I would that thus, when I shall see
The hour of death draw near to me,
Hope, blossoming within my heart,
May look to heaven as I depart.

WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.

Green Things Growing

To a Mountain Daisy

On Turning One Down With the Plough in April.
Wee, modest, crimson-tippèd flow'r,
Thou's met me in an evil hour;
For I maun crush amang the stoure
Thy slender stem;

To spare thee now is past my pow'r,
Thou bonnie gem!

'Alas! it's no thy neebor sweet,

The bonnie lark, companion meet!

Bending thee 'mang the dewy weet,

Wi' spreckl'd breast,

When upward-springing, blithe, to greet

The purpling east.

Cauld blew the bitter-biting north

Upon thy early, humble birth;

Yet cheerfully thou glinted forth

Amid the storm,

Scarce rear'd above the parent earth

Thy tender form.

Green

The flaunting flow'rs our gardens yield,

High shelt'ring woods and wa's maun shield;

But thou, beneath the random bield

O' clod or stane,

Adorns the histie stibble-field,

Unseen, alane.

There, in thy scanty mantle clad,
Thy snawie bosom sun-ward spread,
Thou lifts thy unassuming head

Its cup-shaped blossoms, brimmed with dew,

Like pearly chalices,

Hold cooling fountains, to refresh

The butterflies and bees;

And humming-birds on vibrant wings

Hover, to drink at ease.

And up and down the garden-beds,

Mid box and thyme and yew,
And spikes of purple lavender,

And spikes of larkspur blue,
The bind-weed tendrils win their way,
And find a passage through.

With touches coaxing, delicate,

And arts that never tire,

They tie the rose-trees each to each,

The lilac to the brier,

Making for graceless things a grace,

With steady, sweet desire.

Till near and far the garden growths,
The sweet, the frail, the rude,
Draw close, as if with one consent,
And find each other good,

Held by the bind-weed's pliant loops,
In a dear brotherhood.

Like one fair sister, slender, arch,
A flower in bloom and poise,
Gentle and merry and beloved,
Making no stir or noise,

But swaying, linking, blessing all

A family of boys.

Green Things Growing

SUSAN COOLIDGE.

Green

Things Growing

The Rhodora

In May, when sea-winds pierced our solitudes,
I found the fresh Rhodora in the woods,
Spreading its leafless blooms in a damp nook,
To please the desert and the sluggish brook:
The purple petals, fallen in the pool
Made the black waters with their beauty gay;
Here might the red-bird come his plumes to cool,
And court the flower that cheapens his array.
Rhodora! if the sages ask thee why

This charm is wasted on the earth and sky,
Dear, tell them, that if eyes were made for seeing,
Then beauty is its own excuse for being.

Why thou wert there, O rival of the rose!
I never thought to ask; I never knew,
But in my simple ignorance suppose

The selfsame Power that brought me there,
brought you.

RALPH WALDO EMERSon.

A Song of Clover

I wonder what the Clover thinks,-
Intimate friend of Bob-o'-links,
Lover of Daisies slim and white,
Waltzer with Buttercups at night;
Keeper of Inn for traveling Bees,
Serving to them wine-dregs and lees-

Left by the Royal Humming Birds,

Green

Who sip and pay with fine-spun words;

Fellow with all the lowliest,

Peer of the gayest and the best;
Comrade of winds, beloved of sun,
Kissed by the Dew-drops, one by one;
Prophet of Good-Luck mystery

By sign of four which few may see;
Symbol of Nature's magic zone,

One out of three, and three in one;
Emblem of comfort in the speech
Which poor men's babies early reach;
Sweet by the roadsides, sweet by rills,
Sweet in the meadows, sweet on hills,
Sweet in its white, sweet in its red,—
Oh, half its sweetness cannot be said;-
Sweet in its every living breath,
Sweetest, perhaps, at last, in death!
Oh! who knows what the Clover thinks?
No one! unless the Bob-o'-links!

66 SAXE HOLM.”

To the Dandelion

(Extract)

Dear common flower, that grow'st beside the

way,

Fringing the dusty road with harmless gold,
First pledge of blithesome May,