And in the first-blown violets; we have drunk
Cool water from the rock, and in the shade
Sunk to the noontide slumber; we have plucked
The mellow fruitage of the bending tree,
And girded to our pleasant wanderings.
When the cool winds came freshly from the hills,
And when the tinting of the autumn leaves
Had faded from its glory, we have sat
By the good fires of winter, and rejoiced
Over the fullness of the gathered sheaf.
THE CHILD AND THE YEAR.
CELIA THAXTER.
Said the child to the youthful year:
“What hast thou in store for me,
O giver of beautiful gifts! what cheer,
What joy dost thou bring with thee?”
“My seasons four shall bring
Their treasures: the winter’s snows,
The autumn’s store, and the flowers of spring,
And the summer’s perfect rose.
“All these and more shall be thine,
Dear child,—but the last and best
Thyself must earn by a strife divine,
If thou wouldst be truly blest.
“Wouldst know this last, best gift?
’Tis a conscience clear and bright,
A peace of mind which the soul can lift
To an infinite delight.
“Truth, patience, courage, and love,
If thou unto me canst bring,
I will set thee all earth’s ills above,
O child! and crown thee a king!”
* * * * *
We are bound, by every rule of justice and equity, to give the New
Year credit for being a good one until he proves himself unworthy the
confidence we repose in him.—CHARLES DICKENS.
THE SEASONS.
A SONG OF WAKING.
KATHARINE LEE BATES.
The maple buds are red, are red,
The robin’s call is sweet;
The blue sky floats above thy head,
The violets kiss thy feet.
The sun paints emeralds on the spray
And sapphires on the lake;
A million wings unfold to-day,
A million flowers awake.
Their starry cups the cowslips lift
To catch the golden light,
And like a spirit fresh from shrift
The cherry tree is white.
The innocent looks up with eyes
That know no deeper shade
Than falls from wings of butterflies
Too fair to make afraid.
With long, green raiment blown and wet
The willows, hand in hand,
Lean low to teach the rivulet
What trees may understand
Of murmurous tune and idle dance,
With broken rhymes whose flow
A poet’s ear shall catch, perchance,
A score of miles below.
Across the sky to fairy realm
There sails a cloud-born ship;
A wind sprite standeth at the helm,
With laughter on his lip;
The melting masts are tipped with gold,
The ’broidered pennons stream;
The vessel beareth in her hold
The lading of a dream.
It is the hour to rend thy chains,
The blossom time of souls;
Yield all the rest to cares and pains,
To-day delight controls.
Gird on thy glory and thy pride,
For growth is of the sun;
Expand thy wings whate’er betide,
The Summer is begun.
“EARLY SPRING.”
ALFRED TENNYSON.
I.
Once more the Heavenly Power
Makes all things new,
And domes the red-plowed hills
With loving blue;
The blackbirds have their wills,
The throstles too.
II.
Opens a door in Heaven
From skies of glass;
A Jacob’s-ladder falls
On greening grass,
And o’er the mountain-walls
Young angels pass.
III.
Before them fleets the shower,
And burst the buds,
And shine the level lands,
And flash the floods;
The stars are from their hands
Flung through the woods.
IV.
O follow, leaping blood,
The season’s lure!
O heart, look down and up,
Serene, secure,
Warm as the crocus-cup,
Like snow-drops, pure!
V.
For now the Heavenly Power
Makes all things new,
And thaws the cold and fills
The flower with dew;
The blackbirds have their wills,
The poets too.
_Youth’s Companion._
MAY.
May comes laughing, crowned with daffodils,
Her dress embroidered with blue violets,
So gracious and so sweet she scarcely lets
A thought return of all the winter’s ills.
The orchards with enchanting wealth she fills;
In the green marshes golden cowslip sets,
And all the waking woodland spaces frets
With shy anemones. But ah, she wills
At times to frown in sudden wayward mood;
The violets shiver clinging to the ground,
She’s cold and blustering where once she wooed,
And oftentimes in petulant tears is found;
But like sweet women, who sometimes are cross,
Her smiles come back the sweeter for their loss.
