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Exulting, rich beyond the wealth of kings,
I felt a sense of pain when I beheld

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The silent trees, and saw the intruding sky,
Then, dearest Maiden, move along these shades
In gentleness of heart; with gentle hand

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Touch - for there is a spirit in the woods.

- William Wordsworth.

THE SQUIRREL.

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THE

HE pretty, black Squirrel lives up in a

tree,

A little blithe creature as ever can be;
He dwells in the boughs where the
Stock-dove broods,

Far in the shades of the green sum

mer woods;

His food is the young juicy cones of

the Pine,

And the milky Beechnut is his bread and his wine.

In the joy of his nature he frisks with a bound
To the topmost twigs, and then to the ground;
Then up again, like a wingèd thing,

And from tree to tree with a vaulting spring;
Then he sits up aloft, and looks waggish and queer,
As if he would say, "Ay, follow me here!"
And then he grows pettish, and stamps his foot;
And then independently cracks his nut;
And thus he lives the whole summer through,
Without a care or a thought of sorrow.

But small as he is, he knows he may want,
In the bleak winter weather when food is scant,

So he finds a hole in an old tree's core,

And there makes his nest, and lays up his store;

And when cold winter comes, and the trees are bare, When the white snow is falling, and keen is the air, He heeds it not as he sits by himself,

In his warm little nest, with his nuts on his shelf,

O, wise little squirrel! no wonder that he

In the green summer woods is as blithe as can be.

Mary Howitt.

A FABLE.

THE MOUNTAIN AND THE SQUIRREL.

T Had a quarrel;

HE mountain and the squirrel

And the former called the latter "Little Prig;

Bun replied,

"You are doubtless very big;

But all sorts of things and weather

Must be taken in together,

To make up a year

And a sphere;

And I think it no disgrace

To occupy my place.

If I'm not so large as you,

You are not so small as I,
And not half so spry.

I'll not deny you make

A very pretty squirrel track ;

Talents differ; all is well and wisely put ;

If I cannot carry forests on my back,

Neither can you crack a nut."

- Ralph Waldo Emerson.

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TO THE FRINGED GENTIAN.

THOU

HOU blossom bright with autumn dew,

And colored with the heaven's own

blue,

That openest when the quiet light
Succeeds the keen and frosty night.

Thou comest not when violets lean
O'er wandering brooks and springs

unseen,

Or columbines, in purple dressed,
Nod o'er the ground-bird's hidden

nest.

Thou waitest late, and com'st alone, When woods are bare and birds are flown,

And frosts and shortening days por

tend

The aged year is near his end.

Then doth thy sweet and quiet eye
Look through its fringes to the sky,
Blue blue as if that sky let fall
A flower from its cerulean wall.

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.

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FADED LEAVES.

THE

HE hills are bright with maples yet,
But down the level land

The beech leaves rustle in the wind,

As dry and brown as sand.

The clouds in bars of rusty red
Along the hilltops glow,

And in the still, sharp air, the frost
Is like a dream of snow.

The berries of the brier-rose
Have lost their rounded pride;
The bitter-sweet chrysanthemums
Are drooping heavy-eyed.

The cricket grows more friendly now,
The dormouse, sly and wise,
Hiding away in the disgrace
Of nature from men's eyes.

The pigeons in black wavering lines
Are swinging toward the sun ;
And all the wide and withered fields
Proclaim the summer done.

His store of nuts and acorns now
The squirrel hastes to gain,
And sets his house in order for
The winter's dreary reign.

'Tis time to light the evening fire,
To read good books, to sing

The low and lovely songs, that breathe
Of the eternal spring.

- Alice Cary.

THE

THE DEATH OF THE FLOWERS.

HE melancholy days are come, the saddest of the year,
Of wailing winds, and naked woods, and meadows

brown and sear.

Heaped in the hollows of the grove, the autumn leaves lie

dead;

They rustle to the eddying gust, and to the rabbit's tread. The robin and the wren are flown, and from the shrubs

the jay,

And from the wood-top calls the crow through all the gloomy day.

Where are the flowers, the fair young flowers, that lately sprung and stood

In brighter light and softer airs, a beauteous sisterhood? Alas! they all are in their graves, the gentle race of flowers Are lying in their lowly beds, with the fair and good of ours. The rain is falling where they lie, but the cold November rain

Calls not from out the gloomy earth the lovely ones again.

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