SMILES.

CROCUS.

This pretty flower blooms in early spring. Its colors are yellow, purple, and white.

Down in my solitude under the snow,
Where nothing cheering can reach me;
Here, without light to see how to grow,
I'll trust to nature to teach me.

I will not despair nor be idle, nor frown,
Locked in so gloomy a dwelling;

My leaves shall run up, and my roots shall run down,
While the bud in my bosom is swelling.

Soon as the frost will get out of my bed,
From this cold dungeon to free me,

I will peer up with my little bright head,
And all will be joyful to see me.

Then from my heart will young petals diverge,
As rays of the sun from their focus;

I from the darkness of earth will emerge,
A happy and beautiful Crocus!

Many, perhaps, from so simple a flower,
This little lesson may borrow,
Patient to-day, through its gloomiest hour,
We come out the brighter to-morrow.

MISS H. F. GOULD.

ILLUSTRATION OF PLATE.

Pansies. Broom.

My heart would be at ease, if my solitude were blest with your society.

If thou wert here, my fairy-queen!
With all thy graces, wiles, and spells,
How soon would show this sylvan scene,
What magic in thy presence dwells!

The crests of foam the wavelets wear,
Would change to crowns of living pearl;
And balm would be the ambient air,
And radiant joy the sun, my girl!

F. S. O.

SOLITUDE.

HEATH.

THE foliage of this plant is evergreen, of varied and beautiful shapes, and on examination is found as pleasing as its sin gular blossom. In our floral hieroglyphics it is made emblematical of solitude; and thus, when the rustic lover offers his mistress a bouquet of heath and pansies, she understands that if his solitude were charmed by her society his heart would be

at ease.

There are now about four hundred different species of heath, of such variety of colours and forms that no pen can describe them. On some we observe little waxlike flowers, and others present us with pendent pearls; some are adorned with coraline beads, while others seem to resemble the golden trumpet, or tempting berries, or porcelain of bell or bottle shape. Globes of alabaster hang on the slender spray of some, and others, again, remind us of Lilliputian trees, bedecked with Turkish turbans in miniature. "Their colours are not less varied than their shape, while the foliage is equally beautiful in its apparent imitation of all the mountainous trees, from the Scottish fir to Lebanon's boasted cedar."

A heath's green wild lay present to his view,
With shrubs and field-flowers decked of varied hue.

Oh! to lie down in wilds apart,

Where man is seldom seen or heard,

In still and ancient forests, where

Mows not his scythe, ploughs not his share,
With the shy deer and cooing bird!

To go in dreariness of mood,

O'er a lone heath, that spreads around,
A solitude like a silent sea,

Where rises not a hut or tree,

The wide-embracing sky its bound!

Oh! beautiful those wastes of heath,
Stretching for miles to lure the bee,
Where the wild bird, on pinions strong,
Wheels round and pours his piping song,
And timid creatures wander free.

MARY HOWITT.

SORROWFUL REMEMBRANCES.

PHEASANT'S-EYE, OR FLOS ADONIS.

Look, in the garden blooms the flos adonis,
And memory keeps of him who rashly died,
Thereafter changed by Venus, weeping, to this flower.

ANON.

ADONIS was killed by a boar when hunting. Venus, who had quitted the pleasures of Cythereus for his sake, shed many tears at his melancholy fate. The fable tells us that these were not lost, but mingling witn the blood of Adonis, the earth received them, and forthwith sprang up a light plant covered with purple flowers. Brilliant and transient flowers; alas! too faithful emblems of the pleasures of life! you were consecra

ted by the same beauty as the symbol of sorrowful remembrances.

By this the boy, that by her side lay killed,
Was melted like a vapour from her sight;
And in his blood, that on the ground lay spilled,
A purple flower sprang up, chequered with white.
SHAKSPEARE.

One fatal remembrance, one sorrow that throws
Its bleak shade alike, o'er our joys and our woes;
To which life, nothing darker or brighter, can bring,
For which joy has no balm and affliction no sting!

SPLENDOUR.

MOORE.

LOBELIA.

THIS brilliant flower is frequent in the southern and western parts of the United States.

She stood 'mid the dazzling insignia of Wealth;

But the jewels, that shone o'er her beauty and bloom, Were less fair than the sunny ray smiling by stealth, Through the rose-teinted damask, that curtained the room.

F. S. O.