A tender glory, and the balmy thorn

Spreads his white banner to the breath of morn-
Sporting a coronal of living light,

Strung from the dew-drops of the weeping night.
'Tis sweet to trace the footsteps of the spring
O'er the green earth-to see her lightly fling
Her flowery wreaths on Nature's breathing shrine,
And round the hoary woods her garlands twine;
To hear her voice in every passing breeze
That stirs the new-born foliage on the trees.
'Tis sweet to hear the song of birds arise
At early dawn, to gaze on cloudless skies,
To scatter round you, as you lightly pass,
A shower of diamonds from each blade of grass;
And while your footsteps press the dewy sod,
"To look through Nature up to Nature's God."

THE GRASSHOPPER AND THE CRICKET.

THE poetry of earth is never dead:

When ail the birds are faint with the hot sun, And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead : That is the grasshopper's-he takes the lead In summer luxury-he has never done

With his delights, for when tired out with fun, He rests at ease beneath some pleasant weed. The poetry of earth is ceasing never:

On a lone winter evening, when the frost Has wrought a silence, from the stove there shrills The Cricket's song, in warmth increasing ever,

And seems to one in drowsiness half lost, The grasshopper's among the grassy hills.

Keats.

THE HOMES OF ENGLAND.

THE stately Homes of England,
How beautiful they stand!
Amidst their tall ancestral trees,

O'er all the pleasant land.

The deer across their greensward bound
Through shade and sunny gleam,

And the swan glides past them with the sound
Of some rejoicing stream.

The merry Homes of England!

Around their hearths by night,

What gladsome looks of household love
Meet in the ruddy light!

There woman's voice flows forth in song,

Or childish tale is told;

Or lips move tunefully along

Some glorious page of old.

The blessed Homes of England!

How softly on their bowers

Is laid the holy quietness

That breathes from Sabbath hours!
Solemn, yet sweet, the church bell's chime
Floats through their woods at morn;

All other sounds, in that still time,
Of breeze and leaf are born.

The cottage Homes of England!

By thousands on her plains,

They are smiling o'er the silvery brooks,
And round the hamlet-fanes.

Through glowing orchards forth they peep,

Each from its nook of leaves;

And fearless there the lowly sleep,
As the bird beneath their eaves.

The free, fair Homes of England!
Long, long in hut and hall,

May hearts of native proof be reared
To guard each hallowed wall!
And green for ever be the groves,
And bright the flowery sod,

Where first the child's glad spirit loves

Its country and its God!

Mrs. Hemans.

WISHES.

LAID in my quiet bed, in study as I were,

I saw within my troubled head a heap of thoughts appear,

And every thought did show so lively in mine eyes, That now I sighed, and then I smiled, as cause of thoughts did rise.

I saw the little boy, in thought how oft that he
Did wish of God, to 'scape the rod, a tall

to be;

young man

The young man eke that feels his bones with pain

opprest,

How he would be a rich old man, to live and lie at rest!

The rich old man, that sees his end draw on so sore, How would he be a boy again to live so much the

more.

Whereat full oft I smiled to see how all those three,
From boy to man, from man to boy, would chop and
change degree.
Earl of Surrey.

THE FROST SPIRIT.

HE comes he comes-the frost spirit comes!
You may trace his footsteps now

On the naked woods, and the blasted fields,
And the broad hill's withered brow.
He has smitten the leaves of the grey old trees,
Where their pleasant green came forth,
And the winds which follow wherever he goes,
Have shaken them down to earth.

He comes he comes-the frost spirit comes!
From the frozen Labrador-

From the icy bridge of the Northern Seas,
Which the white bear wanders o'er—
Where the fisherman's sail is stiff with ice,
And the luckless forms below
In the sunless cold of the atmosphere
Into marble statues grow!

He comes he comes-the frost spirit comes!
On the rushing northern blast,

And the dark Norwegian pines have bowed
As his fearful breath went past.
With an unscorched wing he has hurried on,
Where the fires of Hecla glow

On the darkly beautiful sky above
And the ancient ice below.

He comes-he comes-1
-the frost spirit comes!
And the quiet lake shall feel
The torpid touch of his glazing breath,
And ring to the skater's heel;

And the streams which danced on the broken rocks

Or sang to the leaning grass,

hall bow again to the winter's chain,
And in mournful silence pass.

He comes-he comes-the frost spirit comes!
Let us meet him as we may,

nd turn with the light of the parlour fire

His evil power away;

and gather closer the circle round,

When that fire-light dances high,

And laugh at the shriek of the baffled fiend

As his sounding wing goes by!

THE FAIRIES.

Up the airy mountain,
Down the rushy glen,
We daren't go a-hunting
For fear of little men;
Wee folk, good folk,
Trooping all together;
Green jacket, red

сар,

And white owl's feather!

Down along the rocky shore
Some make their home,

They live on crispy pancakes
Of yellow tide-foam;

Some in the reeds

Of the black mountain-lake,
With frogs for their watch-dogs,

All night awake.

High on the hill-top
The old king sits;

Mellen