ILLUSTRATION OF PLATE.

Primrose.-Honeysuckle.-Marygold.

Be not too early entangled in the chains of Love, or yours will be a life of inquietude.

I WOULD not tell thee for the world,
Thy early love will change;

I would not see thy sweet lip curled
In scorn of words so strange.

I would not bid thy smiles away,
Nor quell thy speaking blush;
For happy spirits lend the ray,

And timid thoughts the flush:

Yet Love is but a dangerous guest,
For hearts so young as thine,

Where Youth's unshadowed joys should rest,
Life's springtime fancies shine!

Too soon

-oh! all too soon- would play

Years hence, that meteor's thrall,
In gloom and glory o'er the way,
Where now but sunbeams fall!

Then, sweetest, leave the wildering dream,
Till Time has nerved thy heart
To brook the fitful cloud and gleam,
Which must in love have part.

Ah! Life has many a blessed hour,

That Passion never knows;

And Youth may gather many a flower,
Beside the blushing Rose!

F. S. O.

Amid the sunny luxury of grass,

Are tufts of pale-eyed primroses, entwined

With many a bright-hued flower, and shrub that sccnts
The all-voluptuous air.

CARRINGTON.

THE saffron tufts of the primrose announce the return of spring, when we see the snowy mantle of retiring winter ornamented with embroidery of verdure and of flowers. The season of hoar-frost has passed, but the bright days of summer have not yet arrived. The period is emblematical of a lovely girl just passing from childhood to youth. The timid Aglae has scarce attained her fifteenth year, and would fain join the roniping games of her younger companions, but is unable to do

So.

She watches them, and her heart burns to follow them. But a distaste for innocent joys, which she cannot vanquish, disturbs the heart of this young beauty. An interesting paleness is spread over her face, her heart languishes, and she sighs, scarce knowing why. She has been told that, as spring succeeds to winter, so the pleasures of love follow those of nfancy. Poor girl! you will learn that those pleasures are mingled with bitterness and tears. The arrival of the primrose announces them to thee to-day, but it also tells thee that the happy period of infancy can never return. Alas! in a few years you will say, when observing the early primrose, "The days of love and of youth are fled, never to return."

In dewy glades,

The peering primrose, like sudden gladness,
G.eams on the soul-yet unregarded fades -
The joy is ours, but all its own the sadness.

H. COLERIDGE.

This plant has been sung by many of our best poets, but by none so well as he from whose delightful poems we have already quoted at the commencement of this article. The following lines are extracted from a piece addressed to a friend with an early primrose:

Accept this primrose, friend; it is a pledge

Of the returning spring. What though the wind-
The dread east wind-passed over the shivering earth,
And shook from his deep rustling wings the snows,

And bound the streamlets and the rivers all

In crystal fetters! What though infancy,

And age, and vigorous manhood, felt the blast
Before which many a human blossom fell!
Yet our fine Devon, in a sunny nook,

Cherished this flower; and when the soft west wind
Came with its balmy breath and gentle showers,
With simple grace this firstborn of the year
Waved its pale yellow star; and, lo! for thee
I picked the welcome stranger.

Sometimes, alas! we see a lady matured in years, whose beauty has been marred by the ravages of time, decking herself in the gay habiliments of youth; such a one may be compared to the primrose in autumn, whose untimely presence is reproved in the following agreeable sonnet. It is by R. F. Housman, and was originally published in the Athenæum:

The solitary primrose hath come back

To haunt the green nciks of her happy spring
Alas. it is a melancholy thing,

Thus to return, and vainly strive to tack
The playmates of our youth! Whither have fled
The sweet companions of her vernal hours?
The bee, the infant leaves, the golder A