THE SPRING IS LATE.

SHE stood alone amidst the April fields,

Brown, sodden fields, all desolate and bare,— "The Spring is late," she said, "the faithless spring That should have come to make the meadows fair.

"Their sweet south left too soon, among the trees
The birds, bewildered, flutter to and fro;
For them no green boughs wait, their memories
Of last year's April had deceived them so.

"From 'neath a sheltering pine some tender buds Looked out and saw the hollows filled with snow; On such a frozen world they closed their eyes;

When spring is cold, how can the blossoms blow?"

She watched the homeless birds, the slow sad spring, The barren fields, and shivering naked trees; "Thus God hath dealt with me, his child," she said; "I wait my spring time, and am cold like these.

THE SPRING IS LATE.

"To them will come the fulness of their time;

Their spring, though late, will make the meadows fair, Shall I, who wait like them be blessed?

I am his own,-doth not my Father care?"

-Louise Chandler Moulton.

FROM A FOREST HYMN.

That delicate forest flower,

WITH Scented breath and look so like a smile,
Seems, as it issues from the shapeless mould,
An emanation of the indwelling Life,
A visible token of the upholding Love,
That are the soul of this great universe.

-William Cullen Bryant.

SPRING FLOWERS.

THE loveliest flowers the closest cling to earth,
And they feel the sun; so violets blue,

So the soft star-like primrose drench'd in dew;
The happiest of Spring's happy, fragrant birth.
To gentlest touches sweetest tones reply.

Still humbleness with her low-breathed voice

Can steal o'er man's proud heart, and win his choice From earth to heaven, with mightier witchery

Than eloquence or wisdom e'er could own.

Bloom on then in your shade, contented bloom,

Sweet flowers, nor deem yourselves to all unknown. Heaven knows you, by whose gales and dews ye thrive. They know, who one day for their alter'd doom

Shall thank you, taught by you to abase themselves and

live.

-The Rev. J. Keble.