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On the We'd be so happy by the day,
Wing

So safe and happy through the night,
We both should feel, and I should say,
It's all one season of delight,

And we'll make merry whilst we may.

Perhaps some day there'd be an egg

When spring had blossomed from the snow:
I'd stand triumphant on one leg;

Like chanticleer I'd almost crow
To let our little neighbours know.

Next you should sit and I would sing
Through lengthening days of sunny spring;
Till, if you wearied of the task,

I'd sit; and you should spread your wing
From bough to bough; I'd sit and bask.

Fancy the breaking of the shell,

The chirp, the chickens wet and bare,
The untried proud paternal swell;
And you with housewife-matron air
Enacting choicer bills of fare.

Fancy the embryo coats of down,

The gradual feathers soft and sleek;
Till clothed and strong from tail to crown,
With virgin warblings in their beak,
They too go forth to soar and seek.

So would it last an April through

And early summer fresh with dew, Then should we part and live as twain: Love-time would bring me back to you And build our happy nest again.

CHRISTINA G. ROSSETTI.

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The Flight of the Birds

Whither away, Robin,
Whither away?

Is it through envy of the maple-leaf,
Whose blushes mock the crimson of thy breast,
Thou wilt not stay?

The summer days were long, yet all too brief
The happy season thou hast been our guest:
Whither away?

Whither away, Bluebird,
Whither away?

The blast is chill, yet in the upper sky
Thou still canst find the color of thy wing,
The hue of May.

Warbler, why speed thy southern flight? ah, why,
Thou too, whose song first told us of the Spring?
Whither away?

Whither away, Swallow,
Whither away?

On the Canst thou no longer tarry in the North,
Wing Here, where our roof so well hath screened thy

nest?

Not one short day?

Wilt thou-as if thou human wert-go forth
And wanton far from them who love thee best?
Whither away?

EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN.

The Shepherd's Home

My banks they are furnished with bees,
Whose murmur invites one to sleep;
My grottoes are shaded with trees,

And my hills are white over with sheep.

I seldom have met with a loss,

Such health do my fountains bestow;
My fountains all bordered with moss,
Where the harebells and violets blow.

Not a pine in the grove is there seen,

But with tendrils of woodbine is bound;
Not a beech's more beautiful green,

But a sweetbrier entwines it around.
Not my fields in the prime of the year,
More charms than my cattle unfold;
Not a brook that is limpid and clear,
But it glitters with fishes of gold.

I have found out a gift for my fair,

I have found where the wood pigeons breed,
But let me such plunder forbear,

She will say 'twas a barbarous deed;
For he ne'er could be true, she averred,
Who would rob a poor bird of its young;
And I loved her the more when I heard
Such tenderness fall from her tongue.
WILLIAM SHENSTONE.

On the
Wing

To a Cricket

Voice of Summer, keen and shrill,
Chirping round my winter fire,
Of thy song I never tire,
Weary others as they will;

For thy song with Summer's filled

Filled with sunshine, filled with June;

Firelight echo of that noon

Heard in fields when all is stilled
In the golden light of May,
Bringing scents of new-mown hay,
Bees, and birds, and flowers away:
Prithee, haunt my fireside still,
Voice of Summer, keen and shrill!

WILLIAM C. BENNETT.

On the

Wing

On the Grasshopper and Cricket

The poetry of earth is never dead:

When all the birds are faint with the hot sun,
And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run
From hedge to hedge about the new-mown
mead;

That is the Grasshopper's—he takes the lead
In summer luxury, he has never done
With his delights; for when tired out with
fun,

He rests at ease beneath some pleasant weed.
The poetry of earth is ceasing never:

On a lone winter evening, when the frost

Has wrought a silence, from the stove there

shrills

The Cricket's song, in warmth increasing ever,
And seems to one, in drowsiness half lost,
The Grasshopper's among some grassy hills.
JOHN KEATS.

The Tax-Gatherer

"And pray, who are you?"
Said the violet blue

To the Bee, with surprise

At his wonderful size,

In her eye-glass of dew.

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