THE FIRST OF MARCH.

I sighed as I looked from the hill's gentle slope,
All hushed was the billow's commotion;

And I thought that the beacon looked lovely as Hope,
That star of life's tremulous ocean.

The time is long past and the scene is afar;
Yet, when my head rests on its pillow,

Will memory often rekindle the star

That blazed on the breast of the billow.

And in life's closing hour, when the trembling soul flies, And death stills the heart's last emotion,

O then may the Seraph of mercy arise,

Like a star on eternity's ocean.

ANONYMOUS.

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The First of March.

HE bud is in the bough, and the leaf is in the bud,

THE

And earth's beginning now in her veins to feel the blood, Which, warmed by summer's sun in the alembic of the vine, From her founts will overrun in a ruddy gush of wine.

The perfume and the bloom that shall decorate the flower, Are quickening in the gloom of their subterranean bower; And the juices meant to feed trees, vegetables, fruits, Unerringly proceed to their pre-appointed roots.

How awful is the thought of the wonders under ground,
Of the mystic changes wrought in the silent, dark profound;
How each thing upward tends by necessity decreed,

And the world's support depends on the shooting of a seed!

The summer's in her ark, and this sunny-pinioned day
Is commissioned to remark whether Winter holds her sway;
Go back, thou dove of peace, with myrtle on thy wing,

Say that floods and tempests cease, and the world is ripe for
Spring.

Thou hast fanned the sleeping earth till her dreams are all of flowers,

And the waters look in mirth for their overhanging bowers;
The forest seems to listen for the rustle of its leaves,
And the very skies to glisten in the hope of summer eves.

Thy vivifying spell has been felt beneath the wave,

By the dormouse in its cell, and the mole within its cave; And the summer tribes that creep, or in air expand their

wing,

Have started from their sleep at the summons of the Spring.

The cattle lift their voices from the valleys and the hills,
And the feathered race rejoices with a gush of tuneful bills;
And if this cloudless arch fills the poet's song with glee,
O thou sunny first of March! be it dedicate to thee.

HORACE SMITH.

T1

The Death of the Flowers.

HE melancholy days are come, the saddest of the year,
Of wailing winds, and naked woods, and meadows

brown and sere.

Heaped in the hollows of the grove the autumn leaves lie

dead;

They rustle to the eddying gust, and to the rabbit's tread. The robin and the wren are flown, and from the shrubs the

jay,

And from the wood-top calls the crow through all the gloomy day.

Where are the flowers, the fair young flowers, that lately sprang and stood

In brighter light, and softer airs, a beauteous sisterhood?

THE DEATH OF THE FLOWERS.

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Alas! they all are in their graves; the gentle race of flowers Are lying in their lowly beds, with the fair and good of ours. The rain is falling where they lie; but the cold November rain

Calls not from out the gloomy earth the lovely ones again.

The wind-flower and the violet, they perished long ago,
And the brier-rose and the orchis died amid the summer

glow;

But on the hill the golden-rod, and the aster in the wood, And the yellow sun-flower by the brook in autumn beauty

stood,

Till fell the frost from the clear cold heaven, as falls the plague on men,

And the brightness of their smile was gone, from upland, glade, and glen.

And now, when comes the calm mild day, as still such days will come,

To call the squirrel and the bee from out their winter home; When the sound of dropping nuts is heard, though all the trees are still,

And twinkle in the smoky light the waters of the rill,

The south wind searches for the flowers whose fragrance late

he bore,

And sighs to find them in the wood and by the stream no

more.

And then I think of one who in her youthful beauty died, The fair meek blossom that grew up and faded by my side. In the cold moist earth we laid her, when the forests cast the leaf,

And we wept that one so lovely should have a life so brief; Yet not unmeet it was that one like that young friend of ours, So gentle and so beautiful, should perish with the flowers. WILLIAM C. BRYANT.

She Walks in Beauty.

HE walks in beauty like the night

SH

Of cloudless climes and starry skies; And all that's best of dark and bright Meets in her aspect and her eyes; Thus mellowed to that tender light Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impaired the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress,
Or softly lightens o'er her face;
Where thoughts serenely sweet express
How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.

And on that cheek, and o'er that brow,
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,

The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace with all below,

A heart whose love is innocent.

LORD BYRON.

Hymn of the Hebrew Maid.

HEN Israel, of the Lord beloved,

WH

Out from the land of bondage came,

Her fathers' God before her moved,
An awful guide in smoke and flame.
By day, along the astonished lands
The cloudy pillar glided slow;
By night, Arabia's crimsoned sands
Returned the fiery column's glow.

THE DESTRUCTION OF SENNACHERIB.

Then rose the choral hymn of praise,

And trump and timbrel answered keen;
And Zion's daughters poured their lays,
With priests' and warriors' voice between.
No portents now our foes amaze,

Forsaken Israel wanders lone;

Our fathers would not know thy ways,
And thou hast left them to their own.

But present still, though now unseen,
When brightly shines the prosperous day,
Be thoughts of thee a cloudy screen,
To temper the deceitful ray.

And oh! when stoops on Judah's path,
In shade and storm, the frequent night,
Be thou, long-suffering, slow to wrath,
A burning and a shining light!

Our harps we left by Babel's streams—
The tyrant's jest, the Gentile's scorn;
No censer round our altar beams,

And mute are timbrel, trump and horn.
But thou hast said, "The blood of goat,
The flesh of rams, I will not prize;
A contrite heart, an humble thought,
Are mine accepted sacrifice."

SIR WALTER SCOTT.

The Destruction of Sennacherib.

THE Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold,

And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold; And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea, When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.

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