weeds that are burned up, any more than it is my gloom and regrets that are consumed. An April smoke makes a clean harvest.

I think April is the best month to be born in. One is just in time, so to speak, to catch the first train which is made up in this month. My April chickens always turn out best. They get an early start; they have rugged constitutions. Late chickens cannot stand the heavy dews, or withstand the predaceous hawks. In April all nature starts with you. You have not come out your hibernaculum too early or too late; the time is ripe, and if you do not keep pace with the rest, why, the fault is not in the season.

THERE

SPRING POEMS.

HERE is no month oftener on the tongues of the poets than April. It is the initiative month; it opens the door of the seasons; the interest and expectations of the untried, the untasted, lurk in it.

"From you have I been absent in the spring," says Shakespeare in one of his sonnets,

"When proud-pied April, dressed in all his trim,

Hath put a spirit of youth in everything,

That heavy Saturn laughed and leaped with him."

The following poem from Tennyson's "In Memoriam" might be headed " April," and serve as descriptive of parts of our season :—

"Now fades the last long streak of snow,

Now bourgeons every maze of quick About the flowering squares, and thick By ashen roots the violets blow.

Now rings the woodland loud and long,
The distance takes a lovelier hue,

And drown'd in yonder living blue
The lark becomes a sightless song.

Now dance the lights on lawn and lea,
The flocks are whiter down the vale,
And milkier every milky sail

On winding stream or distant sea;

Where now the sea-mew pipes, or dives
In yonder greening gleam, and fly

The happy birds, that change their sky
To build and brood; that live their lives

From land to land; and in my breast

Spring wakens too; and my regret
Becomes an April violet,

And buds and blossoms like the rest."

In the same poem the poet asks :—

"Can trouble live with April days?"

Yet they are not all jubilant chords that this season awakens. Occasionally there is an undertone of vague longing and sadness, akin to that which one experiences in autumn. Hope for a moment assumes the attitude of memory and stands with reverted look. The haze that in spring as well as in fall sometimes descends and envelops all

things, has in it in some way the sentiment of music, of melody, and awakens pensive thoughts. Elizabeth Akers, in her " April," has recognised and fully expressed this feeling. I give the first and last stanzas :

"The strange, sweet days are here again
The happy-mournful days;

The songs which trembled on our lips
Are half complaint, half praise.

Swing, robin, on the budded sprays,
And sing your blithest tune;-
Help us across these homesick days
Into the joy of June!"

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This poet has also given a touch of spring in her March," which, however, should be written "April" in the New England climate.

"The brown buds thicken on the trees,
Unbound the free streams sing,

As March leads forth across the leas
The wild and windy spring.

Where in the fields the melted snow
Leaves hollows warm and wet,
Ere many days will sweetly blow
The first blue violet."

But on the whole the poets have not been