SEEKING THE MAYFLOWER* BY EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN THE sweetest sound our whole year round Is not so fine a thing. Glad sights are common: Nature draws To me, when in the sudden spring 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, * By permission of the publishers, Houghton, Mifflin & Co. Once more I dare to stoop beside My eager, wandering hands assist Till, at the last, those blossoms won Fresh blows the breeze through hemlock trees, Hark! from the moss-clung apple-bough, I heard it, ay, and heard it not- Nor thought thereafter, year by year, 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 Art happy to see, O Child of the Purple, THE PRIMROSES* BY W. GRAHAM ROBERTSON WHAT has happened in the night? All the stars are fallen down! We can pick them as we pass, Scattered shining on the grass. * Published by the John Lane Company, New York and London. |