To listen and admire her, in her pride
Of conscious excellence; like beauty, vain,
And claiming such our homage as her right:-
While my own merry Robin comes to cheer
Our gloomy winter with his lively song-
He comes to us, and perched on twig or gate,
Or on the chimney top, or window sill,
Sits warbling sweetly on his welcome lay.

The rose is for the nightingale,

The heather for the lark;

But the holly greets the red-breast

'Mid winter drear and dark;

And the snow-drop, wakened by his song,
Peeps tremblingly forth,

From her bed of cold still slumber,

To gaze upon the earth.

For the merry voice above her

Seemed a herald of the spring,

As o'er the sleeping flowers

Blithe robin came to sing

"Up, up! my lady snow-drop,
No longer lie in bed,
But dance unto my melody

And wave your graceful head."
The bulbul wooes the red red rose,
The lark the heathery dell;

But the robin has the holly tree

And the snow-drop's virgin bell.

The snow-drop timidly looked out,
But all was dim and drear,

Save robin's merry song, that sought

Her loneliness to cheer.

And presently the crocus heard

Their greeting, and awoke,

And donned with care her golden robe,
And em'rald-coloured cloak;

And springing from her russet shroud

Stepped forth to meet the sun

Who broke the clouds with one bright glance,

And his jocund race begun.

The crocus brought her sisters, too,

The purple, pied, and white;

And the red-breast warbled merrily

Above the flowerets bright..

Oh! the nightingale may love the rose,

The lark the summer's heather;

But the robin's consort-flow'rs come

And brave the wintry weather.

PYRUS JAPONICA.

THE FAIRIES' FIRE.

The flowers, which cold in prison kept,

Now laugh the frost to scorn.

RICHARD EDWARDS, 1523.

SEE, where the first pale sunbeams of the year

Fall faintly, fearfully, upon the snow,

That rests in wreathed flakes on every twig,

Trained with neat care around the window-frame.

So icy cold is every thing around,

That even sunshine trembles to alight,

Lest it be frozen too.

Ha! are they out?

My summer friends, the fairies? Surely not;
Yet who but they have lit these tiny fires,
That gleam and glow amid the wintry scene?
Yes, here they are, aweary of the storms,

And wrecking winds, and pinching frosts, that keep
Within their darksome prison house of earth, *
The gay and spendthrift flowers; here they are,
Lighting their ruddy beacons at the sun

* I may here be charged with purloining an idea from the lines of my motto.

I can only say such charge were unjust, as "The Fairies' Fire" had been written many months, when, in reading some old poems, the lines in Edwards struck me as appropriate.