F.  Hemans.

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

V.

Half covered with last year’s leaves,
  She peeped from her russet bed;

The great bare branches of the trees
  Were tossed and swayed overhead;

The hedge looked barren and prickly,
  Without the sign of a leaf;
Over the flower there bowed a heart
  Grown cold with the snows of grief.

The violet’s fragile petals
  Enfolded a heart of gold,
And a deeper wealth of perfume,
  Than the tiny cup could hold;
So the great wind roaring above
  Sent a tiny zephyr down,
To drift aside the sheltering bloom,
  And bereave her of her crown.

It stole the familiar scent,
  To give to the burdened heart
With only a cold north wind
  In the world to take its part;
The flower died in the bleak March air,
  And the heart went on its way;
The violet’s life was blooming there,
  And melting the snows away.

Caris Brooke.

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

VI.

Yet nature holds a gracious hand,
  Her ancient ways pursuing;
And spreads the charms we loved of old,
  To aid the heart’s renewing.

Here her long crests of fringed crag
  Allure the skyward swallows;
Here the still dove’s low love-note floats
  Above her leafy hollows.

Here its calm strength her hillside rears,
  From heaving slopes of clover;
Here still the pewit pipes and flits
  Within his furzy cover.

Here hums the wild-bee in the thyme,
  Here glows the royal heather;
And youth comes back upon the breeze,
  And youth’s unclouded weather.

F.T.  Palgrave.

[Illustration:  Here hums the wild bee in the thyme]

[Illustration]

VII.

An Appeal.

Dear, do not die! 
Of cypresses and grassy graves sing I—­
I hang with wreaths of song death’s grief-grown cross,
And weep, to music, for Life’s infinite loss,
And make the sweetest verse of bitterest woe,
—­I know the way because I love you so;
But I have written griefs that I have known
In other’s heart’s blood, never in my own. 
If you died what more could be sung or said? 
I could not sing of Death if you were dead.

Dear, do not love! 
Do not love me, keep still aloof, above! 
While you and Love in far-off glory stand
Clear sounds the voice, and harp responds to hand. 
But if you loved me—­if you came quite near
And set Love ’mid life’s common things and dear—­
Mute would the voice be, Love would be too fair
To waste upon the wide world’s empty air,
And, songless, I should droop and vainly pine—­
I could not sing of Love if you were mine!

E.  Nesbit.

[Illustration.]

VIII.