" All seasons and their change, all please alike : 

 Sweet is the breath of morn, her visions sweet 

 With charm of earliest birds/' 



MILTON. 



APRIL 



/ T -V HE April thrush is one of the charms of Spring : 



A merry muse, the blithe Spring bird, 

 How well he pipes if he but choose, 

 How rounded, polished, is each word ; 

 A merry muse ! 



Spring's missal he doth well peruse, 



Let Summer yet be long deferred, 

 June haste not her sweets to diffuse. 



When summer comes, no more he's heard ; 



He then his silvery flute must lose, 

 Whose piping made this blithe Spring bird 

 A merry muse. 



The charm of birds is felt and acknowledged by most of 

 us. All the year round, our feathered friends give us many 

 pleasures, and surely most of all at the present time, when 

 Spring brings back many an immigrant to grove and glen, 

 where blue-bells are nodding, to meads yellow with cow- 

 slips, and to hawthorn hedgerows now fast preparing to put 

 forth its scented silver to shelter the home of the nightingale. 

 The cuckoo, heard and seen a week ago " half of Spring's 

 gladness is in his twin note " tells of the near approach of 

 the time that brings 



" The swallow back from o'er the sea." 



The greater charm is with the earliest birds, when in the 

 first days of Spring, at dawn, as soon as Aurora has succeeded 



8r 



