The Oak.

(IMITATED FROM THE ITALIAN OF MOTASTAZIO.)

T

HE tall oak, towering to the skies,
The fury of the wind defies;

From age to age in virtue strong,
Inured to stand and suffer wrong.

O'erwhelmed at length upon the plain,
It puts forth wings and sweeps the main;
The selfsame foe, undaunted, braves
And fights the wind upon the waves.

The Bog Pimpernel.

MID the lone and heathy wild,
Where cultivation never smiled,

And man with undelighted eye
Passes the desert region by,—
Lo, there Tenella makes her bed,
And lifts unseeen her modest head.

Of fairer form, and brighter hue
Than many a flower that drinks the dew
Amid the garden's brilliant show

Where scarce the roughening breeze may blow,
Her charms the graceful flower unveils,
And bends beneath the moorland gales.

Oh, it is thus when grief's keen blast
Has o'er the chasten'd spirit past,
Till all the future lot seems traced
On sorrow's lone and dreary waste,—
She finds unthought-of sweets, that bloom
Amid the desert's chilling gloom.

These, lovelier than the fragile flowers
That wave in joy's luxurious bowers,
Sweet as the buds of Sharon's rose,
Amid the wild their leaves unclose,
And give to heaven's pure gales alone
Perfections to the world unknown.

And thus it is that heaven can bless
The bleak and lonely wilderness;
And thus in sorrow's lowly state,
Where all seems drear and desolate,
Become the thorny wastes of care,
Amid neglect and ruin,-fair.

S. M. WARING.

H

To a Sprig of Mignonette.

HE lingering perfume of thy flower,
Its dying fragrance sadly sweet

Though faint to that of Summer's bower, It still is soothing thus to greet.

To me thy yet surviving bloom

And lingering sweetness, can recall
Hearts which, unchill'd by gathering gloom,
Can meekly live and love through all.

From such, in seasons dark and drear,
Immortal hopes of noblest worth,
Feelings and thoughts to virtue dear,
Gush like thy dying fragrance forth,

And fling a holier charm around

Than prosperous hours could ever know;
For rapture's smile less fair is found
Than that which patience lends to woe!

H

Weeds.

B. BARTON.

OW many plants (we call them weeds)
Against our wishes grow,

And scatter wide their various seeds
With all the winds that blow.

Man murmurs when he sees them rise

To foul his husbandry;

Kind providence this way supplies

His lesser family.

Scatter'd and small, they 'scape our eye,

But are not wasted there;
Safe they in clefts and furrows lie,-
The little birds find where.

Lessons from the Gorse.

"To win the secret of a weed's plain heart."

LOWELL.

M

OUNTAIN Gorses, ever golden,
Cankered not the whole year long,
Do ye teach us to be strong?

Howsoever pricked and holden

Like your thorny blooms, and so

Trodden on by rain and snow,

Up the hill-side of life, as bleak as where ye grow!

Mountain blossoms, shining blossoms,

Do ye teach us to be glad

When no summer can be had,

Blooming in our inward bosoms?

Ye, whom God preserveth still,

Set as lights upon a hill,

Tokens to the wintry earth that beauty liveth still.

Mountain Gorses, do ye teach us

From that academic chair

Canopied with azure air,

That the wisest word man reaches
Is the humblest he can speak?

Ye who live on mountain peak,

Yet live low along the ground, beside the grasses

meek!

Mountain Gorses, since Linnæus
Knelt beside you on the sod,
For your beauty thanking God,—
For your teaching ye should see us
Bowing in prostration new!

Whence arisen,-if one or two

Drops be on our cheeks,-oh world, they are not

tears, but dew.

E. B. BROWNING.