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ARBOR DA Y MANUAL. 
MAY TO APRIL. 
W ITHOUT your showers, 
I breed no flowers, 
Each field a barren waste appears; 
If you don’t weep, 
My blossoms sleep, 
They take such pleasure in your tears. 
As your decay 
Made room for May,. 
So I must part with all that’s mine, 
My balmy breeze, 
My blooming trees, 
To torrid suns their sweets resign. 
For April dead 
My shade I spread, 
To her I owe my dress so gay; 
Of daughters three 
It falls on me 
To close our triumphs on one day. 
Thus to repose 
All nature goes; 
Month after month must find its doom, 
Time on the wing. 
May ends the spring, 
And summer frolics o’er her tomb. 
Philip Freneau. 
THE FLOWER. 
O NCE in a golden hour 
I cast to earth a seed. 
Up there came a flower, 
The people said a weed. 
To and fro they went 
Thro’ my garden-bower. 
And muttering discontent, 
Cursed me and my flower. 
Then it grew so tall 
It wore a crown of light. 
But thieves from o’er the wall 
Stole the seed by night. 
Sow’d it far and wide 
By every town and tower, 
Till all the people cried, 
“ Splendid is the flower.” 
Read my little fable; 
He that runs may read, 
Most can raise the flowers now, 
For all have got the seed. 
And some are pretty enough, 
And some are poor, indeed; 
And now again the people 
Call it but a weed. 
Tennyson. 
BIRD TRADES. 
T HE swallow is a mason, 
And underneath the eaves 
He builds a nest and plasters it 
With mud and hay and leaves. 
Of all the weavers that I know, 
The oriole is the best; 
High on the branches of the tree 
She hangs her cosy nest. 
The woodpecker is hard at work — 
A carpenter is he — 
And you may hear him hammering 
His nest high up a tree. 
Some little birds are miners; 
Some build upon the ground; 
And busy little tailors too, 
Among the birds are found. 
