NATURE AND LIFE.

Easily to shed the snow,

And the untaught Spring is wise

In cowslips and anemonies.

Nature, hating art and pains,

Baulks and baffles plotting brains;

Casualty and Surprise

Are the apples of her eyes;

But she dearly loves the poor,

And, by marvel of her own,
Strikes the loud pretender down.

For Nature listens in the rose,

And hearkens in the berry's bell,

To help her friends, to plague her foes,

And like wise God she judges well.

Yet doth much her love excel

To the souls that never fell,

To swains that live in happiness,
And do well because they please,

Who walk in ways that are unfamed,

And feats achieve before they're named.

NATURE.

II.

HE is gamesome and good,

SHE

But of mutable mood,

No dreary repeater now and again,
She will be all things to all men.
She who is old, but nowise feeble,
Pours her power into the people,

Merry and manifold without bar,

Makes and moulds them what they are,

And what they call their city way

Is not their way, but hers,

And what they say they made to-day,

They learned of the oaks and firs.

She spawneth men as mallows fresh,