The Flower.

These are thy wonders, Lord of love!
To make us see we are but flowers that glide;
Which when we once can find and prove,
Thou hast a garden for us where to bide.
Who would be more,

Swelling through store,

Forfeit their Paradise by their pride.

43

GEORGE HERBERT.

CHRISTMAS MEMORIES.

THERE are sounding in this heart,
Old chords still true to thee,
We are far-yet not apart,

Thou'rt gone-but not from me.

LITTLE THINGS

TRAVELLER through a dusty road
Strew'd acorns on the lea;
And one took root, and sprouted up
And grew into a tree.

Love sought its shade at evening time
To breathe its early vows;

And age was pleased, in heats of noon, To bask beneath its boughs.

The dormouse loved its dangling twigs, The birds sweet music bore;

It stood a glory in its place,

A blessing evermore.

A little spring had lost its way
Amid the grass and fern,
A passing stranger scoop'd a well
Where weary men might turn;
He walled it in, and hung with care
A ladle at the brink,-

He thought not of the deed he did,

But judged that toil might drink.

Little Things.

He passed again,—and lo! the well,

By summers never dried,

Had cooled ten thousand parching tongues,
And saved a life beside.

A dreamer dropp'd a random thought:

'Twas old and yet was new

A simple fancy of the brain,
But strong in being true;
It shone upon a genial mind,
And lo, its light became
A lamp of life, a beacon ray,
A monitory flame.

The thought was small-its issue great;

A watch-fire on the hill,

It sheds its radiance far adown,
And cheers the valley still.

A nameless man, amid a crowd
That throng the daily mart,
Let fall a word of hope and love
Unstudied from the heart;

A whisper on the tumult thrown-
A transitory breath,

It raised a brother from the dust,
It saved a soul from death.

O germ! O fount, O word of love,

O thought at random cast;

Ye were but little at the first,

But mighty at the last.

C. MACKAY.

45

THE CATERPILLAR.

Y little maiden of four years old,

(No myth, but a genuine child is she,

With her bronze-brown eyes, and her curls of gold)

Came, quite in disgust, one day, to me.

Rubbing her shoulder with rosy palm,

As the loathsome touch seemed yet to thrill her, She cried, "Oh, mother, I found on my arm

A horrible, crawling caterpillar!

And with mischievous smile she could scarcely smother,
Yet a glance, in its daring, half-awed and shy,
She added, "While they were about it, mother,
I wish they'd just finished the butterfly!"

They were words to the thought of the soul that turns
From the coarser form of a partial growth,

Reproaching the infinite patience that yearns
With an unknown glory to crown them both.

The Caterpillar

Ah, look thou largely, with lenient eyes,

On what so beside thee may creep and cling, For the possible beauty that underlies

The passing phase of the meanest thing!

What if God's great angels, whose waiting love
Beholdeth our pitiful life below,

47

From the holy height of their heaven above,
Couldn't bear with the worm till the wings should
grow?
-Atlantic Monthly.

CHRISTMAS BELLS.

THERE is in souls a sympathy with sounds;
And as the mind is pitched the ear is pleased
With melting airs or martial, brisk or grave:
Some chord in unison with what we hear
Is touched within us, and the heart replies.
How soft the music of those village bells,
Falling at intervals upon the ear
In cadence sweet, now dying all away,
Now pealing loud again, and louder still,
Clear and sonorous as the gale comes on!
With easy force it opens all the cells
Where memory slept.

COWPER.