The Hylodes! The Hylodes!
They're coming everywhere,
Their pipes are wild and garrulous,
And madly storm the air;
They come as mottled harlequins,
In yellow vests, I ween,

Who dance before the stately hosts
Of lords in bottle-green;
They gambol in the wintry pool,
And by the flecks of snow,
And chase each other in the bog
Where hoods of purple grow;
And when the calm, reluctant day
Is filled with pensive light,
And evening shadows creep along
Before the stealthy night,
Then listen to the Hylodes,
Whose myriad notes arise
As if a host of sprites had come
From Gabriel in the skies.

The April cloud is on the wing,
The dew is on the lea,
And soon the violet shall smile

And speak of love to thee;
The sweet hepatica has heard,
And troops of daffodils

Are throwing kisses to the light,

And nodding to the rills;

The flowers that long have slumbered 'neath

The bleak and barren ledge

And where the winter hare has crept

Beside the water's edge

All deftly with their finger-tips
Their coverlets have stirred,
For now the resurrection notes
Of Hylodes are heard.

The Hylodes! The Hylodes!
Oh, hear them as they come!
The robin and the blue-bird now

We gladly welcome home;
The sparrow and the meadow-lark,
And all the winged throng,

Shall drench the woodland and the fields
In floods of joyous song;

And when the thrush within the dell

His heavenly note shall sound,
And when the bobolink shall fall

In rapture to the ground,

And when the drum-beat of the

Shall signal far away,

grouse

And light shall tremble on the leaf

And ripple in the day,

Then shall the mottled Hylodes,

In leafy bowers above,

In silence and in perfect bliss,

Dream all the day of love.

-Lewis G. Wilson

THE SEA.

HE Sea it is deep, the Sea it is wide;

THE

And it girdeth the earth on every side,

On every side it girds it round,

With an undecaying, mighty bound.

Like a youthful giant roused from sleep,
At Creation's call uprose the Deep;
And his crested waves tossed up their spray,
As the bonds of his ancient rest gave way;
And a voice went up in that stillness vast,
As if life through a mighty heart had passed.
Oh, ancient, wide, unfathomed Sea,

Ere the mountains were, God fashioned thee;
And he gave, in thine awful depths to dwell,
Things like thyself untamable—

The Dragons old, and the Harpy brood,
Were the lords of thine early solitude!

But night came down on that ancient day,
And that mighty race was swept away;

And death thy fathomless depths passed through,
And thy waters melted out anew;

And then on thy calmer breast were seen
The verdant crests of islands green;
And mountains in their strength came forth,
And trees and flowers arrayed the earth;
Then the Dolphin first his gambols played
In his rainbow-tinted scales arrayed;
And down below, all fretted and frore,
Were wrought the coral and madrepore,
And among the sea-weeds green and red,
Like flocks of the valley the Turtles fed;
And the sea-flowers budded and opened wide
In the luster of waters deepened and dyed;
And the little Nautilus set afloat

On thy bounding tide his pearly boat;

And the Whale sprang forth in his vigorous play, And shoals of the Flying-fish leaped into day;

And the Pearl-fish under thy world of waves
Laid up his stores in the old sea-caves.

- Mary Howitt.

APOSTROPHE TO THE OCEAN.

OLL on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean - roll!

Man marks the earth with ruin - his control

Stops with the shore; upon the watery plain
The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain
A shadow of man's ravage, save his own,

When, for a moment, like a drop of rain,
He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan,
Without a grave, unknelled, uncoffined, and unknown.

The armaments which thunderstrike the walls
Of rock-built cities, bidding nations quake,
And monarchs tremble in their capitals;
The oak leviathans, whose huge ribs make
Their clay creator the vain title take
Of lord of thee, and arbiter of war;

These are thy toys, and, as the snowy flake,
They melt into thy yeast of waves, which mar
Alike the Armada's pride, or spoils of Trafalgar.

Thy shores are empires, changed in all save thee
Assyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage, what are they?
Thy waters wasted them while they were free
And many a tyrant since; their shores obey
The stranger, slave, or savage; their decay

Has dried up realms to deserts:

not so thou;

Unchangeable, save to thy wild waves' play

Time writes no wrinkle on thine azure brow: Such as creation's dawn beheld, thou rollest now.

Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty's form
Glasses itself in tempests; in all time,

Calm or convulsed — in breeze or gale or storm
Icing the pole, or in the torrid clime

Dark heaving; boundless, endless, and sublime —— The image of Eternity — the throne

Of the Invisible; even from out thy slime The monsters of the deep are made; each zone Obeys thee; thou goest forth, dread, fathomless, alone.

And I have loved thee, Ocean! and my joy. Of youthful sports was on thy breast to be Borne, like thy bubbles, onward; from a boy I wantoned with thy breakers they to me Were a delight; and if the freshening sea Made them a terror, 't was a pleasing fear; For I was, as it were, a child of thee, And trusted to thy billows far and near, And laid my hand upon thy mane as I do here. - Lord George Noel Gordon Byron.

I'M

THE LITTLE BROWN SEED.

'M of no use," said a little brown seed;
"Where shall I go and hide?

I'm little and brown, with nobody's love,
And ugly beside."