Carrying him back to the days of his childish sports, and conjuring up before him the old green field with its gently waving trees, where the birds sang as he has never heard them since, where the butterfly fluttered far more gaily than he ever sees him now in all his ramblings, where the sky seemed bluer, and the sun shone more brightly, where the air blew more freshly over greener grass and sweeter-smelling flowers, where everything wore a richer and more brilliant hue than it is ever dressed in now! Such are the deep feelings of childhood, and such are the impressions which every lovely object stamps upon its heart!

WHY YE BLOSSOME COMETH BEFORE YE LEAFE*

BY OLIVER HERFORD

ONCE Hoary Winter chanced-alas!

Alas! hys waye mistaking

A leafless apple-tree to pass

Where Spring lay dreaming. "Fie, ye lass!
Ye lass had best be waking,"

Quoth he, and shook hys robe, and, lo!
Lo! forth didde flye a cloud of snowe.

*From "The Bashful Earthquake and other Fables," copyright 1898, by Oliver Herford; published by Charles Scribner's Sons.

Now in ye bough an elfe there dwelte,
An elfe of wondrous powere,

That when ye chillye snowe didde pelte,
With magic charm each flake didde melte,
Didde melte into a flowere;

And Spring didde wake and marvelle how,
How blossomed so ye leafless bough.

SPRING

(After Meleager)

BY ANDREW LANG

Now the bright crocus flames, and now
The slim narcissus takes the rain,
And, straying o'er the mountain's brow,
The daffodillies bud again.

The thousand blossoms wax and wane
On wold, and heath, and fragrant bough,
But fairer than the flowers art thou,
Than any growth of hill or plain.

Ye gardens, cast your leafy crown,

That my Love's feet may tread it down,

Like lillies on the lilies set;

My love, whose lips are softer far

Than drowsy poppy petals are,

And sweeter than the violet.

THE RETURN OF SPRING*

BY HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

From Charles D'Orléans

Now Time throws off his cloak again
Of ermined frost, and wind, and rain,
And clothes him in the embroidery
Of glittering sun and clear blue sky.
With beast and bird the forest rings,
Each in his jargon cries or sings;
And Time throws off his cloak again
Of ermined frost, and wind, and rain.

River, and fount, and tinkling brook
Wear in their dainty livery
Drops of silver jewelry;

In new-made suit they merry look;
And Time throws off his cloak again
Of ermined frost, and wind, and rain.

THE MONTH OF APPLE BLOSSOMS

BY HENRY WARD BEECHER

IT MAKES no difference that you have seen forty or fifty springs, each one is as new, every process as fresh, and the charm as fascinating as if you had

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

single one.

never witnessed Nature works the same things without seeming repetition. There, for instance, is the apple-tree. Every year since our boyhood it has been doing the same thing; standing low to the ground, with a round and homely head, without an element of grandeur or poetry, except once a year. In the month of May, apple-trees go a-courting. Love is evermore father of poetry. And the month of May finds the orchard no longer a plain, sober business affair, but the gayest and most radiant frolicker of the year. We have seen human creatures whose ordinary life was dutiful and prosaic; but when some extraordinary excitement of grief, or, more likely, of deep love, had thoroughly mastered them, they broke forth into a richness of feeling, an inspiration of sentiment, that mounted up into the very kingdom of beauty, and for the transient hour they glowed with the very elements of poetry. And so to us seems the apple-tree. From June to May it is a homely, duty-performing, sober, matter-of-fact tree. But May seems to stir up a love-beat in its veins.

The old round-topped, crooked-trunked, and ungainly boughed fellow drops all world-ways and takes to itself a new idea of life. Those little stubbed spurs, that all the year had seemed like rheumatic fingers, or thumbs and fingers, stiffened and stubbed by work, now are transformed. Forth

they put a little head of buds, which a few rains and days of encouraging warmth solicit to a cluster of blossoms. At first rosy and pink, then opening purely white. And now, where is your old, homely tree?

All its crookedness is hidden by the sheets of blossoms. The whole top is changed to a royal dome. The literal, fruit-bearing tree is transfigured, and glows with raiment whiter and purer than any white linen. It is a marvel and a glory! What if you have seen it before, ten thousand times over? An apple-tree in full blossom is like a message, sent fresh from heaven to earth, of purity and beauty. We walk around it reverently and admiringly. We are never tired of

looking at its profusion. Homely as it ordinarily is, yet now it speaks of the munificence of God better than any other tree.

The very glory of God seems resting upon it! It is a little inverted hemisphere, like that above it, and it daily mimics with bud and bloom the stars that nightly blossom out into the darkness above it. Though its hour of glory is short, into it is concentrated a magnificence which puts all the more stately trees into the background. If men will not admire, insects and birds will!

There, on the very topmost twig, that rises and falls with willowy motion, sits that ridiculous but