GILLYFLOWERS.

LD-FASHIONED, yes, I know they are,
Long exiled from the gay parterre,
And banished from the bowers;
But not the fairest foreign bloom
Can match in beauty or perfume
Those bonny English flowers.

Their velvet petals, fold on fold,
In every shade of flaming gold,
And richest, deepest brown,
Lie close with little leaves between,
Of slender shape and tender green,
And soft as softest down.

On Sabbath mornings long ago,
When melody began to flow
From out the belfry tower,

I used to break from childish talk,
To pluck beside the garden walk
My mother's Sunday flower.

In spring she loved the snow-drop white,
In summer time carnations bright,

Or roses newly blown;

But this the bower she cherished most,
And from the goodly garden host

She chose it for her own.

Ah, mother dear! the brown flowers wave
In sunshine o'er thy quiet grave,

This morning far away;

And I sit lonely here the while,
Scarce knowing if to sigh or smile
Upon their sister spray.

I well could sigh, for grief is strong,
I well could smile, for love lives long.
And conquers even death;

But if I smile, or if I sigh,

God knoweth well the reason why,
And gives me broader faith.

Firm faith to feel all good is meant,
Sure hope to fill with deep content
My most despairing hours;

And oftentimes he deigns to shed
Sweet sunshine o'er the path I tread,
As on to-day, these flowers.

And chose he not a bearer meet,
To bring for me those blossoms sweet,
A loving little child?

And child and bonny blossons come,
Like messages of love and home,

O'er waters waste and wild.

-All the Year Round.

THE BROOK.

A. TENNYSON.

"O babbling brook," says Edmund in his rhyme, "Whence come you?" and the brook, why not? replies.

COME from haunts of coot and hern,

I make a sudden sally

And sparkle out among the fern,
To bicker down a valley.

By thirty hills I hurry down,
Or slip between the ridges,
By twenty thorps, a little town,
And half a hundred bridges.

Till last by Philip's farm I flow
To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on forever.

I chatter over stony ways,
In little sharps and trebles,
I bubble into eddying bays,
I babble on the pebbles.