Only grew and waved its wild sweet way;
No one came to note it day by day.

Earth, one time, put on a frolic mood,

Heaved the rocks, and changed the mighty motion
Of the deep, strong currents of the ocean;
Moved the plain, and shook the haughty w
Crushed the little fern in soft moist clay,
Covered it, and hid it safe away.

wood,

O the long, long centuries since that day!
O the agony, O life's bitter cost,

Since that useless little fern was lost!

Useless! Lost! There came a thoughtful
Searching Nature's secrets, far and deep;
From a fissure in a rocky steep

He withdrew a stone, o'er which there ran
Fairy pencilings, a quaint design,
Veinings, leafage, fibers clear and fine,
And the fern's life lay in every line!
So, I think, God hides some souls away,
Sweetly to surprise us the last day.

man

- Mary Bolles Branch.

THE ALPS.

A REVERIE.

HE mountains of this glorious land

ΤΗ

Are conscious beings to mine eye, When at the break of day they stand Like giants, looking through the sky,

To hail the sun's unrisen car,
That gilds their diadems of snow;
While one by one, as star by star,
Their peaks in ether glow.

Their silent presence fills my soul,
When, to the horizontal ray,
The many-tinctured vapors roll
In evanescent wreaths away,

And leave them naked on the scene,

The emblems of eternity,

The same as they have ever been,

And shall for ever be.

Yet through the valley while I range,
Their cliffs, like images in dreams,

Color and shape and station change,

Here crags and caverns, woods and streams,

And seas of adamantine ice,

With gardens, vineyards, fields embraced,
Open a way to Paradise,

Through all the splendid waste.

The sun in morning freshness shines;
At noon behold his orb o'ercast;
Hollow and dreary o'er the pines,
Like distant ocean, moans the blast.
The mountains darken at the sound,
Put on their armor, and anon,
In panoply of clouds wrapt round,
Their forms from sight are gone.

-James Montgomery.

THE CHILD'S WORLD.

REAT, wide, beautiful, wonderful World,
With the wonderful water round you curled,
And the wonderful grass upon your breast,
World, you are beautifully dressed '

The wonderful air is over me,

And the wonderful wind is shaking the tree;
It walks on the water, and whirls the mills,
And talks to itself on the tops of the hills.

You, friendly Earth, how far do you go,

With the wheat-fields that nod, and the rivers that flow, With cities and gardens, and cliffs and isles,

And people upon you for thousands of miles?

Ah! you are so great, and I am so small,
I hardly can think of you, World, at all;
And yet, when I said my prayers to-day,

A whisper within me seemed to say,

"You are more than the Earth, though you're such a dot! You can love and think, and the Earth cannot!"

- Selected.

THE FLAG IN NATURE.

LL nature sings wildly the song of the free,

A The red, white, and blue floats o'er land and o'er sea:

The white

in each billow that breaks on the shore, The blue in the arching that canopies o'er The land of our birth, in its glory outspread And sunset dyes deepen and glow into red;

Day fades into night, and the red stripes retire,
But stars o'er the blue light their sentinel fires,
And though night be gloomy, with clouds overspread,
Each star holds its place in the field overhead ;
When scatter the clouds and the tempest is through,
We count every star in the field of the blue.

From "Poems of Home and Country."

- Samuel Francis Smith.

I

MY COUNTRY.

LOVE my country's pine-clad hills,
Her thousand bright and gushing rills,
Her sunshine and her storms;

Her rough and rugged rocks that rear
Their hoary heads high in the air
In wild, fantastic forms.

I love her rivers, deep and wide,
Those mighty streams that seaward glide
To seek the ocean's breast;
Her smiling fields, her pleasant vales,
Her shady dells, her flowery dales,
Her haunts of peaceful rest.

I love her forests, dark and lone;
For there the wild bird's merry tone
Is heard from morn till night,

And there are lovelier flowers, I ween,
Than e'er in Eastern land were seen,
In varied colors bright.

Her forests and her valleys fair,

Her flowers that scent the morning air,

Have all their charms for me;
But more I love my country's name,

Those words that echo deathless fame, -
"The land of liberty."

- Hesperion.

AN AUTUMN SUNSET.

WHAT

WHAT wildfire runs about the stooping sheaves, Climbs up the hill, and dips in fervid bath The tender promise of the aftermath,

And fans to redder flame the frost-bright leaves
On forest bough and path?

What liquid amber overlays the stream,
And paints the quick, dark swallows as they dart
Through windless heaven, gathering to depart,
And gilds the web and floating motes that seem
A crowd in airy mart?

What flame has lit a lamp in window-panes
That westward look, and poured such glamour down
Upon the roofs and gables of the town,

That now they stand in pomp of Moorish fanes

And towers of old renown?