Better than all treasures

That in books are found,

Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground!

Teach me half the gladness

That thy brain must know,
Such harmonious madness

From my lips would flow,

The world should listen then, as I am listening now.

PERCY BYSSHE Shelley

A LARK SINGING IN A RAINBOW.

Fraught with a transient, frozen shower

If a cloud should haply lower,
Sailing o'er the landscape dark,
Mute, on a sudden, is the lark;
But when gleams the sun again
O'er the pearl-besprinkled plain,
And from behind his watery vail
Looks through the thin descending hail;
She mounts, and, lessening to the sight,
Salutes the blithe return of light,
And high her tuneful track pursues
Through the rainbow's melting hues.

THOMAS WARTON, 1728-1790.

THE SKYLARK.

FROM THE FARMER'S BOY."

When music waking, speaks the skylark nigh,
Just starting from the corn, he cheerly sings,
And trusts with conscious pride his downy wings;
Still louder breathes, and in the face of day
Mounts up, and calls on Giles to mark his way.
Close to his eyes his hat he instant bends,
And forms a friendly telescope, that lends
Just aid enough to dull the glaring light,
And place the wandering bird before his sight,
That oft beneath a light cloud sweeps along,
Lost for a while, yet pours the varied song.
The eye still follows, and the cloud moves by;
Again he stretches up the clear blue sky.

His form, his motion, undistinguish'd quite
Save when he wheels direct from shade to 1
E'en then the songster a mere speck become,
Gliding like fancy's bubbles in a dream,
The gazer sees

ROBERT BLOOMFIELD, 1766-1823.

THE MOORS OF JUTLAND.

FROM THE DANISH.

I lay on my heathery hills all alone,

The storm-winds rush'd o'er me in turbulence loud;
My head rested lone on the gray moorland stone,

My eyes wandered starward from cloud unto cloud.

There wandered my eyes, but my thoughts onward passed,
Far, far beyond cloud-track or tempests' career;
At times I hummed songs, and the desolate waste
Was the first the sad chimes of my spirit to hear.

Gloomy and gray are the moorlands, where rest

My fathers, yet there doth the wild heather bloom; And amid the old cairns the lark buildeth her nest, And sings in the desert, o'er hill-top, and tomb! Translation of MRS. HOWITT.

BLICKER.

THE RISING OF THE LARK.

For so have I seen a lark rising from his bed of grass, and, soaring upward, sing as he rises, and hopes to get to heaven, and climb above the clouds; but the poor bird was beaten back with the loud sighings of an eastern wind, and his motion made irregular and inconstant, descending more and more at every breath of the tempest than it could recover by the libration and frequent weighing of his wings; till the little creature was forced to sit down and pant, and stay till the storm was over, and then it made a prosperous flight, and did rise and sing, as if it had learned music and motion from an angel, as he passed sometimes through the air about his ministries here below: so is the prayer of a good man.

JEREMY TAYLOR, 1618-1667.

From courser-breeding Thrace comes rushing forth
O'er the broad sea the whirlwind of the North,

And moves it with his breath; the ocean floods
Heave, and earth bellows through her wild of woods.
Full many an oak of lofty leaf he fells

And strews with thick-branched pines the mountain dells
He stoops to earth; the crash is heard around;

The depth of forests rolls the roar of sound.

The beasts their cowering tails with trembling fold,
And shrink and shudder at the gusty cold;
Thick is the hairy coat, the shaggy skin,
But that all-chilling breath shall pierce within.
Not his rough hide can then the ox avail;

The long-haired goat, defenseless, feels the gale;
Yet vain the north wind's rushing strength to wound
The flock with sheltering fleeces fenced around.

Translation of SIR C. A. ELTON.

A WINTER SCENE.

FROM THE SEASONS."

The keener tempests rise; and fuming dun,
From all the livid east, or piercing north,
Thick clouds ascend; in whose capacious womb
A vapory deluge lies, to snow congeal'd.
Heavy they roll their fleecy world along;
And the sky saddens with the gathered storm.

Through the hush'd air the whitening shower descends,
At first thin wavering; till at last the flakes
Fall broad, and wide, and fast, dimming the sky,
With a continual flow. The cherish'd fields

Put on their winter robe of purest white.

'Tis brightness all; save where the new snow melts
Along the mazy current. Low, the woods
Bow their huar head; and, ere the languid sun,
Faint from the west, emits his evening ray,
Earth's universal face, deep hid and still,
Is one wild dazzling waste, that buries wide
The works of man. Drooping, the laborer-ox
Stands cover'd o'er with snow, and then demands
The fruit of all his toil. The fowls of heaven,
Tam'd by the cruel season, crowd around
The winnowing store, and claim the little boon
Which Providence assigns them. One alone,

LINES.

So when the lark, poor bird! afar espyeth
Her yet unfeathered children, whom to save
She strives in vain-slain by the fatal scythe,
Which from the meadow her green locks do shave,
That their warm nest is now become their grave.
The woful mother up to heaven springs,
And all about her plaintive notes she flings,
And their untimely fate most pitifully sings.

GILES FLETCHER, 1588-1628.

VI.

May.

THAT, alas! will become of those luckless wights-the future poets of Caffreland and New Zealand, of Patagonia and Pitcairn's Island-when they suddenly awake to the miserable reality that there is no May in their year.. May! The very word in itself is charming; pleasing to the eye, falling sweetly on the ear, gliding naturally into music and song, dowered with innumerable images of beauty and delight, imaginary bliss, and natural joy. What, we ask again, will be the melancholy consequences to the southern hemisphere when they become fully conscious that they have lost the "merry month," the "soote season," from their calendar —that with them January must forever linger in the lap of May. Conceive of Hottentot elegies and Fejee sonnets enlarging upon the balmy airs and soft skies of November; raving about the tender young blossoms of December, and the delicate fruits of January. Will the world ever become really