What is the word that, over and over,

Sings the Scythe to the flowers and grass?

Hush, ah, hush, the Scythes are saying,

Hush, and heed not, and fall asleep; Hush, they say to the grasses swaying, Hush, they say to the clover deep! Hush'tis the lullaby Time is singingHush, and heed not, for all things pass, Hush, ah, hush! And the Scythes are swinging Over the clover, over the grass !

I

LONGFELLOW's HOUSE AT CAMBRIDGE

HENRY W. LONGFELLOW

SHOT an arrow into the air,

It fell to the earth, I knew not where;

For, so swiftly it flew, the sight

Could not follow it in its flight.

I breathed a song into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where ;
For who has sight so keen and strong,
That it can follow the flight of song?

Long, long afterward, in an oak
I found the arrow, still unbroke;
And the song, from beginning to end,
I found again in the heart of a friend.

SPRING

HENRY W. LONGFELLOW

AH, how wonderful is the advent of the Spring! - The

great annual miracle of the blossoming of Aaron's rod, repeated on myriads and myriads of branches! — The gentle progression and growth of herbs, flowers, and trees,. - gentle, and yet irrepressible, which no force can stay, no violence restrain, like love, that wins its way and cannot be withstood by any human power. If Spring came but once a century, instead of once a year, or burst forth with the sound of an earthquake, and not in silence, what wonder and expectation would there be in all hearts. to behold the miraculous change!

But now the silent succession suggests nothing but necessity. To most men, only the cessation of the miracle would be miraculous, and the perpetual exercise of God's power seems less wonderful than its withdrawal would be. We are like children who are astonished and delighted only by the second hand of the clock, not by the hour hand.

SUMMER

HENRY W. LONGFELLOW

IN the fields and woods, meanwhile, there were other signs and signals of the summer. The darkening foliage; the embrowning grain; the golden dragon fly haunting the blackberry bushes; the cawing crows, that looked down from the mountain on the cornfield and waited day after day for the scarecrow to finish his work and depart; and the smoke of far-off burning woods, that pervaded the air and hung in purple haze about the summits of the mountains, these were the vaunt couriers and attendants of the hot August.

AUTUMN

HENRY W. LONGFELLOW

THE

Out of doors, it brought

HE brown autumn came. to the fields the prodigality of the golden harvest, -to the forest, revelations of light, and to the sky, the sharp air, the morning mist, the red clouds at evening. Within doors, the sense of seclusion, the stillness of closed and curtained windows, musings by the fireside, books, friend's conversation, and the long, meditative evenings. To the farmer, it brought surcease of toil, to the scholar that sweet delirium of the brain which changes toil to pleasure. It brought the wild duck back to the reedy marshes of the south; it brought the wild song back to the fervid brain of the poet. Without, the village street was paved

with gold; the river ran red with the reflection of the leaves. Within, the faces of friends brightened the gloomy walls; the returning footsteps of the long absent gladdened the household; and all the sweet amenities of social life again resumed their interrupted reign.

THE

WINTER

HENRY W. LONGFELLOW

HE first snow came. ing so silently, all day long, all night long, on the mountains, on the meadows, on the roofs of the living, on the graves of the dead! All white save the river, that marked its course by a winding black line across the landscape; the leafless trees, that against the leaden sky now revealed more fully the wonderful beauty and intricacy of their branches!

How beautiful it was, fall

What silence, too, came with the snow, and what seclusion! Every sound was muffled, every noise changed to something soft and musical. No more trampling of hoofs, - no more rattling wheels! Only the chiming sleigh bells, beating as swift and merrily as the hearts of children.

THE FINDING OF THE LYRE

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

THERE lay upon the ocean's shore

A

What once a tortoise served to cover.

year and more, with rush and roar, The surf had rolled it over,

Had played with it, and flung it by,

As wind and weather might decide it,
Then tossed it high where sand drifts dry
Cheap burial might provide it.

It rested there to bleach or tan,

The rains had soaked, the suns had burned it ;
With many a ban the fisherman

Had stumbled o'er and spurned it ;
And there the fisher girl would stay,
Conjecturing with her brother
How in their play the poor estray
Might serve some use or other.

So there it lay, through wet and dry,
As empty as the last new sonnet,

Till by and by came Mercury,

And, having mused upon it,

66

Why, here," cried he, "the thing of things

In shape, material, and dimension !

Give it but strings, and, lo, it sings,

A wonderful invention !"

So said, so done; the chords he strained,
And, as his fingers o'er them hovered,
The shell disdained, a soul had gained,
The lyre had been discovered.

O empty world that round us lies,
Dead shell, of soul and thought forsaken,
Brought we but eyes like Mercury's
In thee what songs should waken.