"Come out! with me the oriole cries,

Escape the demon that pursues you! And, hark, the cuckoo weatherwise, Still hiding, farther onward woos you."

"Alas, dear friend, that, all my days,

Has poured from thy syringa thicket The quaintly discontinuous lays

To which I hold a season-ticket,

"A season-ticket cheaply bought

With a dessert of pilfered berries, And who so oft my soul has caught With morn and evening voluntaries,

"Deem me not faithless, if all day

Among my dusty books I linger,
No pipe, like thee, for June to play
With fancy-led, half-conscious finger.

"A bird is singing in my brain

And bubbling o'er with mingled fancies, Gay, tragic, rapt, right heart of Spain Fed with the sap of old romances.

"I ask no ampler skies than those

His magic music rears above me,

No falser friends, no truer foes,

And does not Doña Clara love me?

"Cloaked shapes, a twanging of guitars,

A rush of feet, and rapiers clashing,

Then silence deep with breathless stars,
And overhead a white hand flashing.

"O music of all moods and climes,

Vengeful, forgiving, sensuous, saintly, Where still, between the Christian chimes, The Moorish cymbal tinkles faintly!

"O life borne lightly in the hand,

For friend or foe with grace Castilian! O valley safe in Fancy's land,

Not tramped to mud yet by the million!

"Bird of to-day, thy songs are stale

To his, my singer of all weathers,

My Calderon, my nightingale,

My Arab soul in Spanish feathers.

"Ah, friend, these singers dead so long,
And still, God knows, in purgatory,
Give its best sweetness to all song,
To Nature's self her better glory."

James Russell Lowell.

THE FAIRIES

Up the airy mountain,
Down the rushy glen,
We daren't go a-hunting
For fear of little men;
Wee folk, good folk,
Trooping all together;

Green jacket, red cap,

And white owl's feather!

Down along the rocky shore
Some make their home:

They live on crispy pancakes
Of yellow tide-foam;
Some in the reeds

Of the black mountain lake,
With frogs for their watch-dogs,
All night awake.

High on the hilltop

The old King sits;

He is now so old and gray,
He's nigh lost his wits.
With a bridge of white mist
Columbkill he crosses,

On his stately journeys

From Slieveleague to Rosses;

Or going up with music

On cold starry nights,

Το sup with the queen

Of the gay Northern Lights.

They took her lightly back,

Between the night and morrow;

They thought that she was fast asleep,

But she was dead with sorrow.
They have kept her ever since
Deep within the lakes,
On a bed of flag-leaves,
Watching till she wakes.

By the craggy hillside,
Through the mosses bare,
They have planted thorn-trees
For pleasure here and there.
Is any man so daring

As dig them up in spite,

He shall find their sharpest thorns
In his bed at night.

Up the airy mountain,
Down the rushy glen,
We dare n't go a-hunting
For fear of little men;
Wee folk, good folk,
Trooping all together;
Green jacket, red cap,

And white owl's feather!

William Allingham.

AULD ROBIN GRAY!

WHEN the sheep are in the fauld, and the kye at hame,

And a' the warld to rest are gane,

The waes o' my heart fa' in showers frae my e'e, While my gudeman lies sound by me.

Young Jamie lo'ed me weel, and sought me for his bride;

But saving a croun he had naething else beside:
To make the croun a pund, young Jamie gaed to

sea;

And the croun and the pund were baith for me.

He hadna been awa' a week but only twa,

When my father brak his arm, and the cow was stown awa';

My mother she fell sick, and my Jamie at the

sea

And auld Robin Gray came a-courtin' me.

My father couldna work, and my mother couldna

spin;

I toiled day and night, but their bread I couldna

win;

Auld Rob maintained them baith, and wi' tears in

his e'e

Said, "Jennie, for their sakes, oh, marry me!"

1 Note 3.