_Good Cheer._
JUNE.
She sits all day plaiting a wild-rose wreath,
This daughter of the Sun, come from afar.
Sweeter is she than her bright sisters are
Who follow her across the flowery heath.
A daisy is her sign, and underneath
The meadow’s foamy flow the clovers wear
Their uniforms of white and red, and bear
Their cups of sweet to scent their mistress’ breath.
What dawns are thine, O dear, delicious June,
When at the drawing of thy curtain’s fold
The birds awake and sing a marvelous tune
To the young Day that comes in rose and gold!
What twilights when the gray dusk hides thy face
That thou mayst come with more enchanting grace!
_Travelers’ Record._
GOLDEN-ROD.
LUCY LARCOM.
Midsummer music in the grass—
The cricket and the grasshopper;
White daisies and red clover pass;
The caterpillar trails her fur
After the languid butterfly;
But green and spring-like is the sod
Where autumn’s earliest lamps I spy—
The tapers of the golden-rod.
This flower is fuller of the sun
Than any our pale North can show;
It has the heart of August won,
And scatters wide the warmth and glow
Kindled at summer’s mid-noon blaze,
Where gentians of September bloom
Along October’s leaf-strewn ways,
And through November’s paths of gloom.
As lavish of its golden light
As sunshine’s self, this blossom is;
Its starry chandeliers burn bright
All day; and have you noted this—
A perfect sun in every flower,—
Ten thousand thousand fairy suns,
Raying from new disks hour by hour,
As up the stalk the life-flash runs?
Because its myriad glimmering plumes
Like a great army’s stir and wave,
Because its gold in billows blooms,
The poor man’s barren walks to lave;
Because its sun-shaped blossoms show
How souls receive the light of God,
And unto earth give back that glow—
I thank Him for the golden-rod.
INDIAN SUMMER.
JOHN G. WHITTIER.
From gold to gray
Our mild sweet day
Of Indian summer fades too soon;
But tenderly
Above the sea
Hangs, white and calm, the hunter’s moon.
In its pale fire
The village spire,
Shows like the zodiac’s spectral lance,
The painted walls
Whereon it falls,
Transfigured stand in marble trance.
SEPTEMBER, 1815.
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.
While not a leaf seems faded, while the fields,
With ripening harvests prodigally fair,
In brightest sunshine bask, this nipping air,
Sent from some distant clime where Winter wields
His icy cimeter, a foretaste yields
Of bitter change, and bids the flowers beware,
And whispers to the silent birds, “Prepare
Against the threatening foe your trustiest shields.”
For me, who, under kindlier laws, belong
To Nature’s tuneful choir, this rustling dry,
Through the green leaves, and yon crystalline sky,
Announce a season potent to renew,
’Mid frost and snow, the instinctive joys of song,
And nobler cares than listless summer knew.
OCTOBER.
WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.
Ay, thou art welcome, Heaven’s delicious breath,
When woods begin to wear the crimson leaf,
And suns grow meek, and the meek suns grow brief,
And the year smiles as it draws near its death.
Wind of the sunny South, oh! still delay
In the gay woods and in the golden air,
Like to a good old age released from care,
Journeying, in long serenity, away.
In such a bright, late quiet, would that I
Might wear out life like thee, ’mid bowers and brooks,
And, dearer yet, the sunshine of kind looks,
And music of kind voices ever nigh,
And, when my last sand twinkled in the glass,
Pass silently from men, as thou dost pass.
FADED LEAVES.
ALICE CARY.
The hills are bright with maples yet;
But down the level land
The beech-leaves rustle in the wind
As dry and brown as sand.
The clouds in bars of rusty red
Along the hilltops glow,
And in the still sharp air the frost
Is like a dream of snow.
The berries of the brier rose
Have lost their rounded pride,
The bitter-sweet chrysanthemums
Are drooping heavy-eyed.
The cricket grows more friendly now,
The dormouse sly and wise,
Hiding away in disgrace
Of nature from men’s eyes.
The pigeons in black and wavering lines
Are swinging toward the sun;
And all the wide and withered fields
Proclaim the summer done.
