Of cypresses and grassy graves sing I--
I hang with wreaths of song death's grief-grown cross,
And weep, to music, for Life's infinite loss,
And make the sweetest verse of bitterest woe,
--I know the way because I love you so;
But I have written griefs that I have known
In other's heart's blood, never in my own.
If you died what more could be sung or said?
I could not sing of Death if you were dead.
Dear, do not love!
Do not love me, keep still aloof, above!
While you and Love in far-off glory stand
Clear sounds the voice, and harp responds to hand.
But if you loved me--if you came quite near
And set Love 'mid life's common things and dear--
Mute would the voice be, Love would be too fair
To waste upon the wide world's empty air,
And, songless, I should droop and vainly pine--
I could not sing of Love if you were
mine! E. Nesbit.
VIII.
I know the way she went
Home with her maiden
posy,
For her feet have touch'd
the meadows
And left the daisies
rosy.
Tennyson.
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The cornfield now is still,
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X. As a twig trembles which a bird |
As clasps some lake, by gusts unriven,
The blue dome's measureless content,
So my soul held that moment's heaven;--
I only know she came and went.
As at
one bound, our swift Spring heaps
The orchard full of bloom and scent,
So
clove her May my wintry sleeps;--
I only know she came and went.
An
angel stood and met my gaze
Through the low doorway of my tent;
The
tent is struck, the vision stays;--
I only know she came and went.
Oh, when the room grows
slowly dim,
And life's last oil is
nearly spent,
One gush of light these
eyes will brim,
Only to think she came
and went.
J.R. Lowell.
XI.
EVENING SONG.
Waking, I dream of thy life that shall be
Never by sorrow made weary;
Earth shall be soft with love for thee,
Down-lined the nest of my
dearie.
Millions of flowers to gladden thy way,
Springing from seeds that my heart sets to-day.
Sleep, darling baby, baby!
Sleeping, dream thou of the Spirit of Spring--
Of sweets and of scents she is
bringing;
Just for the flowers' sake thrushes will sing,
Flowers blow for love of the
singing.
In the world's harmony take thou thy part,
So shall the springtide bloom in thy heart!
Sleep, darling baby, baby!
E. Nesbit.
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ow comes the first chill whisper of the |
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While yet the woods are
green and skies are blue; While under loads of corn great waggons bend, And sunshine makes us glad the whole day through. The trees are full of leaf and of delight, Yet through them sighs the forecast of the time When the lean branches shall be wondrous, white With winter's lovely radiant frost and rime.
The fallen leaves as yet are hardly
missed, |
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"Failure
again--failure for evermore!
Yet every spring millions of flowers
have birth, |
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No seed is lost--in earth's brown bosom cast; No deed is lost--of all the deeds we do; Each grows to fruit--is harvested at last, Haply in shape undreamed of, fair, and new. And, though we die before the end be won, |
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Our
deeds live on; and other men will cry, Seeing the end of what |
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XIII. Birds, joyous birds, of the wander- |
And what have ye found in the monarch's dome,
Since last ye traversed the blue sea's foam?
"We have found a change, we have found a pall,
And a gloom o'ershadowing the banquet's hall,
And a mark on the floor as of life-drops spilt,--
Naught looks the same, save the nest we built."
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O joyous birds! it hath still |
"A change we have found there--and many a change!
Faces and footsteps, and all things strange!
Gone are the heads of the silvery hair,
And the young that were, have a brow of care.
And the place is hushed where the children played--
Naught looks the same, save the nest we made."
F.
Hemans.
