Woods and cornfields a little brown,

The picture must not be overbright, — Yet all in the golden and gracious light Of a cloud, when the summer sun is down.

Alway and alway, night and morn, Woods upon woods, with fields of corn Lying between them, not quite sere,

And not in the full, thick, leafy bloom,

When the wind can hardly find breathing room Under their tassels, cattle near,

-

Biting shorter the short green grass,
And a hedge of sumac and sassafras,
With bluebirds twittering all around, -
Ah! good painter, you can't paint sound!

These, and the house where I was born,
Low and little, and black and old,
With children, many as it can hold,
All at the windows, open wide,
Heads and shoulders clear outside,

And fair young faces all ablush:

Perhaps you may have seen, some day,
Roses crowding, the selfsame way,

Out of a wilding, wayside bush.

Listen closer. When you have done

With woods and cornfields and grazing herds,

A lady, the loveliest ever the sun

Looked down upon, you must paint for me:
Oh! if I could only make you see

The clear blue eyes, the tender smile,

The sovereign sweetness, the gentle grace, The woman's soul, and the angel's face That are beaming on me all the while,

God knoweth if he be living now!
He sailed in the good ship "Commodore";
Nobody ever crossed her track

To bring us news, and she never came back.
Ah, 'tis twenty long years and more
Since that old ship went out of the bay

With my great-hearted brother on her deck: I watched him till he shrank to a speck, And his face was toward me all the way. Bright his hair was, a golden brown,

The time we stood at our mother's knee; That beauteous head, if it did go down, Carried sunshine into the sea!

Out in the fields one summer night,

We were together, half afraid

Of the corn leaves' rustling, and of the shade Of the high hills, stretching so still and far, Loitering till after the low, little light

Of the candle shone through the open door,
And over the haystack's pointed top,
All of a tremble, and ready to drop,
The first half-hour, the great yellow star
That we, with our staring, ignorant eyes,
Had often and often watched to see
Propped and held in its place in the skies
By the fork of a tall, red mulberry tree,
Which close in the edge of our flax field grew,

-

Dead at the top-just one branch full Of leaves, notched round, and lined with wool From which it tenderly shook the dew

Over our heads, when we came to play

In its handbreadth of shadow, day after day. Afraid to go home, sir; for one of us bore A nest full of speckled and thin-shelled eggs; The other, a bird, held fast by the legs,

Not so big as a straw of wheat;

The berries we gave her she wouldn't eat,
But cried and cried till we held her bill,
So slim and shining, to keep her still.

At last we stood at our mother's knee.
Do you think, sir, if you try,
You can paint the look of a lie?

If you can, pray, have the grace
To put it solely in the face
Of the urchin that is likest me:
I think 'twas solely mine, indeed;

But that's no matter-paint it so:
The eyes of our mother, take good heed,
Looking not on the nest full of eggs,

Nor the fluttering bird, held so fast by the legs,
But straight through our faces, down to our lies,
And, oh! with such injured reproachful surprise!

I felt my heart bleed where that glance went, as though
A sharp blade struck through it.

You, sir, know

That you on the canvas are to repeat
Things that are fairest, things most sweet, -
Woods, and cornfields, and mulberry tree,

The mother her lads, with their bird, at her knee;
But, oh! that look of reproachful woe!

High as the heavens your name I'll shout,
If you'll paint me the picture and leave that out!

THE FAIRIES.

(SONG FOR CHILDREN.)

BY WILLIAM ALLINGHAM.

[Irish songwright; born Ballyshannon, County Donegal, in 1828; son of a local banker, clerk in the bank some years, then in the customs; assistant editor Fraser's Magazine, 1870-1874, then chief editor succeeding Froude; died 1889. He published "Poems" (1850); "Day and Night Songs" (1854); "Lawrence Bloomfield; or, Richard Poor in Ireland" (1864); two anthologies (1862 and 1865); "The Rambles of Patricius Walker" (1872), in Fraser's Magazine; "Ashby Manor," a play (1882); etc.]

UP THE airy mountain,

Down the rushy glen,
We daren't go a-hunting
For fear of little men:
Wee folk, good folk,

Trooping all together;
Green jacket, red cap,

And white owl's feather.

Down along the rocky shore
Some have made their home;
They live on crispy pancakes
Of yellow-tide foam.
Some in the reeds

Of the black mountain-lake,
With frogs for their watch-dogs,
All night awake.

High on the hill-top

The old King sits;

He is now so old and gray

He's nigh lost his wits.
With a bridge of white mist
Columbkill he crosses,
On his stately journeys

From Sliveleague to Rosses;

Or going up with music

On cold, starry nights,

To sup with the Queen

Of the gay Northern Lights.

They stole little Bridget
For seven years long;
When she came down again

Her friends were all gone.

They took her lightly back

Between the night and morrow;

They thought that she was fast asleep, But she was dead with sorrow.

They have kept her ever since

Deep within the lakes, On a bed of flag leaves Watching till she wakes.

By the craggy hillside,

Through the mosses bare, They have planted thorn-trees For pleasure here and there.

Is any man so daring

As dig them up in spite,

He shall feel their sharpest thorns
In his bed at night.

Up the airy mountain,
Down the rushy glen,
We daren't go a-hunting
For fear of little men:
Wee folk, good folk,
Trooping all together;
Green jacket, red cap,

And white owl's feather.

THE CONVICT IN THE MARSHES.

BY CHARLES DICKENS.

(From "Great Expectations.")

[CHARLES DICKENS, one of the greatest novelists and humorists of the world, was born February 7, 1812, at Portsea, Eng. His father being unprosperous, he had no regular education and much hardship; at fourteen became an attorney's clerk, and at seventeen a reporter. His first short story appeared in December, 1833; the collected "Sketches by Boz" in 1836, which also saw the first number of "The Pickwick Papers," finished in November, 1837. There followed "Oliver Twist" (1839), "Nicholas Nickleby" (1839), "Master Humphrey's Clock" (finally dissolved into the "Old Curiosity Shop" and "Barnaby Rudge ") (1840-1841), "American Notes" (1842), "A Christmas Carol" (1843: many other Christmas stories followed later), "Martin Chuzzlewit" (1844), "Pictures from Italy" (1846), "Dombey and Son" (1848), "David Copperfield" (1850), "Bleak House" (1853), "Hard Times" (1854), Little Dorrit" (1857), "A Tale of Two Cities" (1859), "Great Expectations" (1861), "Our Mutual Friend (1865), and the unfinished "Mystery of Edwin Drood" (1870). Several of these, and his "Uncommercial Traveller" papers, appeared in All the Year Round, which he edited. He died June 9, 1870.]

[This piece is inserted in the sure and happy belief that any one who reads it will be unable to resist reading the novel of which it is the introductory chapter. - ANDREW LANG.]

MY FATHER'S family name being Pirrip, and my Christian name Philip, my infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer or more explicit than Pip. So I called myself Pip, and came to be called Pip.

I give Pirrip as my father's family name, on the authority of his tombstone and my sister - Mrs. Joe Gargery, who married the blacksmith. As I never saw my father or my mother,