THE FLOWERS

To our private taste, there is always something a little exotic, almost artificial, in songs which, under an English aspect and dress, are yet so manifestly the product of other skies. They affect us like translations; the very fauna and flora are alien, remote; the dog's-tooth violet is but an ill substitute for the rathe primrose, nor can we ever believe that the wood-robin sings as sweetly in April as the English thrush.-THE ATHENEUM.

Buy my English posies!
Kent and Surrey may—
Violets of the Undercliff

Wet with Channel spray;
Cowslips from a Devon combe-
Midland furze afire —

Buy my English posies

And I'll sell your heart's desire!

Buy my English posies!

You that scorn the May,

Won't you greet a friend from home

Half the world away?

Green against the draggled drift,

Faint and frail and first

Buy my Northern blood-root

And I'll know where you were nursed:

Robin down the logging-road whistles, "Come to me!"

Spring has found the maple-grove, the sap is running free;

All the winds of Canada call the ploughing-rain.

Take the flower and turn the hour, and kiss your love again!

Buy my English posies!

Here's to match your need

Buy a tuft of royal heath,
Buy a bunch of weed
White as sand of Muysenberg

Spun before the gale—
Buy my heath and lilies

And I'll tell you whence you hail!

Under hot Constantia broad the vineyards lieThroned and thorned the aching berg props the speckless sky

Slow below the Wynberg firs trails the tilted wainTake the flower and turn the hour, and kiss your love again!

Buy my English posies!

You that will not turn-
Buy my hot-wood clematis,
Buy a frond o' fern

Gathered where the Erskine leaps

Down the road to Lorne

Buy my Christmas creeper

And I'll say where you were born!

West away from Melbourne dust holidays beginThey that mock at Paradise woo at Cora Lynn— Through the great South Otway gums sings the great South Main

Take the flower and turn the hour, and kiss your love again!

Buy my English posies!

Here's your choice unsold!
Buy a blood-red myrtle-bloom,
Buy the kowhai's gold
Flung for gift on Taupo's face,

Sign that spring is come

Buy my clinging myrtle

And I'll give you back your home!

Broom behind the windy town; pollen o' the pineBell-bird in the leafy deep where the ratas twineFern above the saddle-bow, flax upon the plainTake the flower and turn the hour, and kiss your love again!

Buy my English posies!

Ye that have your own
Buy them for a brother's sake
Overseas, alone.

Weed ye trample underfoot

Floods his heart abrim-
Bird ye never heeded,

Oh, she calls his dead to him!

Far and far our homes are set round the Seven Seas;
Woe for us if we forget, we that hold by these!
Unto each his mother-beach, bloom and bird and
land-

Masters of the Seven Seas, oh, love and understand.

THE LAST RHYME OF TRUE THOMAS

THE King has called for priest and cup,
The King has taken spur and blade

To dub True Thomas a belted knight,

And all for the sake o' the songs he made.

They have sought him high, they have sought him low,
They have sought him over down and lea;
They have found him by the milk-white thorn
That guards the gates o' Faerie.

'Twas bent beneath and blue above,

Their eyes were held that they might not see
The kine that grazed beneath the knowes,
Oh, they were the Queens o' Faerie!

"Now cease your song," the King he said, "Oh, cease your song and get you dight To vow your vow and watch your arms, For I will dub you a belted knight.

"For I will give you a horse o' pride,

Wi' blazon and spur and page and squire;