BUTTERCUPS AND DAISIES.

Springing with bold and gleesome bound,
Proclaiming joy that crazes ;
And chorusing the magic sound
Of "Buttercups and Daisies"?

Are there, I ask, beneath the sky
Blossoms that knit so strong a tie
With Childhood's love? can any please
Or light the infant eye like these?
No, no; there 's not a bud on earth,
Of richest tint, or warmest birth,
Can ever fling such zeal and zest
Into the tiny hand and breast.
Who does not recollect the hours
When burning words and praises
Were lavished on those shining flowers,
"Buttercups and Daisies"?

There seems a bright and fairy spell
About their very names to dwell;
And though old Time has marked my
brow
With care and thought, I love them now.
Smile, if you will, but some heart-strings
Are closest linked to simplest things;
And these wild flowers will hold mine fast,
Till love, and life, and all be past;
And then the only wish I have

Is, that the one who raises
The turf-sod o'er me, plant my grave
With "Buttercups and Daisies."

199

Eliza Cook.

THE ORPHAN BALLAD-SINGERS.

OH, weary, weary are our feet,

And weary, weary is our way;
Through many a long and crowded street
We've wandered mournfully to-day.
My little sister she is pale;

She is too tender and too young
To bear the autumn's sullen gale,
And all day long the child has sung.

She was our mother's favorite child,
Who loved her for her eyes of blue;
And she is delicate and mild-

She cannot do what I can do. She never met her father's eyes,

Although they were so like her own; In some far distant sea he lies,

A father to his child unknown.

The first time that she lisp'd his name,
A little playful thing was she;

How proud we were

- yet that night came

The tale how he had sunk at sea.

My mother never raised her head

How strange, how white, how cold she grew!

It was a broken heart, they said·

I wish our hearts were broken too.

PRECIOUS TRUTHS.

We have no home - we have no friends;

They said our home no more was ours —
Our cottage where the ash-tree bends,

The garden we had fill'd with flowers;
The sounding shells our father brought,
That we might hear the sea at home;
Our bees, that in the summer wrought
The winter's golden honeycomb.

We wandered forth 'mid wind and rain;
No shelter from the open sky;

I only wish to see again

My mother's grave, and rest, and die.
Alas, it is a weary thing

To sing our ballads o'er and o'er-
The song we used at home to sing -
Alas, we have a home no more.

PRECIOUS TRUTHS.

THEY serve God well,

Who serve His creatures.

201

Miss Landon.

GOOD is not a shapely mass of stone,

Hewn by man's hands and worked by him alone;
It is a seed God suffers one to sow,

Many to reap; and when the harvest grows,
God giveth increase through all the coming years,
And lets us reap in joy, seed that was sown in tears.

ALL that our wisdom knows, or ever can,
Is this; that God hath pity upon man;
And where His Spirit shines in Holy Writ,
The great word Comforter comes after it.

Hon. Mrs. Norton.

A BIRTHDAY WALK.

To the meadows, to the meadows, love, the birds

Το

are on the trees,

And the scent of springing violets comes stealthy on the breeze,

And the pulse of early love is warm, on the cheek and

in the eye,

And the heart is beating tunefully, it cannot tell thee why.

And we are young, my well-beloved, and life is yet

to be,

And many a spring has birthdays yet, to decorate for

thee,

Then let us to the meadows, love, the woodlands and the vale,

And when we've found the "white thorn bush " I 'll listen to thy tale.

I wakened from the pleasant dream a dream of vanished years!

And time upon my cheek had traced a pathway for the tears,

A BIRTHDAY WALK.

203

And silver were the locks, my love, that o'er thy forehead strayed,

And thou a staff hadst chosen thee, from out the hazel shade.

Yet let us to the meadows, love, e'en altered though we go,

For still, to all things beautiful, the mellowed heart

can glow,

And few and brief the summer-tides that yet to us

remain,

And when we've taken leave of them, we see them not again.

E'en now, in some green churchyard way, the dews of night may lave

A daisy root, like that we love from thy young mother's

grave,

Which ere some pleasant spring or two hath made its leafy stir,

Shall blossom over us my love, as that did over her.

Then let us to the meadows, to the woodlands, to the vale,

Ere the golden bowl be broken, and the silver cord shall fail;

Green earth shall still be beautiful, when closed our little day,

And we'll enjoy her loveliness, as twilight sinks away. Ann Taylor.