** High-walled gardens green and old*** 



TENNYSON. 



FEBRUARY 



When first the violet in moss bed hides, 



Hastening, the wind its perfumed message bears ; 



What a sweet mask the face of Nature wears, 

 What joy her smile, her breath, so brief, betides. 

 Sweet time, when primrose stars o'er meads are cast, 



And fair anemones light up the shade 



Of woods where first ambrosial growths are made 

 To tell where Spring has lately flitted past. 

 But this the promise of the violet, 



Beside the frost-dumb stream that seeks the vale : 



The cuckoo soon to tell its echoing tale 

 To woods that day by day grow greener yet, 



When earth wears first her smiling mask of flowers, 



In April's earliest rain-threaded hours. 



T^VERY new day, with a gladder note the birds in the 

 garden awaken the dawn, seemingly with a more im- 

 patient note, and one that rings more sweetly. They have 

 indeed a very charm of their own, and a peculiar magic in 

 their song to sweeten the bitter cold of the February dawns. 

 A first thought of Spring came to me when, in a warm after- 

 noon of last week to all appearance a wayfarer from Spring 

 in a walled garden, hidden in a thicket of yew, a thrush was 

 fluting a silver melody, and at twilight, the not far distant 

 spring seemed more pronounced, for in the tall elms the loud 

 chatter of birds told with an exactness the time of the year, 

 that it was February the birds' love time. Emerson has 

 said : " To the attentive eye each moment of the year has 

 its own beauty," and many would add that February has a 

 charm for the ear. Just as a first flower stimulates the eye, 



