Buttercups. 
(RICHES.—MEMORIES OF CHILDHOOD.) 
B EAUTIFULLY does our great poet, Robert Browning, 
call these emblems of riches , "the buttercups , the little 
children’s dower.” Of all the mingled sad and sweet memories 
ol childhood, what is recalled more vividly than that feeling of 
being the possessor of boundless wealth, as, amid the glowing 
fields of gold which these wild flowers spread around us, we 
have—to quote from Eliza Cook— 
“ Stood like an elf in fairy lands, 
With a wide and wistful stare ; 
As a maiden over her casket stands, 
’Mid heaps of jewels beneath her hands, 
Uncertain which to wear ! ” 
This same lady, in some pathetic and appropriate lines, re¬ 
calling childhood’s faded glories, sweetly introduces this floral 
reminder: 
“’Tis sweet to love in childhood, when the souls that we bequeath 
Are beautiful in freshness as the coronals we wreathe; 
When we feed the gentle robin, and caress the leaping hound, 
And linger latest on the spot where buttercups are found : 
When we seek the bee and ladybird with laughter, shout, and song, 
And think the day for wooing them can never be too long. 
Oh! ’t is sweet to love in childhood, and tho’ stirr’d by meanest things, 
The music that the heart yields then will never leave its strings. 
“ ’T is sweet to love in after years the dear one by our side; 
To dote with all the mingled joys of passion, hope, and pride; 
To think the chain around our breast will hold still warm and fast; 
And grieve to know that death must come to break the link at last. 
But when the rainbow span of bliss is waning, hue by hue; 
When eyes forget their kindly beams, and lips become less true; 
When stricken hearts are pining on through many a lonely hour, 
Who would not sigh ‘ ’tis safer far to love the bird and flower’? 
