3

THE upper skies are palest blue Mottled with pearl and fretted snow : With tattered fleece of inky hue Close overhead the stormclouds go.

Their shadows fly along the hill
And o'er the crest mount one by one :
The whitened planking of the mill
Is now in shade and now in sun.

4

THE clouds have left the sky,
The wind hath left the sea,
The half-moon up on high
Shrinketh her face of dree.

She lightens on the comb
Of leaden waves, that roar
And thrust their hurried foam
Up on the dusky shore.

Behind the western bars
The shrouded day retreats,
And unperceived the stars

Steal to their sovran seats.

And whiter grows the foam, The small moon lightens more;

And as I turn me home,

My shadow walks before.

HARK to the merry birds, hark how they sing! Although 'tis not yet spring

And keen the air;

Hale Winter, half resigning ere he go,

Doth to his heiress shew

His kingdom fair.

In patient russet is his forest spread,
All bright with bramble red,

With beechen moss

And holly sheen: the oak silver and stark

Sunneth his aged bark

And wrinkled boss.

But neath the ruin of the withered brake

Primroses now awake

From nursing shades:

The crumpled carpet of the dry leaves brown

Avails not to keep down

The hyacinth blades.

The hazel hath put forth his tassels ruffed;

The willow's flossy tuft

Hath slipped him free:

The rose amid her ransacked orange hips
Braggeth the tender tips

Of bowers to be.

A black rook stirs the branches here and there, Foraging to repair

His broken home:

And hark, on the ash-boughs! Never thrush did sing

Louder in praise of spring,

When spring is come.

6

APRIL, 1885

WANTON with long delay the gay spring leaping cometh ;

The blackthorn starreth now his bough on the eve

of May:

All day in the sweet box-tree the bee for pleasure hummeth:

The cuckoo sends afloat his note on the air all day.

Now dewy nights again and rain in gentle shower At root of tree and flower have quenched the winter's drouth:

On high the hot sun smiles, and banks of cloud up

tower

In bulging heads that crowd for miles the dazzling

south.