EV

Pleasure never is at home;

At a touch sweet pleasure melteth

Like to bubble, when rain pelteth.

Then let winged Fancy wander

Through the thought still spread beyond her.

Open wide the mind's cage door,

She'll dart forth, and cloudward soar.

Oh, sweet Fancy ! let her loose,
Summer's joys are spoilt by use,
And the enjoying of the spring
Fades as does its blossoming:
Autumn's red-lipped fruitage too,
Blushing through the mist and dew,

Cloys with tasting: what do then?

Sit thee by the ingle, when

The sear faggot blazes bright,
Spirit of a winter's night;

When the soundless earth is muffled,

And the caked snow is shuffled

From the ploughboy's heavy shoon :
When the Night doth meet the Moon
In a dark conspiracy

To banish Even from her sky.
Sit thee here, and send abroad,
With a mind self-overawed,

Fancy, high-commissioned;-send her!
She has vassals to attend her;
She will bring, in spite of post,
Beauties that the earth hath lost;
She will bring thee, all together,
All delights of summer weather;
All the buds and bells of May,
From dewy sward or thorny spray,
All the heaped Autumn's wealth,
With a still, mysterious stealth;
She will mix these pleasures up

Like three fit wines in a cup,

And thou shalt quaff it; thou shalt hear

Distant harvest-carols clear;

Rustle of the reaped corn;

Sweet birds antheming the morn ;

And, in the same moment, hark!

FANCY.

'Tis the early April lark,
Or the rooks, with busy caw,
Foraging for sticks and straw.

Thou shalt, at one glance behold,
The daisy and the marigold;
White-plumed lilies, and the first
Hedge-grown primrose that hath burst;
Shaded hyacinth, alway

Sapphire queen of the mid-May;

And every leaf, and every flower

Pearled with the self-same shower.
Thou shalt see the field-mouse creep
Meager from its celled sleep;
And the snake all winter-thin
Cast on sunny bank its skin;
Freckled nest-eggs thou shalt see
Hatching in the hawthorn-tree,

When the hen-bird's wing doth rest

Quiet on her mossy nest;

Then the hurry and alarm

When the bee-hive casts its swarm;

Acorns ripe down-pattering,

While the Autumn breezes sing.

11

Arcadian Hymn to Flora.

R. H. Stoddard.

COME, all ye virgins fair in kirtles white,

Ye debonair and merry-hearted maids,

Who have been out in troops before the light,
And gathered blossoms in the woodland shades,—
The foot-prints of the fiery-sandalled day

Are glowing in the sky like kindling coals,

The clouds are golden rimmed like burning scrolls,
Jagged and fringed, and darkness melts away;
The shrine is wreathed with leaves, the holy urns

Brimming with morning dew are laid thereby,
The censers swing, the odorous incense burns,
And floats in misty volumes up the sky;-
Lay down your garlands and your baskets trim,
Heaped up with floral offerings to the brim,
And knit your little hands, and trip away
With light and nimble feet

To music soft and sweet,

And celebrate the joyous break of day,

And sing a hymn to Flora, Queen of May.