His store of nuts and acorns now
The squirrel hastes to gain,
And sets his house in order for
The winter’s dreary reign.
’Tis time to light the evening fire,
To read good books, to sing
The low and lovely songs that breathe
Of the eternal spring.
NOVEMBER.
HARTLEY COLERIDGE.
The mellow year is hasting to its close;
The little birds have almost sung their last;
Their small notes twitter in the dreary blast,
That shrill-piped harbinger of early snows;
The patient beauty of the scentless rose
Oft with the morn’s hoar crystal quaintly glassed
Hangs a pale mourner for the summer past
And makes a little summer where it grows,
In the chill sunbeam of the faint, brief day.
The dusky waters shudder as they shine;
The russet leaves obstruct the straggling way
Of oozy brooks, which no deep banks confine,
And the gaunt woods, in ragged, scant array,
Wrap their old limbs with somber ivy-twine.
WINTER.
ROBERT SOUTHEY.
A wrinkled, crabbed man they picture thee,
Old Winter, with a rugged beard as gray
As the long moss upon the apple-tree;
Blue-lipt, an ice-drop at thy sharp blue nose,
Close muffled up, and on thy dreary way
Plodding alone through sleet and drifting snows.
They should have drawn thee by the high-heapt hearth,
Old Winter, seated in thy great armed chair,
Watching the children at their Christmas mirth,
Or circled by them as thy lips declare
Some merry jest, or tale of murder dire,
Or troubled spirit that disturbs the night,
Pausing at times to rouse the moldering fire,
Or taste the old October brown and bright.
DECEMBER.
LOUISA PARSONS HOPKINS.
Blow, northern winds!
To brace my fibers, knit my cords,
To gird my soul, to fire my words,
To do my work—for ’tis the Lord’s—
To fashion minds.
Come, tonic blasts!
Arouse my courage, stir my thought,
Give nerve and strength that as I ought
I give my strength to what is wrought
While duty lasts.
Glow, arctic light!
And let my heart with burnished steel
That bright magnetic flame reveal
Which kindles purpose, faith, and zeal
For truth and right.
Shine, winter skies!
That when each brave day’s work is done
I wait in peace from sun to sun,
To meet unshamed, through victory won,
Your starry eyes.
* * * * *
Under these names, January, February, March, April, how much is hid that
the eye cannot see! Uncover the months and interpret them. In a low and
sweet way our Almanac began to speak as if he were a harp, and as if the
spirit of the year like a gentle wind was breathing through it.—HENRY
WARD BEECHER.
JANUARY.
ROSALINE E. JONES.
Who can love you, January?
You are gruff and ugly—very.
How you roar!
And a sorry tale you utter,
In a maniacal mutter,
At my door.
Then you sob and sigh and pine,
In a mindless, minor whine,
And again
A wild, grewsome ditty slips
From your frozen, rigid lips,
Fierce as pain.
Like some creature strung to hate,
Wrestling with its cruel fate,
Conquering
Only as you flee apace,
Glaring back with grim, wry face,
Mimicking.
Hush your savage minstrelsy
To a mellower symphony,
Soft and deep.
Know you no mellifluous rune?
No low, lulling cradle croon,
Wooing sleep?
No soft breath from slumbrous isles,
Where eternal summer smiles
Halcyon?
Beat your tattoo for your raids,
And decamp for Hadean shades.
Pray begone!
FROST WORK.
MARY E. BRADLEY.
No fairies left? You need not tell me so,
For in the night upon my window pane
Grew wondrous things that made me surely know
The fairies are at their old tricks again.
O wonder working spirit! if I could
But learn of you the secret of the snow—
How frost is given by the breath of God,
And where the hidden water courses flow;
And where begotten is the dew that strings
Her lovely pearls upon the meanest weed,
And what sweet animating influence brings
The blossom splendid from the trivial seed;
Could I but ride the south wind and the north,
And fathom all the mysteries they hold,
See how the lightning, leaping wildly forth,
And how the turbulent thunder is controlled,
I would no more be fretted by the greed
And selfishness of men; their puny spite,
Nor any worldly loss or cross indeed,
My lifted soul could evermore affright.
