Ye painted moths, your gold-eyed plumage furl,
Bow your wide horns, your spiral trunks uncurl;
Glitter, ye glowworms, on your mossy beds;
Descend, ye spiders, on your lengthened threads;
Slide here, ye horned snails, with varnished shells;
Ye bee-nymphs, listen in your waxen cells!

THE FIRST VIOLET

MATTED with yellow grass the fields lie bare,
Wind-swept and bleak, and desolate with rain;
Through misty distances, the leafless trees

Stretch gaunt, bare arms, and writhe as if in pain;
And, save the fitful sobbing of the wind,

No sound, no life in all this lonesome waste. Oh hopeless day, that ever thou wert born! Pass on! pass on! and to thine ending haste. Pass on! for never in the count of Time Came day to me more full of evil things; Old memories of loss, of death, and pain,

Start from their sleep and wound with freshest stings; And here I stand alone, dear God, alone,

A pitiless gray sky above my head;

Below

ah! what is this? Thou fairest flower, What dost thou here upon this death-cold bed?

Blue, bright as hope, or rifts in summer clouds,
Fresh, pure, unsmirched by stain of rain or clay,
Thou dream of radiant suns, of soft spring skies,
What dost thou here, mocked by this dismal day?
But yet methinks a light born of thy grace

Pierces the gloom, as morning pierces night;
Sweet messenger, hast thou some sign for me
Some blest Evangel, if I read aright?

The waking pulse of Nature throbs in thee,

,

And through the ice-bound mould, so grim and bare, Thy tender shoots have pierced, thy blooms unfold, Amidst this sullen waste the one thing fair;

So delicate, so frail, and yet so strong

To bear the gracious message of the spring; Herald of life which underlies all death,

We dimly read the riddle that you bring.

The violet droops within this bitter blast

(All first great truths the martyr's crown must bear). Blow wind, fall snow, we know no shroud can still

The life which stirs beneath this frozen air.

Dear God! I read upon this petaled page

Thy changeless record in the changeful hours; Day follows night Thou turnest blooms to dust, But from that tear-wet dust Thou bringest flowers.

Fairer and purer for the vanished night ·

The long, lone wintry night when hope was o'er, And Love stood shivering by some open grave, And wrote upon its margin "Nevermore”; Blind Love, who could not see beyond the mould And watch the new life quicken from decay, Who could not trust the Lord who rules the night To bring the blossoms of some fresh spring day. MARIE B. WILLIAMS.

THE VIOLET

O FAINT, delicious, spring-time violet!

Thine odor, like a key,

Turns noiselessly in memory's wards to let
A thought of sorrow free.

The breath of distant fields upon my brow
Blows through that open door

The sound of wind-borne bells, more sweet and low
And sadder than of yore.

It comes afar, from that beloved place,

And that beloved hour,

When life hung ripening in love's golden grace,
Like grapes above a bower.

A spring goes singing through its reedy grass;
The lark sings o'er my head,

Drowned in the sky

I would that I were dead!

Why hast thou opened that forbidden door
From which I ever flee?

O vanished joy! O Love, that art no more,
Let my vexed spirit be!

O violet! thy odor through my brain
Hath searched and stung to grief

This sunny day, as if a curse did stain
Thy velvet leaf.

WILLIAM WETMORE STORY.

ORCHID

FROM what strange land beyond our ken
Com'st thou, O creature winged in white ?
Art fairy from some distant fen?

Art saint from far-off mountain height?

Or art thou ghost of wandering bird,

Caught on a light stem's green-flushed tips?
Sure never sound hath mortal heard
Like music of thy wind-blown lips!

Perchance thou 'rt butterfly, escaped
From swinging crimson-flecked cocoon;
Thy pale wings like a crescent shaped
To greet the pallid crescent moon.

What angel from the clouds bent down
To kiss thy white face floating by,
And hold thee, who wert heaven's own,
And now art half of earth, half sky.

Thou creature of another sphere,

I scarcely breathe lest thou should'st fade!

How can'st thou find companion here,
Where thy white sheen makes all else fade ?

Ah, fold thy wings, and loving eyes

Shall watch thy trysting with the moon ;

And then, thou darling of the skies,
Fly far, with other joys of June.

LYDIA AVERY COONLEY WARD.

THE DAISY.

Of all the floures in the mede,

Than love I most these floures white and rede,
Soch that men callen daisies in our town;
To hem I have so great affection,

As I said erst, whan comen is the May,
That in my bedde there daweth me no day
That I nam up and walking in the mede;
To seene this flour agenst the Sunne sprede,
Whan it up riseth early by the morow,
That blissful sight softeneth all my sorow,
So glad am I whan that I have the presence
Of it, to done it all reverence;

And ever I love it, and ever ylike newe,
And ever shall, till that mine herte die ;

All swere I not, of this I will not lie.

GEOFFREY CHAUCER (Legend of Good Women).

DAFFODILS

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, 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

În 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.

TO THE FRINGED GENTIAN
THOU blossom bright with autumn dew,
And colored with the heaven's own blue,
That openest when the quiet light
Succeeds the keen and frosty night,

Thou comest not when violets lean
O'er wandering brooks and springs unseen
Or columbines, in purple dressed,
Nod o'er the ground-bird's hidden nest.
Thou waitest late and com'st alone,
When woods are bare and birds are flown,
And frost and shortening days portend
The aged year is near his end.

Then doth thy sweet and quiet eye
Look through its fringes to the sky,
Blue - blue as if that sky let fall
A flower from its cerulean wall.

I would that thus, when I shall see
The hour of death draw near to me,
Hope, blossoming within my heart,
May look to heaven as I depart.

WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT,

FOUR-LEAF CLOVER*

I KNOW a place where the sun is like gold,
And the cherry blossoms burst with snow,
And down underneath is the loveliest nook,
Where the four-leaf clovers grow.

One leaf is for hope, and one is for faith
And one is for love, you know,

And God put another in for luck,

If you search you will find where they grow.

But you must have hope, and you must have faith,
You must love and be strong-
and so,
If you work, if you wait, you will find the place
Where the four-leaf clovers grow.

ELLA HIGGINSON.

TO A WIND-FLOWER

TEACH me the secret of thy loveliness,
That, being made wise, I may aspire to be
As beautiful in thought, and so express
Immortal truths to earth's mortality;

*Copyright, 1898, by the Macmillan Company.