CONSIDER.

CONSIDER

The lilies of the field whose bloom is brief:We are as they ;

Like them we fade away,

As doth a leaf.

Consider

The sparrows of the air of small account:

Our God doth view

Whether they fall or mount,-
He guards us too.

Consider

The lilies that do neither spin nor toil,

Yet are most fair: —

What profits all this care

And all this coil?

Consider

The birds that have no barn nor harvest-weeks;

BEAUTY IS VAIN.

HILE roses are so red,

WH

While lilies are so white,
Shall a woman exalt her face

Because it gives delight?
She's not so sweet as a rose,

A lily's straighter than she, And if she were as red or white She'd be but one of three.

Whether she flush in love's summer
Or in its winter grow pale,
Whether she flaunt her beauty
Or hide it away in a veil,

Be she red or white,

And stand she erect or bowed,

Time will win the race he runs with her

And hide her away in a shroud.

You

MAGGIE A LADY.

must not call me Maggie, you must not call me Dear,

For I'm Lady of the Manor now stately to see; And if there comes a babe, as there may some happy

year,

'T will be little lord or lady at my knee.

O, but what ails you, my sailor cousin Phil,

That you shake and turn white like a cockcrow ghost? You're as white as I turned once down by the mill,

When one told me you and ship and crew were lost :

Philip my playfellow, when we were boy and girl
(It was the Miller's Nancy told it to me),
Philip with the merry life in lip and curl,
Philip my playfellow drowned in the sea!

I thought I should have fainted, but I did not faint ;
I stood stunned at the moment, scarcely sad,

Till I raised my wail of desolate complaint
For you, my cousin, brother, all I had.

They said I looked so pale, some say so fair, –
My lord stopped in passing to soothe me back to life:

I know I missed a ringlet from my hair

Next morning; and now I am his wife.

Look at my gown, Philip, and look at my ring,
I'm all crimson and gold from top to toe :
All day long I sit in the sun and sing,

Where in the sun red roses blush and blow.

And I'm the rose of roses says my lord;

And to him I'm more than the sun in the sky,
While I hold him fast with the golden cord
Of a curl, with the eyelash of an eye.

His mother said "fie," and his sisters cried "shame,"

His high-born ladies cried "shame" from their place: They said "fie" when they only heard my name, But fell silent when they saw my face.

Am I so fair, Philip? Philip, did you think
I was so fair when we played boy and girl,
Where blue forget-me-nots bloomed on the brink
Of our stream which the mill-wheel sent awhirl?

If I was fair then sure I'm fairer now,
Sitting where a score of servants stand,
With a coronet on high days for my brow
And almost a sceptre for my hand.

You're but a sailor, Philip, weatherbeaten brown,
A stranger on land and at home on the sea,
Coasting as best you may from town to town:
Coasting along do you often think of me?

· I'm a great lady in a sheltered bower,

With hands grown white through having naught to
do:

Yet sometimes I think of you hour after hour
Till I nigh wish myself a child with you.

WHAT WOULD I GIVE?

HAT would I give for a heart of flesh to warm

W me through,

Instead of this heart of stone ice-cold whatever I

do;

Hard and cold and small, of all hearts the worst of

all.

What would I give for words, if only words would

come;

But now in its misery my spirit has fallen dumb :
O, merry friends, go your way, I have never a word

to say.

What would I give for tears, not smiles but scalding

tears,

To wash the black mark clean, and to thaw the frost

of years,

To wash the stain ingrain and to make me clean again.