And wherefore now? The laughing fairy seems
To mock at me the spangled window through;
And I laugh also, waking from my dreams
To take up daily loss and cross anew.
But with a sense of things divinely planned,
That makes me sure I need not fear disdain,
From One who holds the thunder in his hand,
Yet stoops to trace the frost work on the pane.
FLOWERS.
NO FLOWERS.
How bleak and drear the earth would seem
Were there no flower faces
To give the hills, the woods and fields
Their pleasing charms and graces!
Could spring be spring without a flower
To smile at April’s weeping?
Would robins trill so gay a song,
Or May day be worth keeping?
And only think how bare the hedge
Would look without its posies!—
How queer ’twould be to have a June
That did not smell like roses!
No dandelions on the sward
For childhood’s busy fingers;
No morning-glories, drinking dew,
While golden sunrise lingers!
No violets, with hoods of blue,
To nod at mild spring’s coming;
No clover blossoms—would we hear
The busy bees’ soft humming?
And were there no forget-me-nots,
No buttercups or daisies,
The children would be lost for sports,
The poet lost for phrases.
No flowers, with their refining power
No wafts from yon sweet heaven—
No tokens of a love divine
To erring mortals given!
Ah, flowers your smiling faces prove
The Source of all our pleasures
Would not pronounce creation good
Without thee, floral treasures!
FERNS.
Ferns, beautiful ferns,
By the side of the running waters,
Lovely and sweet and fresh,
As the fairest of earth-born daughters;
Under the dreamy shade
Of the forest’s mighty branches,
Curving their graceful shapes
To the playful wind’s advances.
Ferns, delicate ferns,
Neighbors of emerald mosses,
Having no thought or care
For worldly attainments or losses.
Children of shadow serene,
Fresh at the heart through the summer,
Over the cool springs they lean,
Where the sunbeam is rarely a comer.
Ferns, feathery ferns,
Delicate, slender and frail,
Nursed by the streamlet, whose song
Is music for hillside and vale.
Purity, modesty, grace,
Emblems of these to the mind,
Loving the quietest place
That ever a sunbeam will find.
SWEET PEAS.
Oh, what is the use of such pretty wings
If one never, never can fly?
Pink and fine as the clouds that shine
In the delicate morning sky.
With a perfume sweet as the lilies keep
Down in their vases so white and deep.
The brown bees go humming aloft;
The humming-bird soars away;
The butterfly blows like the leaf of a rose,
Off, off in the sunshine gay;
While you peep over the garden wall,
Looking so wistfully after them all.
Are you tired of the company
Of the balsams so dull and proud?
Of the coxcombs bold and the marigold,
And the spider-wort wrapped in a cloud?
Have you not plenty of sunshine and dew,
And crowds of gay gossips to visit you?
How you flutter, and reach, and climb!
How eager your wee faces are!
Aye, turned to the light till the blind old night
Is led to the world by a star.
Well, it surely is hard to feel one’s wings,
And still be prisoned like wingless things.
“Tweet, tweet,” then says Parson Thrush,
Who is preaching up in a tree;
“Though you never may fly while the world goes by,
Take heart, little flowers,” says he;
“For often, I know, to the souls that aspire
Comes something better than their desire!”
_St. Nicholas._
THE TRAILING ARBUTUS.
JOHN G. WHITTIER.
I wandered lone where the pine trees made
Against the east their barricade;
And, guided by its sweet
Perfume, I found within a narrow dell
The trailing spring flower, tinted like a shell,
Amid dry leaves and mosses at my feet.
From under dead boughs, for whose loss the pines
Moaned ceaseless overhead, the blossoming vines
Lifted their glad surprise,
While yet the bluebird smoothed in leafless trees
His feathers, ruffled by chill sea breeze,
And snowdrifts lingered under April skies.
As, pausing, o’er the lowly flowers I bent,
I thought of lives thus lowly, clogged and pent,
Which yet find room,
Through care and cumber, coldness and decay,
To lend a sweetness to the ungenial day,
And make the sad earth happier for their bloom.
