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SEEKING THE MAYFLOWER*

BY EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN

THE sweetest sound our whole year round
'Tis the first robin of the spring!
The song of the full orchard choir

Is not so fine a thing.

Glad sights are common: Nature draws
Her random pictures through the year,
But oft her music bids us long
Remember those most dear.

To me, when in the sudden spring
I hear the earliest robin's lay,
With the first trill there comes again
One picture of the May.

The veil is parted wide, and lo,

A moment though my eyelids close, Once more I see that wooded hill Where the arbutus grows.

I see the village dryad kneel,
Trailing her slender fingers through
The knotted tendrils, as she lifts
Their pink, pale flowers to view.

* By permission of the publishers, Houghton, Mifflin & Co.

Once more I dare to stoop beside
The dove-eyed beauty of my choice,
And long to touch her careless hair,
And think how dear her voice.

My eager, wandering hands assist
With fragrant blooms her lap to fill,
And half by chance they meet her own;
Half by our young hearts' will.

Till, at the last, those blossoms won
Like her, so pure, so sweet, so shy
Upon the gray and lichened rocks
Close at her feet I lie.

Fresh blows the breeze through hemlock trees,
The fields are edged with green below;
And naught but youth and hope and love
We know or care to know!

Hark! from the moss-clung apple-bough,
Beyond the tumbled wall, there broke
That gurgling music of the May —
'Twas the first robin spoke!

I heard it, ay, and heard it not-
For little then my glad heart wist
What toil and time should come to pass;
And what delight be missed;

Nor thought thereafter, year by year,
Hearing that fresh yet olden song,
To yearn for unreturning joys
That with its joy belong.

THE STORY OF THE HYACINTH

ANONYMOUS

HYACINTH was a beautiful youth beloved by Apollo. He was playing one day at discus-throwing with the god, when Zephyrus, the West Wind, enraged at Hyacinthus for preferring Apollo to himself, caused one of the discuses to rebound and strike him in the face. Apollo, in despair, seeing that he was unable to save his life, changed him into the flower which bears his name, on whose petals Grecian fancy traced ai, ai, the notes of grief.

CHILDREN AND FLOWERS

BY AMANDA B. HARRIS

From Wild Flower Papers

WHAT do these children do who never have a chance to gather wild flowers- the flowers that bloom so lavishly; more than enough for everybody, in the dear country-places?

Never to have been where violets grow, or arbutus,

or down in those lovely woods among the beds of linnæa! Never to have found the spring-beauty and the wood-sorrel, and the dog's-tooth violet, and Jack-in-the-pulpit! Never to have seen banks of scarlet columbine, and a whole milky-way of the silvery miterwort! Never to have come home from the pasture with lady's slippers and red lilies; or been on the meadows in cowslip time, or by the pond when the lilies were open! Never to have had all the goldenrod and asters one wanted!

It seems as if a child had not had his rightful share in this world when he has been limited to some pentup court or narrow street. Every child is born with a love for flowers. Yet many a little one must be satisfied with the dandelion that comes up in the backyard, which the eager fingers reach for as a miser would for gold.

Every generous boy and girl who has been used to having wild flowers enough must have often longed to share them with those who had none; to send them by the barrel full; to load down express wagons with daisies and lilies (oh, so many there are on the green meadows in midsummer!) and have them distributed all along those city byways, and in the hospitals where sick children are lying in pain. It would be like opening the doors and letting the country in; for they would carry with them the dew of the meadows, and the woodsy smells. You could almost seem to hear the cow-bells tinkle, the

singing of birds, the gurgling of happy brooks, murmur of bees, and lowing of cattle, and the whistle of the farm boys at their work; for they all belong together.

THE VIOLET UNDER THE SNOW

BY RACHEL CAPEN SCHAUFFLER

TO THEE I Would bring

Through all thy dead winter

Th' perfume of Spring.

With thee I would share

The gold in the burden
Brave hearts have to bear.

Art happy to see,

O Child of the Purple,
A Brother in me?

THE PRIMROSES*

BY W. GRAHAM ROBERTSON

WHAT has happened in the night?

All the stars are fallen down!
Won't they set the earth a-light?
Earth so old and brown.

We can pick them as we pass,

Scattered shining on the grass.

* Published by the John Lane Company, New York and London.

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