O columbine, open your folded wrapper,
Where two twin turtle-doves dwell!
O cuckoo-pint, toll me the purple clapper
That hangs in your clear green bell!

And show me your nest with the young ones in it;

I will not steal them away;

I am old! you may trust me, linnet, linnet-
I am seven times one to-day.

Jean Ingelow: born, 1830.

Miss Ingelow is a native of Ipswich, Suffolk, and is the author of several volumes of poetry and imaginative tales. Her poems are pure and sweet, in sympathy with human interests and emotions, and keenly appreciative of even the subtlest phenomena of Nature, the feelings they awaken, and the fancies they suggest.

THE ROMANCE OF THE SWAN'S NEST.

'So the dreams depart,

So the fading phantoms flee,
And the sharp reality

Now must act its part.'

WESTWOOD'S Beads from a Rosary.

LITTLE ELLIE sits alone

'Mid the beeches of a meadow,

By a stream side, on the grass,
And the trees are showering down
Doubles of their leaves in shadow,
On her shining hair and face.

She has thrown her bonnet by,
And her feet she has been dipping
In the shallow water's flow.
Now she holds them nakedly
In her hands, all sleek and dripping,
While she rocketh to and fro.

1 cuckoo-pint-the wild arum, 'lords and ladies.'

Little Ellie sits alone,
And the smile she softly uses

Fills the silence like a speech,

While she thinks what shall be done,-
And the sweetest pleasure chooses
For her future, within reach.

Little Ellie in her smile
Chooses . . . . 'I will have a lover,
Riding on a steed of steeds!
He shall love me without guile,
And to him I will discover

That swan's nest among the reeds.

'And the steed shall be red-roan,
And the lover shall be noble,

With an eye that takes the breath.
And the lute he plays upon,

Shall strike ladies into trouble,

As his sword strikes men to death.

'And the steed, it shall be shod
All in silver, housed in azure,1

And the mane shall swim the wind;
And the hoofs along the sod

Shall flash onward and keep measure,
Till the shepherds look behind.

'But my lover will not prize
All the glory that he rides in,
When he gazes in my face
He will say, "O Love, thine eyes
Build the shrine my soul abides in,
And I kneel here for thy grace."

‘Then, ay, then-he shall kneel low,
With the red-roan steed anear him,

Which shall seem to understand-
Till I answer, "Rise and go !

For the world must love and fear him
Whom I gift with heart and hand."

1 housed in_azure-equipped in trappings of blue: housings are ornamental coverings or saddle-cloths.

'Then he will arise so pale,
I shall feel my own lips tremble
With a yes I must not say,

Nathless,1 maiden brave, "Farewell,"
I will utter and dissemble-

"Light to-morrow with to-day."

'Then he'll ride among the hills
To the wide world past the river,
There to put away all wrong;
To make straight distorted wills,
And to empty the broad quiver
Which the wicked bear along.

'Three times shall a young foot-page
Swim the stream and climb the mountain
And kneel down beside my feet—
"Lo! my master sends this gage,3

Lady, for thy pity's counting!

What wilt thou exchange for it?"

'And the first time, I will send
A white rosebud for a guerdon,4-
And the second time, a glove;
But the third time-I may bend
From my pride, and answer,-" Pardon
If he comes to take my love."

'Then the young foot-page will run-
Then my lover will ride faster,

Till he kneeleth at my knee!
"I am a duke's eldest son !
Thousand serfs do call me master,-
But, O Love, I love but thee!"

1 nathless-nevertheless.

2 i.e., Win a bright future by noble deeds in the present.

3 gage-something (usually a glove) thrown down as token of challenge to combat. In this case the gage would be sent as a trophy, a pledge that the challenge had been accepted and victory obtained.

guerdon-reward,

'He will kiss me on the mouth
Then, and lead me, as a lover

Through the crowd that praise his deeds:
And, when soul-tied by one troth,

Unto him I will discover

That swan's nest among the reeds.'

Little Ellie, with her smile
Not yet ended, rose up gaily,

Tied the bonnet, donn'd the shoe,
And went homeward, round a mile,

Just to see, as she did daily,

What more eggs were with the two.

Pushing through the elm-tree copse,
Winding by the stream, light-hearted,
Where the osier pathway leads-
Past the boughs she stoops-and stops.
Lo! the wild swan had deserted-
And a rat had gnaw'd the reeds.

Ellie went home, sad and slow.
If she found the lover ever,

With his red-roan steed of steeds,
Sooth, I know not! but I know
She could never show him-never,

That swan's nest among the reeds!

Elizabeth Barrett Browning: 1809-1861.

Mrs. Browning's best poems are the grandest ever written by an Englishwoman. She understood the human heart, and all her work appeals directly to it. In her early life Miss Barrett was a devoted student : she learnt many languages, and studied the world's best poetry in its original form. From her seventeenth year till her death she continued to write, and produced many volumes of poetry. In 1846 she was married to Robert Browning (see page 41), and they went to live in Italy. Mrs. Browning died in Florence, where a tablet was erected to her memory by the inhabitants, in recognition of the sympathy her poems had won for them in England.

THE WITNESSES.

WHEN Eve had led her lord away,
And Cain had killed his brother,
The stars and flowers, the poets say,
Agreed with one another

To cheat the cunning tempter's art,
And teach the race its duty,
By keeping on its wicked heart
Their eyes of light and beauty.
A million sleepless lids, they say,
Will be at least a warning;

And so the flowers would watch by day,
The stars from eve till morning.

On hill and prairie, field and lawn,
Their dewy eyes upturning,

The flowers still watch from reddening dawn
Till western skies are burning.

Alas! each hour of daylight tells

A tale of shame so crushing,

That some turn white as sea-bleach'd shells,
And some are always blushing.

But when the patient stars look down
On all their light discovers,

The traitor's smile, the murderer's frown,
The lips of lying lovers,

They try to shut their saddening eyes,

And in the vain endeavour

We see them twinkling in the skies,

And so they wink for ever.

Oliver Wendell Holmes: born, 1809.

(See page 100.)

CHILDHOOD AND HIS VISITORS.

ONCE on a time, when sunny May
Was kissing up the April showers,
I saw fair Childhood hard at play
Upon a bank of blushing flowers: