TRUE LOVE'S CORONAL.

RIPPLE, ripple on ye streamlets,
Making music as ye flow,

Sweet as love-words breathed at evening,
When the voice is soft and low.
Ripple, ripple, kissing sweetly

All the flowers that round ye grow;
I will weave a true love garland,
Listening to your water's flow.

Winding briony first I gather,

With its rich and clustering gems
Glittering 'neath the setting sun-light,
Brighter than all diadems:

Round its lithe and yielding tendrils,
Next the sweet convolvolus twine ;
Fitting it with each enwreathing
To thy forehead, darling mine.

Then the flow'rets made for lovers,
'Which like starlets gem each bank,

Shall be placed in seat of honour,
Raised in beauty and in rank.
Resting on thy graceful forehead,

With their pure and spotless dyes ;
Pointing with their rays to brighter
Beaming from thy violet eyes.

B

Crown of grace, and crown of beauty,
I have wreathed it, love, for thee,
Swearing ever truest fealty-

Take, O take it love from me:
O, how beauteous now thou seemest,
Crowned beneath the woodlands green-

Ne'er had monarch such a subject,
Ne'er had subject such a queen.

THE BIRTH OF SPRING.*

AGAIN, again the Spring is here!
With noiseless step and slow,
She glides across the waking earth,
And blesses all below.

The blackbird sings her cradle-song

With his deep note of joy,

And all earth's songsters in her praise
Their richest strains employ.

The lark goes singing up to heav'n,
And showers his music down

In floods of rapturous melody,

Her name and fame to crown:
The thrush, the linnet, and the wren-
The woods' assembled throng-

All join her birth to celebrate,

And welcome her with song.

And as she gains in grace and power,
Where'er her footsteps light

Sweet flowers arise to mark her path-
The beautiful and bright.

Her presence gladdens earth and sky,
Her heralds beam afar,

And smiling morns and roseate eves
Her glad attendants are.

The trees her gentle breathings feel,

And to their inmost vein

A thrill of bliss goes trembling through, And burgeons forth again

In bright green buds and fragrant blooms,

Until the air around

Makes e'en the blind receive the joy
Which in her birth is found.

The cattle browsing in the fields,
The sheep upon the hills,

The happy winds that haste to kiss

The ever-murmuring rills,

All come with joy her birth to greet,
These tidings glad to sing-

"Good news again to all the earth,
The blessed birth of Spring!"

TO AN EARLY BLACKBIRD.*

O MERRY bird!

O merry bird,

That singest of the Spring!

What pleasant thoughts and joyous hopes

Thy bonny warblings bring.

They tell of sunshine and of flowers,
Of hedge-rows rich and rare,
Where blooms the unseen violet-
Its fragrance telling where.

They tell of snowdrops on the bank-
Those innocents of flowers-
That love so much the early sun,

But dread its later powers;
Whose tender natures will not bear
The sin and taints of earth,

But pass like children loved of heaven,
To God who gave them birth.

They tell of bright and sunny spots,
The crowding primrose loves,
Of blithesome evening rambles made,

Amid the budding groves.

They tell of murmured music sweet,

From every flowing rill,

Along whose smiling banks is seen
The dew-fed daffodil.

They tell of Winter passed away
Unto the gloomy North;

Of cheerful morns, and balmy eves,
And days which woo us forth
From noisy towns and bustling streets,

To green and flowery fields:
They tell of all the coming joys

A gracious Nature yields.

Of trees, and fields, and flowers they tell,
Of mirth, and love, and song;

Of fancy's dreams, and reveries,
The rustling woods among.
They tell of brighter, sunnier days;

Raise visions blessed and free;

Of all the glories of the year
They are a prophecy.

Of lovers' evening strolls they tell,
Confessions rapt and sweet;
And are the blithest notes that e'er
The lonely wanderer greet.
Like angel voices heard at night,
When all the world is still,

They soothe, console, exalt and bless,
And all our senses thrill.

merry bird! O merry bird,

Thou singest of the Spring,

And pleasant thoughts and joyous hopes

Thy bonny warblings bring.