POETRY.

LOVE AND NATURE.

O YE birds there, our sweetest in singing,

Did ye learn your glad music of streams ? From yon fountain melodiously springing Like a sleeper awakened from dreams ?

Hark, that bell-note ! How sweetly it tinkled Over ledges, thro' mosses and fern !

As ye bathed there at noon dew-besprinkled, Did the first bird its first note there learn?

And the winds, now in Autumn-leaves moaning, Now joyous and gay after rain, Did ye hear them, your answer intoning, With a sadder or gayer refrain?

And the storms, were they also your teachers ?

Say, thou Eagle, dread monarch on high, Lord of air and of all feathered creatures, Came it thence, thine unearthly shrill cry?

Was it thus, now such melodies pouring, That ye learnt your first lesson, sweet birds ? Even as eloquence, high in its soaring, Was content first to stammer in words?

Till the nightingale all notes combining, Song of finch, thrush, and warbler, oft-told, Came last, like a Homer, refining Rude lays to an epic of gold.* Ah, not thus, came the answer, replying From a songster, the sage of the grove, Not from wind, stream, or fountain, outlying, But within us the teacher, from love !

* " Inspired mocking-bird, greatest of plagiarists."

Love, it may be, the picker, the chooser, Nature's sweetest sounds apt to recall; Love, it may be, the borrower, the user, But 'tis love at the source after all.

Love a joy, and a bliss, and a yearning, Love a pang, and a pain of desire : Ask yon lark there whose rapture is burning In the firmament, catching its fire : Ask the skylark, our wonder, our glory, As he sings from his honest sweet breast, Tho' a world may be listening, his story, To his little brown mate in the nest !

So the love-note, the love-song, the warning When the hawk is abroad in the sky, Are love's offspring, immediately born in Love's heart, and without love they die.

For a thousand sweet notes may be ringing, Heard Nature's rude harpstrings along ; But the charm of them all is in singing, And the heart is the charm of the song.

And would ye too, our singers, not perish, But live on, and sound thro' the years,— Know, 'tis Nature alone we most cherish, But Nature made human thro' tears.

For a thousand sweet thoughts may be winging, Love-born, youthful fancies along, But as pearls to enchain us need stringing, So love to enthrall us needs song. A. G. B.