Only grew and waved its wild sweet way; Earth, one time, put on a frolic mood, Heaved the rocks, and changed the mighty moti. O the long, long centuries since that day! Since that useless little fern was lost! Useless! Lost! There came a thoughtful man He withdrew a stone, o'er which there ran - Mary Bolles Branch. THE ALPS. A REVERIE. HE mountains of this glorious land THE Are conscious beings to mine eye, When at the break of day they stand Like giants, looking through the sky, To hail the sun's unrisen car, Their silent presence fills my soul, And leave them naked on the scene, The emblems of eternity, The same as they have ever been, Yet through the valley while I range, With gardens, vineyards, fields embraced, Through all the splendid waste. The sun in morning freshness shines; -James Montgomery. GR THE CHILD'S WORLD. REAT, wide, beautiful, wonderful World, The wonderful air is over me, And the wonderful wind is shaking the tree; You, friendly Earth, how far do you go, With the wheat-fields that nod, and the rivers that flow, With cities and gardens, and cliffs and isles, And people upon you for thousands of miles? Ah! you are so great, and I am so small, A whisper within me seemed to say, “You are more than the Earth, though you're such a dot! You can love and think, and the Earth cannot!" Α THE FLAG IN NATURE. LL nature sings wildly the song of the free, A The red, white, and blue floats of land and sea: The red, white, and blue floats o'er land and o'er sea: The white in each billow that breaks on the shore, The blue in the arching that canopies o'er The land of our birth, in its glory outspread - Day fades into night, and the red stripes retire, From "Poems of Home and Country." - Samuel Francis Smith. I MY COUNTRY. LOVE my country's pine-clad hills, Her rough and rugged rocks that rear I love her rivers, deep and wide, Her smiling fields, her pleasant vales, I love her forests, dark and lone; And there are lovelier flowers, I ween, Her forests and her valleys fair, Her flowers that scent the morning air, Have all their charms for me; WHAT WHAT wildfire runs about the stooping sheaves, The tender promise of the aftermath, And fans to redder flame the frost-bright leaves What liquid amber overlays the stream, What flame has lit a lamp in window-panes That now they stand in pomp of Moorish fanes And towers of old renown? |