While ducks and geese, with happy joys,
Plunge in the yard-pond brimming o'er.

The sun peeps through the window-pane,
Which children mark with laughing eye,
And in the wet streets steal again,

To tell each other Spring is nigh.
Then as young Hope the past recalls,
In playing groups they often draw,
To build beside the sunny walls

Their spring-time huts of sticks or straw.

And oft in pleasure's dream they hie
Round homesteads by the village side,
Scratching the hedge-row mosses by,
Where painted pooty shells abide ;
Mistaking oft the ivy spray

For leaves that come with budding spring,
And wondering, in their search for play,
Why birds delay to build and sing.

The mavis thrush, with wild delight,
Upon the orchard's dripping tree
Mutters, to see the day so bright,

Fragments of young Hope's poesy;
And Dame oft stops her buzzing wheel,
To hear the robin's note once more,
Who tootles while he pecks his meal
From sweet-briar hips beside the door.

Clare.

THE AWAKENING YEAR.

HE blue-birds and the violets

Are with us once again,
And promises of summer spot
The hill-side and the plain.

The clouds along the mountain-tops
Are riding on the breeze,
Their trailing azure trains of mist
Are tangled in the trees.

The snow-drifts, which have lain so long,
Haunting the hidden nooks,

Like guilty ghosts have slipp'd away,
Unseen, into the brooks.

The streams are fed with generous rain,
They drink the wayside springs,
And flutter down from crag to crag,
Upon their foamy wings.

Through all the long wet nights they brawl,

By mountain-homes remote,

Till woodmen in their sleep behold

Their ample rafts afloat.

The lazy wheel that hung so dry
Above the idle stream,

Whirls wildly in the misty dark,

And through the miller's dream.

Loud torrent unto torrent calls,

Till at the mountain's feet, Flashing afar their spectral light, The noisy waters meet.

They meet, and through the lowlands sweep, Toward briny bay and lake,

Proclaiming to the distant towns

"The country is awake!"

SONG.

UP, up! let us greet

The season so sweet,

For winter is gone,
And the flowers are springing,

And little birds singing,
Their soft notes ringing,

And bright is the sun!
Where all was dress'd

In a snowy vest;
There grass is growing,
With dew-drops glowing,

And flowers are seen

On beds of green.
All down in the grove,

Around, above,

Sweet music floats;

28

Reed.