" The garden with its many cares 

 All well repaid*" 



CoWPER. 



MARCH 



TO-DAY : 



The tender voice, the voice of Spring, 

 Across the world is whispering ; 

 They fall upon our ears to-day, 

 The accents of its tender lay. 



The voice of Spring bids homeward fly 

 The birds that love our April sky ; 

 That love our fitful April hours, 

 By turn of sunshine and of showers. 



The voice of Spring ! To you and me 

 It whispers May's tranquillity ; 

 Of flowers that gem a glorious scene, 

 The wood-floor's firmament of green. 



hawthorn waits for a few days of warm, golden 

 sunlight to show its new leaves. It is the first to verify 

 the beauty of coming Spring, and the green of its leaves 

 along the winding lanes first clothes the world in the Spring. 

 The flowers of to-day that are first to flower at the voice of 

 Spring and the truest flowers of earliest Spring are the 

 violet and anemone, or Pasque-flower. The anemone has 

 been long called the Holy- Week flower. The anemone or 

 so-called Pasque-flower, or wind-flower, grew, it is said, with 

 certain gorgeous Eastern blossoms, on the grassy hill of Calvary. 

 It was the pale wood-anemone, and as it grew it was sprinkled 

 with the sacred blood which spots the little leaves to this day. 

 Not for this reason, however, but because of its triple leaves, 



