SONG AND LAUGHTER.

BIRDS ARE SINGING ROUND MY WINDOW.

RICHARD HENRY STODDARD.

BIRDS are singing round my window
Songs the sweetest ever heard,
And I set my cage there daily,
Yet I never catch a bird.

So with thoughts my brain is peopled,
And they sing there all day long,
But they will not fold their pinions
In the little cage of song.

THE BUGLE SONG.

ALFRED TENNYSON.

THE splendor falls on castle walls

And snowy summits old in story:
The long light shakes across the lakes

And the wild cataract leaps in glory.

Blow, bugle, blow! set the wild echoes flying,

Blow, bugle; answer, echoes - dying, dying, dying!

Oh, hark! oh, hear! how thin and clear,
And thinner, clearer, farther going!
Oh, sweet and far, from cliff and scar

The horns of Elfland faintly blowing!
Blow! let us hear the purple glens replying:
Blow, bugle; answer, echoes-dying, dying, dying!

They faint on hill or field or river:

Our echoes roll from soul to soul,

And grow forever and forever.

Blow, bugle, blow! set the wild echoes flying,
And answer, echoes, answer-dying, dying, dying!

THE HUNTER'S SONG.

BARRY CORNWALL.

RISE! Sleep no more! 'Tis a noble morn!
The dews hang thick on the fringed thorn,
And the frost shrinks back like a beaten hound,
Under the steaming, steaming ground.
Behold where the billowy clouds flow by,
And leave us alone in the clear gray sky!
Our horses are ready and steady, -So, ho!
I'm
gone like a dart from the Tartar's bow.
Hark, hark!- who calleth the maiden Morn
From her sleep in the woods and the stubble corn?
The horn the horn!

The

merry sweet ring of the hunter's horn!