But hark! is that a sound we hear "Tis dead, 'tis dead! and all our care The mother's woe doth pierce the air, WINTER CHANGES. New Year's Gift. BY MARIA JANE JEWSBURY. I am come back to my bower, And the leaves are green no more; Winter winds are sighing, Where summer breezes strayed; Winter mists are lying, Where the sunbeams played; Hope, the spirit that gladdens, Flees upon the blast; Memory, that but saddens, Lingers to the last, Telling of the roses, Telling of the joys, That life in spring discloses, I am come back to my bower, Though withered every flower, And the leaves are green no more; MARCH. Spring Comes and rains beauty on the kindling boughs Mrs. Hemans. THIS is the month in which the Spring commences her all-creative and omnipotent reign-in which the elemental powers of Nature are more conspicuous in producing the principles of eternity into action, and by which every generation is carried forward to periods of varied consequence. When the sun enters Aries, every sign of the Zodiac is in apparent succession. Artists and birds,-travellers and flowers-mariners and agriculturists, gamekeepers and manufacturers, avail themselves of the thrifty and growing day. About this time, Chaucer's Canterbury Pilgrims set off from the "Tabard,” in the Borough, at the "Watering of St. Thomas," began drawing lots to decide who should be the first to tell a " right marrowy Tale." The lot did not fall upon Jonas as in Scripture, but the Knight, than whom a more proper person could not be found in the train to shew his gallantry to the Lady Nun and the Priestess, by a recital of interesting adventures in foreign lands. Spenser was not a less ardent anticipator and encourager of Spring. His "Faery Queen" is redolent of the sweetness, both in song and poetic imagery, which never dies. The inspiration which his description effects, as he carries the narration of objects lovely, or not, in the portraiture of the human passions and metaphysicial delineations, is such as to convey the most passionate love of this season both of the human heart and nature. Many of Shakespeare's finest touches, in his dramatic, and narrative, and fugitive pieces, are the emanations of the very spirit and exuberance-the very appliance and glory of an immortality, elicited by the spring season stirring in his nature, an essence of the fadeless spring, rare, but enduring and ever beautiful. Cowley's finest thoughts, and his most incidental passages, are the produce of spring meditations, and live in the heart as seeds of prolific truth. Nor was Milton less enamoured of the flowery lawn, the plat of rising ground and beechen shade. Nothing of the Pastoral character is enjoyed without a true taste for those new arrivals in the spring. Not to mention the Latins and Greeks, our national poets have followed each other, in giving hope, and faith, and love, to encourage all succeeding people in a proper estimate of this season. Whether Shenstone or Gray, Thomson or Crabbe,-Burns, Ramsay, or Bloomfield-Rogers, Camphell, or Wiffen. The unioned spirit of reciprocal feeling pervades every page, and the very senator, who is not expected to derive pleasure from common sources or every day scenes, is attracted to his duties by the commencement of spring. The Lectures of medical men are now more sappy, and every student, in every branch of art and science, rises from his wintry-gotten apathies, and feeling new energies, shows forth new powers, practical and illustrative. The sun is the source, and its Divine Author the regulator of these operations. -Come thou expressive Spring! exalt his praise. J. R. P. This month sets in with cold and keen winds, but a clear and healthy air. The trees, which were last month budding, now put forth their leaves. A late Naturalist says: "Before the arrival of the nightingale, or at least before he begins to sing, the owl, particularly it is said, before rain, perfoms a nightly serenade—such as it is,-dreary, ominous; but not without poetical association, when we recollect the throne assigned her by Gray, in the ivy-mantled tower.' But the truth is, the owl only utters her cry while on the wing. It is a fact, worthy of remark in the natural history of the owl, that, like the cat, it is very fond of fish, though it seems but ill-adapted by nature for capturing them. That it does so, however, there can be no doubt, as owls have been detected in the very act of robbing fish-ponds, and they frequently feed their young with fish." This is a busy month in the farm yard; one of the most pleasing objects of which is, the chickens that now begin to run about. The formation of the chick in the egg is extremely curious. Scarcely has the hen sat upon the eggs twelve hours, before some lineaments of the head and body of the chick are discernable in the embryo; at the end of the second day, the heart begins to beat, but no blood is to be seen. In forty-eight hours we may distinguish two vesicles with blood, the pulsation of which is evident; one of them is the left ventricle, the other, the root of the great artery; soon after one of auricles of the heart is perceptible, in which pulsation |