L NATURE. Nature's Chain. OOK round our world; behold the chain of love Combining all below and all above; See plastic nature working to this end, All forms that perish other forms supply, We found while listening by a hedge To hear a merry ploughman sing. And from the earth the plough turned up Sends forth from many a woodland dell. We saw the yellow wall-flower wave And through the gloomy arches watched We heard the speckled-breasted lark And tried to find it; but the sky Was filled with clouds of dazzling light, We saw young rabbits near the wood, And heard a pheasant's wings go "whirr!" We came back by the village fields, The orchards red and white with blossom. Were I to tell you all we saw, I'm sure that it would take me hours; For the whole landscape was alive With bees, and birds, and buds, and flowers. -Thomas Miller. THEY They Come! The Merry Summer Months. HEY come! the merry summer months of beauty, song, and flowers; They come! the gladsome months that bring thick leafiness to bowers. Up, up, my heart! and walk abroad; fling cark and care aside; Seek silent hills, or rest thyself where peaceful waters glide; Or, underneath the shadow vast of patriarchal tree, Scan through its leaves the cloudless sky in rapt tranquility. The grass is soft, its velvet touch is grateful to the hand; And, like the kiss of maiden love, the breeze is sweet and bland; The daisy and the buttercup are nodding courteously; It stirs their blood with kindest love, to bless and welcome thee; And mark how with thine own thin locks--they now are silvery gray That blissful breeze is wantoning, and whispering, "Be gay!" S' Summer Morning. [From "The Seasons."] HORT is the doubtful empire of the night; White break the clouds away. With quickened step, The dripping rock, the mountain's misty top, Roused by the cock, the soon-clad shepherd leaves His mossy cottage, where with peace he dwells; And from the crowded fold, in order, drives A Summer Noon. HO has not dreamed a world of bliss WHO On a bright sunny noon like this, Who has not loved at such an hour, Through the tall foxglove's crimson bloom, Soak up the sunshine; sleeps the brimming tide Save when the wedge-shaped wake in silence passes Of some slow water-rat; whose sinuous glide Wavers the long green sedge's shade from side to side; But up the west, like a rock-shivered surge, Climbs a great cloud edged with sun-whitened sprays, Huge whirls in the toil toppling o'er its verge, And falling in streams, and yet it climbs alway. Suddenly all the sky is hid As with the shutting of a lid, One by one great drops are falling Doubtful and slow; Down the pane they are crookedly crawling, Slowly the circles widen on the river, Widen and mingle, one and all; Here and there the slenderer flowers shiver, Struck by an icy rain-drop's fall. Now on the hills I hear the thunder mutter, The upturned leaves first whiten and flutter, Up from the stream with sluggish flap And tramples the grass with terrified feet, You can hear the quick heart of the tempest beat. Look! look! that livid flash! And instantly follows the rattling thunder, As if some cloud-crag, split asunder, Fell, splintering with a ruinous crash, On the earth, which crouches in silence under; Shuts off the landscape, mile by mile; For a breath's space I see the blue wood again, And, ere the next heart-beat, the wind-hurled pile, That seemed but now a league aloof, Bursts crackling o'er the sun-parched roof; And crashing and crumbling,- Hush! Still as death, The tempest holds his breath The rain stops short, but from the eaves You see it drop, and hear it from the leaves, All is so bodingly still: One wildering crash, Followed by silence dead and dull As if the cloud, let go Leapt bodily below To whiten the earth in one mad overthrow, And then a total lull, Gone, gone, so soon! No more my half-crazed fancy there The pale and quiet moon -James Russell Lowell. Song of the Summer Winds. 'P the dale and down the bourne, UP O'er the meadow swift we fly; Now we sing, and now we mourn, By the grassy-fringed river, Through the murmering reeds we sweep; Mid the lily-leaves we quiver, To their very hearts we creep. |