THE GRASSHOPPER.

Thus would I double my life's fading space;
For he that runs it well twice runs his race.
And in this true delight,

These unbought sports, this happy state,
I would not fear, nor wish, my fate;
But boldly say, each night,
To-morrow let my sun his beams display,
Or in clouds hide them; I have lived to-day.

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THE GRASSHOPPER. - Tennyson.

VOICE of the summer wind,
Joy of the summer plain,
Life of the summer hours,
Carol clearly, bound along.
No Tithon* thou, as poets feign,
(Shame fall 'em, they are deaf and blind,)
But an insect lithe and strong,
Bowing the seeded summer flowers.
Prove their falsehood and their quarrel,
Vaulting on thy airy feet,

Clap thy shielded sides and carol,
Carol clearly, chirrup sweet.

Thou art a mailed warrior, in youth and strength

complete.

*Among the many beautiful fables of the ancient Greeks was this one. The beauty of Tithonus, son of a king of Troy, gained for him the affection of one of the goddesses. He begged her, as a favor, to make him immortal, and his request was granted. But, as he had forgotten to ask to retain the vigor and beauty of youth, he soon became infirm and decrepid; and, as life became insupportable to him, he begged the goddess to remove him from the world. As he could not die, she changed him into a grasshopper.

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THE GRASSHOPPER.

Armed cap-a-pie,
Full fair to see;
Unknowing fear,
Undreading loss.
A gallant cavalier,

"Sans peur et sans reproche," *
In sunlight and in shadow,
The Bayard of the meadow.
I would dwell with thee,
Merry grasshopper,
Thou art so glad and free,

And as light as air;

Thou hast no sorrow or tears,
Thou hast no compt of years,
No withered immortality,
But a short youth, sunny and free.
Carol clearly, bound along,
Soon thy joy is over.
A summer of loud song,

And slumbers in the clover,
What hast thou to do with evil
In thine hour of love and revel,

In thy heat of summer pride
Pushing the thick roots aside
Of the singing, flowered grasses,
That brush thee with their silken tresses?
What hast thou to do with evil,
Shooting, singing, ever springing

In and out the emerald glooms;
Ever leaping, ever singing,
Lighting on the golden blooms?

*Without fear and without reproach; an epithet applied to Bayard, a French knight distinguished for his courage and his integrity. He died in 1524.

A GRECIAN ANECDOTE.

A GRECIAN ANECDOTE. - Milnes.

How Sparta thirsted after orient gold,
And bartered faith for wealth she dared not use,
Is as severe a tale as e'er was told

The pride of man to conquer and confuse.

Therefore forget not what that nature was,

That once availed the base desire to foil, When sought the Ionian Aristagoras

To mingle Sparta in his distant broil.

How thick the perils of that far emprise,
How dim the vista cunningly displayed,
The king discerned, with clear and practised eyes,
And bade the stranger court Athenian aid.

To people as to prince, appeal was vain,-
Vain the dark menace, vain the shadowy gibe,-
But the wise envoy would not bend again
His homeward steps till failed the wonted bribe.

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Ten-twenty-forty talents rose the bait;

Strange feeling glistened in those infant eyes, That gazed attentive on the grave debate,

And seemed to search its meaning in surprise.

A suppliant at the regal hearth he stood,

Nor ever thought that proffer to withhold Because about them, in her careless mood,

Played the king's child,—a girl some nine years old.

Yet fifty now had well secured the prey,
Had not a little hand tight clasped his arm,
And a quick spirit uttered, "Come away,
that man is there to do you harm.”

Father,

--

204

Not unaccepted such pure omen came;

That gentle voice the present God revealed, And back the Ionian chief returned in shame, Checked by the virtue of that simple shield.

THE DEATH OF THE FLOWERS.

THE DEATH OF THE FLOWERS. - Bryant.

THE melancholy days have come, the saddest of the year,

Of wailing winds, and naked woods, and meadows brown and sear.

Heaped in the hollows of the grove, the withered leaves lie dead;

They rustle to the eddying gust, and to the rabbit's tread.

The robin and the wren are flown, and from the shrubs the jay,

And from the wood-top calls the crow, through all the gloomy day.

Where are the flowers, the fair young flowers, that lately sprang and stood

In brighter light and softer airs, a beauteous sisterhood?

Alas! they all are in their graves; the gentle race of flowers

Are lying in their lowly beds, with the fair and good of ours.

The rain is falling where they lie, but the cold November rain

Calls not, from out the gloomy earth, the lovely ones again.

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The wind-flower and the violet, they perished long ago, And the brier-rose and the orchis died amid the summer glow;

But on the hill the golden-rod, and the aster in the wood,

And the yellow sunflower by the brook, in autumn beauty stood,

Till fell the frost from the clear, cold heaven, as falls the plague on men,

And the brightness of their smile was gone, from upland, glade, and glen.

THE DEATH OF THE FLOWERS.

And now, when comes the calm, mild day, as still such days will come,

To call the squirrel and the bee from out their winter home,

When the sound of dropping nuts is heard, though all the trees are still,

And twinkle in the smoky light the waters of the rill, The south wind searches for the flowers whose fragrance late he bore,

And sighs to find them in the wood and by the stream

no more.

And then I think of one who in her youthful beauty died,

The fair, meek blossom that grew up and faded by my side:

In the cold, moist earth we laid her, when the forest cast the leaf,

And we wept that one so lovely should have a life so brief;

Yet not unmeet it was that one, like that young friend of ours,

So gentle, and so beautiful, should perish with the flowers.