A Chanted Calendar

Here is the Year's Processional in verse; the story of her hours, her days, her seasons, told as only poets can, because they see and hear things not revealed to you and me, and are able by their magic to make us sharers in the revelation. Read the first six poems and ask yourself whether you have ever realized the glories of the common day; from the moment when morning from her orient chambers comes, and the lark at heaven's gate sings, to the hour when the moon, unveiling her peerless light, throws her silver mantle o'er the dark, and the firmament glows with living sapphires.

It is the task of poetry not only to say noble things, but to say them nobly; having beautiful fancies, to clothe them in beautiful phrases, and if you search these poems you will find some of the most wonderful wordpictures in the English language. How charming Drayton's description of the summer breeze:

"The wind had no more strength than this,

That leisurely it blew,

To make one leaf the next to kiss
That closely by it grew.”

" June

If the day is dreary you need only read Lowell's Weather," and like the bird sitting at his door in the sun, atilt like a blossom among the leaves, your illumined being will overrun with the deluge of sum

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mer it receives."
Then turn the page; the picture fades as you read Trow-
bridge's "Midwinter." The speckled sky is dim; the light
flakes falter and fall slow; the chickadee sings cheerily; lo,
the magic touch again and the house mates sit, as Emerson
saw them,

"Around the radiant fireplace enclosed
In a tumultuous privacy of storm.”

A CHANTED CALENDAR

Daybreak

DAY had awakened all things that be,

The lark, and the thrush, and the swallow free,
And the milkmaid's song, and the mower's scythe,
And the matin bell and the mountain bee:
Fireflies were quenched on the dewy corn,
Glowworms went out, on the river's brim,
Like lamps which a student forgets to trim:
The beetle forgot to wind his horn,

The crickets were still in the meadow and hill:
Like a flock of rooks at a farmer's gun,
Night's dreams and terrors, every one,
Fled from the brains which are its prey,
From the lamp's death to the morning ray.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.

Morning

Now morning from her orient chambers came,
And her first footsteps touch'd a verdant hill:
Crowning its lawny crest with amber flame,
Silvering the untainted gushes of its rill,
Which, pure from mossy beds of simple flowers.
By many streams a little lake did fill,

A Which round its marge reflected woven bowers, Chanted And, in its middle space, a sky that never lowers

Calendar

JOHN KEATS.

A Morning Song

Hark! hark! the lark at heaven's gate sings,

And Phoebus 'gins arise,

His steeds to water at those springs

On chaliced flowers that lies;

And winking Mary-buds begin
To ope their golden eyes:
With every thing that pretty bin,
My lady sweet, arise:

Arise, arise!

From "Cymbeline.'

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.

Evening in Paradise

Now came still Evening on, and Twilight gray
Had in her sober livery all things clad;
Silence accompanied; for beast and bird-
They to their grassy couch, these to their nests,
Were slunk, all but the wakeful nightingale;
She all night long her amorous descant sung;
Silence was pleased: now glowed the firmament.
With living sapphires: Hesperus, that led
The starry host, rode brightest, till the Moon,