THE VIOLET-GIRL.

BY R. M. MILNES.

WHEN Fancy will continually rehearse Some painful scene once present to the eye, 'Tis well to mould it into gentle verse,

That it may lighter on the spirit lie.

Home yestern eve I wearily return'd,

Though bright my morning mood and short my

way,

But sad experience, in one moment earn'd,
Can crush the heap'd enjoyments of the day.

Passing the corner of a populous street,

I mark'd a girl whose wont it was to stand, With pallid cheek, torn gown, and naked feet, And bunches of fresh violets in each hand.

There her small commerce in the chill March

weather

She plied with accents miserably mild;

It was a frightful thought to set together

Those blooming blossoms anu that fading child:

-Those luxuries and largess of the earth,
Beauty and pleasure to the sense of man,
And this poor sorry weed cast loosely forth
On Life's wild waste to struggle as it can!

To me that odorous purple ministers
Hope-bearing memories and inspiring glee,
While meanest images alone are hers,
The sordid wants of base humanity.

Think after all this lapse of hungry hours,
In the disfurnish'd chamber of dim cold,
How she must loathe the very smiling flowers,
That on the squalid table lie unsold!

Rest on your woodland banks and wither there
Sweet preluders of Spring! far better so,
Than live misused to fill the grasp of care,
And serve the piteous purposes of woe.

Ye are no longer Nature's gracious gift, Yourselves so much and harbingers of more, But a most bitter irony to lift

The veil that hides our vilest mortal sore.

WINTER ROSES.

BY R. M. MILNES.

YE roses of November,
Ye are no joy to me;
The roses I remember

Are other than ye be !

Your cordial kindred summer
Has gone by long before,
And winter, the new-comer,
Is a lover fierce and frore.

At sight of ye I tremble,
As ye in this bleak air;
I read a fearful symbol
In what ye are and were;
How all that's best and fairest,
When past a petty reign,

To those, who hold them dearest,
Are pain and only pain.

Beauty is always beauty,
Her essences divine
The poet, in his duty,
May labor to combine ;
But beauty wed to sorrow
Is sad, whate'er we say,-
Sad thinking for to-morrow,
Sad presence for to-day!

TO THE YEW.

BY DR. LEYDEN.

WHEN fortune smiled, and nature's charms were

new,

I loved to see the oak majestic tower;
I loved to see the apple's painted flower,
Bedropp'd with pencill'd tints of rosy hue.
Now more I love thee, melancholy yew,

Whose still green leaves in solemn silence

wave

Above the peasant's red unhonour'd grave, Which oft thou moistenest with the morning dew. To thee the sad, to thee the weary fly;

They rest in peace beneath thy sacred gloom,
Thou sole companion of the lowly tomb!

No leaves but thine in pity o'er them sigh.
Lo! now, to fancy's gaze, thou seem'st to
spread

Thy shadowy boughs to shroud me with the dead.

THE FRIENDSHIP FLOWER.

BY R. M. MILNES.

WHEN first the Friendship flower is planted Within the garden of your soul,

Little of care or thought is wanted

To guard its beauty fresh and whole;
But when the one impassioned age
Has full reveal'd the magic bloom,
A wise and holy tutelage

Alone can shun the open tomb.

It is not absence you should dread,-
For absence is the very air

In which, if sound at root, the head
Shall wave most wonderful and fair;
With sympathies of joy and sorrow
Fed, as with morn and even dews,
Ideal coloring it may borrow

Richer than ever earthly hues.

But oft the plant, whose leaves unsere
Refresh the desert, hardly brooks

The common-peopled atmosphere

Of daily thoughts and words and looks;

It trembles at the brushing wings

Of many a careless fashion-fly,