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R-rhudrha, r-rhudrha, on I sweep,
Over hills and glens I leap,
R-rhudrha, r-rhudrha, never tired,
For my feet with steel are wired.

Fare thee well, my little chick,
Do well thy tasks and do them quick,—
R-rhudrha, r-rhudrha, keep it up,

R-rhudrha, r-rhudrha, dip a dup.

The Butterfly and the Snail.

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JOHN GAY.

S in the sunshine of the morn

A butterfly (but newly born)
Sat proudly perking on a rose,
With pert conceit his bosom glows;
His wings (all glorious to behold)
Bedropt with azure, jet and gold,
Wide he displays; the spangled dew
Reflects his eyes and various hue.
His now forgotten friend, a snail,
Beneath his house, with slimy trail,
Crawls o'er the grass, whom when he spies,
In wrath he to the gardener cries:
"What means yon peasant's daily toil,
From choking weeds to rid the soil?
Why wake you to the morning's care?
Why with new arts correct the year?
Why grows the peach's crimson hue?
And why the plum's inviting blue?
Were they to feast his taste design'd,
That vermin of voracious kind!
Crush then the slow, the pilfering race,
So purge thy garden from disgrace."
"What arrogance!" the snail replied;
"How insolent is upstart pride!

Hadst thou not thus, with insult vain
Provoked my patience to complain,

I had conceal'd thy meaner birth,

Nor trac'd thee to the scum of earth;

For scarce nine suns have wak'd the hours,
To swell the fruit, and paint the flowers,
Since I thy humbler life survey'd,
In base, in sordid guise array'd.

I own my humble life, good friend;
Snail was I born and snail shall end.
And what's a butterfly? At best
He's but a caterpillar drest;

And all thy race (a numerous seed)

Shall prove of caterpillar breed."

Ο

Fairy Song.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.

VER hill, over dale,

Through bush, through brier,

Over park, over pale,

Through flood, through fire, I do wander everywhere, Swifter than the moon's sphere; And I serve the fairy queen, To dew her orbs upon the green, The cowslips tall her pensioners be, In their gold coats spots you see; Those be rubies, fairy favors, In those freckles live their savors. I must go seek some dewdrops here, And hang a pearl in every cowslip's ear.

I

The Brook.

ALFRED TENNYSON.

COME from haunts of coot and hern,

I make a sudden sally,

And sparkle out among the fern,

To bicker down a valley.

By thirty hills I hurry down,
Or slip between the ridges,
By twenty thorps, a little town,
And half a hundred bridges.

Till last by Philip's farm I flow
To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on forever.

I chatter over stony ways,
In little sharps and trebles,
I bubble into eddying bays,
I babble on the pebbles.

With many a curve my banks I fret,
By many a field and fallow,

And many a fairy foreland set

With willow weed and mallow.

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