I steal by lawns and grassy plots,
I slide by hazel covers,
I move the sweet forget-me-nots
That grow for happy lovers.

I slip, I slide, I gloom, I glance,
Among my skimming swallows;
I make the netted sunbeam dance
Against my sandy shallows.

I murmur under moon and stars
In brambly wildernesses;
I linger by my shingly bars;
I loiter round my cresses ;

And out again I curve and flow
To join the brimming river,

For men may come, and men may go,

But I go on forever.

-Alfred Tennyson.

THE GLADNESS OF NATURE.

Is this a time to be cloudy and sad,
When our mother Nature laughs around,
When even the deep blue heavens look glad,

And gladness breathes from the blossoming ground?

There are notes of joy from the hang-bird and wren,
And the gossip of swallows through all the sky ;

The ground-squirrel gaily chirps by his den,

And the wilding-bee hums merrily by.

The clouds are at play in the azure space,

And their shadows at play on the bright green vale,

And here they stretch to the frolic chase,

And there they roll on the easy gale.

There's a dance of leaves in that aspen bower; There's a titter of winds in that beechen tree; There's a smile on the fruit, and a smile on the flower, And a laugh from the brook that runs to the sea.

And look at the broad-faced sun, how he smiles
On the dewy earth that smiles in his ray,
On the leaping waters and gay young isles, -
Ay, look, and he'll smile thy gloom away!

-William Cullen Bryant.

WHEN on the breath of Autumn's breeze,

From pastures dry and brown,
Goes floating, like an idle thought,
The fair, white thistle-down, -
Oh, then what joy to walk at will
Upon the golden harvest-hill !

What joy in dreaming ease to lie
Amid a field new shorn;
And see all round, on sunlit slopes,
The piled-up shocks of corn;
And send the fancy wandering o'er
All pleasant harvest-fields of yore!

I feel the day; I see the field;
The quivering of the leaves;
And good old Jacob, and his horse, -
Binding the yellow sheaves !

And at this very hour I seem
To be with Joseph in his dream!

I see the fields of Bethlehem,

And reapers many a one
Bending unto their sickles' stroke,
And Boaz looking on ;
And Ruth, the Moabitess fair,
Among the gleaners stooping there!

Again, I see a little child,

His mother's sole delight, God's living gift of love unto

The kind, good Shunamite ;

To mortal pangs I see him yield,
And the lad bear him from the field.

The sun-bathed quiet of the hills,
The fields of Galilee,

That eighteen hundred years ago
Were full of corn, I see;
And the dear Saviour take his way
Mid ripe ears on the Sabbath-day.

Oh golden fields of bending corn,
How beautiful they seem!
The reaper-folk, the piled-up sheaves,
To me are like a dream;
The sunshine, and the very air

Seem of old time, and take me there!

LEGENDARY.