Green Things Growing

"Oh, the fluttering and the pattering of those green things growing!

66

66

How they talk each to each, when none of us are know

ing; "

Every clod feels a stir of might,

An instinct within it that reaches and towers,
And groping blindly above it for light,
Climbs to a soul in grass and flowers;

Lean against a streamlet's rushy banks,

And watch intently Nature's gentle doings;

They will be found softer than ringdoves' cooings.”

"Dear, tell them, that if eyes were made for seeing, Then beauty is its own excuse for being."

"They know the time to go!

The fairy clocks strike their inaudible hour
In field and woodland, and each punctual flower
Bows at the signal an obedient head

And hastes to bed."

"If so the sweetness of the wheat Into my soul might pass,

And the clear courage of the grass."

56 Flower in the crannied wall,

I pluck you out of the crannies;
Hold you here, root and all, in my hand,
Little flower-but if I could understand
What you are, root and all, and all in all,
I should know what God and man is.”

III

GREEN THINGS GROWING

Green Things Growing

OH, the green things growing, the green thing growing,

The faint sweet smell of the green things growing!

I should like to live, whether I smile or grieve, Just to watch the happy life of my green things growing.

Oh, the fluttering and the pattering of those green things growing!

How they talk cach to each, when none of us are knowing;

In the wonderful white of the weird moonlight Or the dim dreamy dawn when the cocks are crowing.

I love, I love them so,-my green things grow

ing!

And I think that they love me, without false

showing;

Green For by many a tender touch, they comfort me so Things

Growing

much,

With the soft mute comfort of green things

growing.

DINAH MARIA MULOCK.

The Sigh of Silence

I stood tiptoe upon a little hill;

The air was cooling and so very still,

That the sweet buds which with a modest pride
Pull droopingly, in slanting curve aside,
Their scanty-leaved, and finely-tapering stems,
Had not yet lost their starry diadems

Caught from the early sobbing of the morn.
The clouds were pure and white as flocks new-
shorn,

And fresh from the clear brook; sweetly they

slept

On the blue fields of heaven, and then there crept
A little noiseless noise among the leaves,
Born of the very sigh that silence heaves;
For not the faintest motion could be seen
Of all the shades that slanted o'er the green.

JOHN KEATS.