LINES ΤΟ AN ORANGE-TREE.

Thou shall find a friend in me,

Outcast tree!

Who will bear thee from the storm

To a shelter snug and warm-
An asylum Winter-proof,

When the snow is on the roof,

Or the sleet comes down amain
On the pane.

Few delights, in sooth, to boast,
At the most,

Has our little, plain retreat,
In its unpretending street;
Save a bird or two, a lute,
Pleasant books and nooks to suit,
And three pictures on the wall-
These are all,

Yet while sadness rules the year
Far and near,

Thou shalt sit beside my hearth,

And its music and its mirth

From thy memory shall beguile
E'en the charms of that dear isle,
Whose enchantment far-off gleams
On thy dreams.

289

290

W.

P. P.

And the nook assigned to thee,

It shall be

Just the soothest, sunniest spot
On the noon-side of our cot,

Where, throughout the Winter day,
Little prattling ones shall play

'Mid the leafy shades so sweet,

At thy feet.

So then, prithee, come with me,
Hapless tree!

And beneath my lowly roof,

Let thy greeting be a proof

That the peasant's humble door
To the wretched evermore,

With as wide a welcome swings

As a king's!

Winter Piece.

James Russell Lowell.

DOWN swept the chill wind from the mountain peak,

From the snow five thousand Summers old;

On open wold and hill-top bleak

It had gathered all the cold.

And whirled it like sleet on the wanderer's cheek;

It carried a shiver every where

From the unleafed boughs and pastures bare;

The little brook heard it, and built a roof
'Neath which he could house him, Winter-proof;
All night by the white stars' frosty gleams

He groined his arches and matched his beams;
Slender and clear were his crystal spars

As the lashes of light that trim the stars;

He sculptured every Summer delight
In his halls and chambers out of sight;
Sometimes his tinkling waters slipt

Down through a frost-leaved forest crypt,
Long, sparkling aisles of steel-stemmed trees,
Bending to counterfeit a breeze;

292

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.

Sometimes the roof no fretwork knew
But silvery mosses that downward grew;
Sometimes it was carved in sharp relief
With quaint arabesques of ice-fern leaf;
Sometimes it was simply smooth and clear

For the gladness of heaven to shine through, and here
He had caught the nodding bulrush-tops

And hung them thickly with diamond drops,
Which crystalled the beams of moon and sun,
And made a star of every one:

No mortal builder's most rare device
Could match this Winter-palace of ice;
'Twas as if every image that mirrored lay
In his depths serene through the Summer day,
Each flitting shadow of earth and sky,

Lest the happy model should be lost,
Had been mimicked in fairy masonry

By the elfin builders of the frost.

The Snow-Storm.

Ralph Waldo Emerson.

ANNOUNCED by all the trumpets of the sky,

Arrives the Snow, and, driving o'er the fields,

Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air

Hides hills and woods, the river, and the heaven, And veils the farm-house at the garden's end.

The sled and traveller stopped, the courier's feet Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit Around the radiant fireplace, inclosed

In a tumultuous privacy of storm.

Come see the north wind's

masonry.

Out of an unseen quarry evermore

Furnished with tile, the fierce artificer

Curves his white bastions with projected roof
Round every windward stake, or tree, or door.
Speeding, the myriad-handed, his wild work
So fanciful, so savage, naught cares he
For number or proportion. Mockingly,