A BUNCH OF COWSLIPS.
In the rarest of English valleys
A motherless girl ran wild,
And the greenness and silence and gladness
Were soul of the soul of the child.
The birds were her gay little brothers,
The squirrels her sweethearts shy;
And her heart kept tune with the raindrops,
And sailed with the clouds in the sky;
And angels kept coming and going,
With beautiful things to do;
And wherever they left a footprint,
A cowslip or primrose grew.
She was taken to live in London—
So thick with pitiless folk—
And she could not smile for its badness,
And could not breathe for its smoke;
And now as she lay on her pallet,
Too weary and weak to rise,
A smile of ineffable longing
Brought dews to her faded eyes;
“Oh, me! for a yellow cowslip,
A pale little primrose dear!
Won’t some kind angel remember,
And pluck one and bring it here?”
They brought her a bunch of cowslips;
She took them with fingers weak,
And kissed them, and stroked them, and loved them,
And laid them against her cheek.
“It was kind of the angels to send them;
And now I’m too tired to pray,
If God looks down at the cowslips,
He’ll know what I want to say.”
They buried them in her bosom;
And when she shall wake and rise,
Why may not the flowers be quickened,
And bloom in her happy skies?
DAFFODILS.
ROBERT HERRICK.
We have short time to stay as you,
We have as short a spring;
As quick a growth, to meet decay,
As you or anything.
We die
As your hours do, and dry
Away,
Like to the summer’s rain,
Or as the pearls of morning’s dew,
Ne’er to be found again.
CHRYSANTHEMUMS.
MRS. MARY E. DODGE.
Bravest of brave sweet blossoms in all of the garden-row;
Fair, when most of the flowers shrink from the winds that blow;
Gay, when the dismal north wind wails through the tree-tops dumb;
Breathing a breath of gladness is the brave Chrysanthemum.
One is of tawny color; another of cardinal glow,
As the cheek of a sun-warmed maiden and reddest of wine will show;
While some are of gorgeous yellow, like gold in a monarch’s crown,
And some of a royal purple, dusted with softest down.
Some of a creamy whiteness, touched to a rosy blush,
As the snow of the lovely Jungfrau glows with a sunset flush;
Some flame at the heart, pearl-petaled; and lavender-hued are some;
Yet each of them, crude or cultured, just a brave Chrysanthemum.
ROSES.
It is summer, says a fairy,
Bring me tissue light and airy;
Bring me colors of the rarest,
Search the rainbow for the fairest
Sea-shell, pink and sunny yellow,
Kingly crimson, deep and mellow;
Faint red in Aurora beaming,
And the white in pure pearl gleaming.
Bring me diamonds from the spaces
Where the air the earth embraces;
Bring me gold-dust by divining
Where the humming-bird is mining;
Bring me sweets as rich as may be
From the kisses of a baby;
With an art no fay discloses
I am going to make some roses.
THE MESSAGE OF THE SNOWDROP.
Courage and hope, true heart!
Summer is coming though late the spring,
Over the breast of the quiet mold,
With an emerald shimmer—a glint of gold,
Till the leaves of the regal rose unfold
At the rush of the swallow’s wing.
Courage and hope, true heart!
Summer is coming though spring be late;
Wishing is weary and waiting is long,
But sorrow’s day hath an even-song,
And the garlands that never shall fade belong
To the soul that is strong to wait.
RAGGED SAILORS.
O ragged, ragged Sailors!
I pray you answer me:
What may you all be doing
So far away from sea?
“We’re loitering by the roadsides,
We’re lingering on the hills,
To talk with pretty Daisies
In stiff and snowy frills.
“And though our blue be ragged,
Right welcome still are we
To tell the nodding lasses
Long tales about the sea!”
DIALOGUES.
THE QUEEN’S NECKLACE.
ALEXANDER DUMAS.
NOTE.—The scandal concerning this famous necklace—upon which the story
is founded—was one of the many misfortunes endured by the unhappy Queen
Marie Antoinette.
Characters:
MARIE ANTOINETTE, Queen of France.
