THE QUEEN OF MAY. 
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form; and on it was seated the Queen of May, her 
beautiful brow crowned with a simple wreath of 
wild roses; while, hand in hand, young men and 
village maidens formed a circle around her, and, 
with smiling faces, timed their feet to the music of 
an old-fashioned country dance. At a distance stood 
the wealthy squire, surrounded by his family, his face 
beaming with smiles, as he gazed upon the merry 
group before him, and pointed proudly to his 
youngest daughter, who sat crowned the Queen of 
May. For ages past had some high-born daughter 
of the hall laid aside her dignity for the day, and con¬ 
descended to preside over their May games. Many 
a proud beauty who now slept in the dark vault 
beneath the chancel pavement, on which shone the 
morning sun, had, in the rose-bloom of youth and 
loveliness, left her old ancestral hearth and mounted 
the flowery throne on the village green, to do 
reverence to May ; but never before had there 
stepped out, from that long gallery of departed 
beauties, one lovelier than she who now sat the 
crowned queen of the month of flowers. Her face 
recalled the immortal sculpture of ancient Greece; 
and you might have fancied, but for the pearly flush 
which softened into the peach-like velvetness of her 
cheeks, and the smile which ever played about the 
parted rosebuds of her lips, that her head and neck 
had been chiselled from the whitest marble, with just 
