2

Sing the new year in under the blue.

Last year you sang it as gladly.

"New, new, new, new!" Is it then so new
That you should carol so madly?

3

"Love again, song again, nest again, young again"

Never a prophet so crazy!

And hardly a daisy as yet, little friend,

See, there is hardly a daisy.

4

"Here again, here, here, here, happy year!"
O warble unchidden, unbidden!
Summer is coming, is coming my dear,

And all the winters are hidden.

HELPS TO STUDY.

Biographical and Historical: Alfred, Lord Tennyson, 1809-1892, was poet laureate of England, succeeding Wordsworth. He was born in Lincolnshire and studied at Trinity College, Cambridge. He lived a quiet life and devoted himself to poetry, in which he excelled in beauty of expression and choice of words. One of his longer poems is "The Idylls of the King.' 99

The song-thrush or throstle is found in most parts of England. Its song is rich, mellow and sustained. The throstle begins to sing in the early spring and continues until late in autumn. This is the bird of which Robert Browning says,

"He sings each song twice over,

Lest you should think he never could recapture

The first fine careless rapture!''

Notes and Questions.

Read the lines in the first stanza which represent the song of the throstle.

Read the line which gives Tennyson's answer to the bird.

Why does he call the bird a poet? What words in the second stanza represent the bird's song? Find the bird's song in the third stanza. In the fourth.

No bird, but an invisible thing,

A voice, a mystery;

5

The same whom in my schoolboy days
I listen'd to; that cry

Which made me look a thousand ways,
In bush, and tree, and sky.

6

To seek thee did I often rove

Through woods and on the green;
And thou wert still a hope, a love;
Still long'd for, never seen!

7

And I can listen to thee yet;

Can lie upon the plain
And listen, till I do beget

That golden time again.

8

O blesséd bird! the earth we pace,

Again appears to be

An unsubstantial, fairy place,

That is fit home for thee!

HELPS TO STUDY.

Biographical: William Wordsworth, 1770-1850, was born in the beautiful Cumberland Highlands of northern England, which furnished the inspiration for most of his poetry and where his life was largely lived. His father and mother died when he was a mere boy. After a course at Cambridge, where he and Coleridge became friends, he located in the northern part of England, known as the Lake Region. His poems deal with humble life and are expressed in simple yet beautiful language.

Across the lonely beach we flit
One little sandpiper and I;
And fast I gather, bit by bit,

The scattered driftwood, bleached and dry,
The wild waves reach their hands for it,
The wild wind raves, the tide runs high,

As up and down the beach we flit,
One little sandpiper and I.

2

Above our heads the sullen clouds

Scud, black and swift, across the sky;

Like silent ghosts in misty shrouds
Stand out the white light-houses high.
Almost as far as eye can reach

I see the close-reefed vessels fly,
As fast we flit along the beach,
One little sandpiper and I.

3

I watch him as he skims along,
Uttering his sweet and mournful cry:
He starts not at my fitful song,
Nor flash of fluttering drapery.

He has no thought of any wrong,

He scans me with a fearless eye;
Staunch friends are we, well tried and strong,
The little sandpiper and I.

4

Comrade, where wilt thou be to-night,
When the loosed storm breaks furiously?
My driftwood fire will burn so bright!
To what warm shelter canst thou fly?
I do not fear for thee, though wroth
The tempest rushes through the sky;
For are we not God's children both,
Thou, little sandpiper, and I?

HELPS TO STUDY.

Biographical: Celia Thaxter, 1835-1894, whose father was a light house keeper on one of the rocky isles known as the "Isles of Shoals," off the coast of New Hampshire, had the ocean for her companion in her early years. She studied the sunrise and the sunset, the wildflowers, the birds, the rocks, and all sea life. This selection shows how intimate was her friendship with the bird life of the ocean, and how her life was linked with that of the little sea bird. She wrote for the Atlantic Monthly when Lowell was its editor.