Monsieur BOEHMER, Merchant.
_Monsieur Boehmer._ We do not come to offer anything to your Majesty, we
should fear to be indiscreet; but we come to fulfill a duty concerning
the necklace which your Majesty did not deign to take.
_Marie Antoinette._ Oh! then the necklace has come again! It was really
beautiful, M. Boehmer.
_M. B._ So beautiful that your Majesty alone was worthy to wear it.
_M. A._ My consolation is that it cost a million and a half francs, and
in these times there is no sovereign that can give such a sum for a
necklace; so that although I cannot wear it, no one else can.
_M. B._ That is an error of your Majesty’s. The necklace is sold.
_M. A._ Sold! To whom?
_M. B._ Ah, Madame, that is a state secret.
_M. A._ Oh, I think I am safe. A state secret means that there is nothing
to tell.
_M. B._ With your Majesty we do not act as with others. The necklace is
sold, but in the most secret manner, and an embassador—
_M. A._ I really think you believe it yourself! Come, M. Boehmer, tell me
at least the country he comes from, or, at all events, the first letter
of his name.
_M. B._ Madame, it is the embassador from Portugal.
_M. A._ The embassador from Portugal! There is none here, M. Boehmer.
_M. B._ He came expressly for this, Madame.
_M. A._ Well, so much the better for the Queen of Portugal. We will speak
of it no more.
_M. B._ We could not let the diamonds leave France without expressing
our regret to your Majesty. It is a necklace which is now known all over
Europe, and we wished to know definitely that your Majesty really refused
it before we parted with it.
_M. A._ My refusal has been made public, and has been too much applauded
for me to repent it.
_M. B._ Oh, Madame, if the people found it admirable that your Majesty
preferred a ship of war to a necklace, the nobility at least would not
think it surprising if you bought the necklace after all.
_M. A._ Do not speak of it any more!
_M. B._ It has touched your Majesty’s neck; it ought not to belong to any
one else. We will return to-morrow.
_M. A._ Impossible! I have amused myself with these jewels; to do more
would be a fault.
_M. B._ Your Majesty, then, refuses them?
_M. A._ Yes, oh yes. Take the necklace back. Put it away immediately!
QUEEN ISABELLA’S RESOLVE.
EPES SARGENT.
Characters:
ISABELLA, QUEEN OF SPAIN.
DON GOMEZ, a Grandee.
CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS.
_Isabella._ And so, Don Gomez, you think we ought to dismiss the
proposition of this worthy Genoese?
_Don Gomez._ His scheme, your Majesty, is fanciful in the extreme. I am a
plain man. I do not see visions and dream dreams like some men.
_I._ And yet Columbus has given us good reasons for believing that he can
reach India by sailing in a westerly direction.
_D. G._ Delusion, your Majesty! Admitting that the earth is a sphere, how
would it be possible for him to return, if he once descended the sphere
in the direction he proposes? Would not the coming back be all up-hill?
Could a ship accomplish it even with the most favorable wind?
_I._ What have you to say to these objections, Columbus?
_Col._ With your Majesty’s leave, I would suggest that if the earth is a
sphere, the same laws of adhesion and motion must operate at every point
on its surface.
_D. G._ Don’t try to make _me_, a grandee of Spain, believe such stuff
as that there are people on the earth who walk with their heads down,
like flies on a ceiling! Would not the blood run into my head if I were
standing upside down?
_Col._ I have already answered that objection. If there are people on the
earth who are our antipodes, it should be remembered that we are also
theirs.
_I._ To cut short the discussion, you think that the enterprise, which
Columbus proposes, is one unworthy of our serious consideration?
_D. G._ As a matter-of-fact man, I must confess that I do so regard it.
Has your Majesty ever seen an embassador from this unknown coast?
_I._ Have you ever seen an embassador from the unknown world of spirits?
_D. G._ Certainly not. Through faith we look forward to it.
_I._ Even so, by faith, does Columbus look forward, far over the misty
ocean, to an undiscovered shore. Know, Don Gomez, that the _absurdity_,
as you style it, shall be tested, and that forthwith.