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' To him who in the love of nature holds 

 Communion with her visible forms, she speaks 

 A various language ; for his gayer hours 

 She has a voice of gladness, and a smile 

 And eloquence of beauty, and she glides 

 Into his darker musings, v\dth a mild 

 And healing sympathy, that steals away 

 Their sharpness, ere he is aware." — W. C. Bhyant. 



' A Flow'r is not a flower alone — 



A thousand sanctities invest it ; 

 And as they form a radiant zone. 

 Around its simple beauty thrown, 

 Their magic tints become its own. 



As if their spirit had possess'd it." — Wordsworth. 



" Alas ! I took great pains to study it, and 't is poetical." — Twelfth Night. 



" By hieroglyphic hue and sign, 

 Flowers shall the heart and soul divine. 

 And all the feelings that engage 

 Man's restless thoughts from youth to age : 

 This blossom shall note Infancy, 

 Lifting in earliest spring its eye 

 To dewy dawn, and drinking thence 

 The purity of innocence ; 

 That — vigorous Youth, which from the hue 

 Of summer skies imbibes its blue. 

 And bursts abroad, as if to say, 

 ' Can lusty strength like mine decay ? ' 



This — Life's autumnal date, which takes 

 A colouring from the breeze which shakes 

 The yellowing woods ; and that — Old Age, 



Which comes when Winter drifts the fields 

 With snow, and, prostrate to his rage 



Tyrannical, bows dovm and yields." — D. M. MoiR. 



' I thought of men, who look'd upon my face. 



Breathing and blooming, breathless now and cold ; 

 I heard their voices issuing from tlie mould, 



Amid the scenes that bear of them no trace. 



I thought of smiling children, who have sat 



At evening on my knees, and press'd my hand, — 

 Their cherub features and their accents bland, — 



Their innocence, — and their untimely fate ; — 

 How soon their flower was cropt, and laid below 

 The tm-f, where daisies spring, and lilies blow!" — D. M. MoiK. 



" O, these are Voices of the Past, 



Links of a broken chain, 

 Wings that can bear me back to times 



Which cannot come again ; 

 Yet God forbid that I should lose 



The echoes that remain ! " — Household Words. 



