179 THE LOVE OF NATURE. The clouds weep o'er the fallen world. E'en as repentant love; Ere to the blessed breeze unfurled The sky it is a temple's arch, Is glorious with the spirit-march The gentle moon, the kindling sun, The many stars are given As shrines to burn earth's incense on, JOHN G. WHITTIER. III. THE LOVE OF NATURE. "THERE are in the changeful aspects of nature so many analogies to the emotions of living beings that in animating poetically what exhibits to us these analogies we scarcely feel, till we reflect, that we are using metaphors, and that the clear and sunny sky, for example, is as little cheerful as that atmosphere of fogs and darkness through which the sun shines only enough to show us how thick the gloom must be which has resisted all the penetrating splendours of his beams. When nature is thus once animated by us, it is not wonderful if we sympathise with the living, that we should for the moment sympathise with it too as with some living thing. It is this sympathy with a cheerfulness which we have ourselves created that constitutes a great part of that 'moral delight and joy' which is so well described as able to drive all sadness but despair.'"-Brown's Lectures. WHEN Heaven and Earth, as if contending, vie Or only lavish to yourselves; away! But come, ye generous minds, in whose wide thought, With warmest beam; and on your open front, 6 Like silent-working heaven, surprising oft Blows spring abroad; for you the teeming clouds Spring o'er his mind, beyond the power of kings. THOMSON. IV. THE DAISY, ON BEING TURNED UP WITH THE PLOUGH. * * "How the universal heart of man blesses flowers! They are wreathed round the cradle, the marriage altar, and the tomb. The Persian in the far east, delights in their perfume, and writes his love in nosegays; while the Indian child of the far west claps his hands with glee, as he gathers the abundant blossoms-the illuminated scriptures of the prairies. * Flowers should deck the brow of the youthful bride, for they are in themselves a lovely type of marriage. They should twine round the tomb, for their perpetually renewed beauty is a symbol of the resurrection. They should festoon the altar, for their fragrance and their beauty ascend in perpetual worship before the Most High."-Lydia M. Child. MAY. Cauld blew the bitter-biting north Scarce rear'd above the parent earth The flaunting flow'rs our gardens yield, O' clod or stane, Adorns the histie stibble-field, Unseen, alane. There, in thy scanty mantle clad, But now the share uptears thy bed, And low thou lies! 181 BURNS. V. MAY. "In a fine morning in spring, amid sunshine and fragrance, and the thousand voices of joy that make the air one universal song of rapture, who is there that does not feel as if heaven and earth were truly glad at heart? and who does not sympathize with nature, as if with some living being diffusing happiness, and rejoicing in the happiness which it diffuses ?"-Brown's Lectures. Like an actual colour bright LEIGH HUNT. VI. FIELD FLOWERS. "SHAKSPEARE, Homer, Dante, and Chaucer, saw the splendour of meaning that plays over the visible world; knew that a tree had another use than for apples, and corn another than for meal, and the ball of the earth, than for tillage and roads: and these things bore a second and finer harvest to the mind, being emblems of its thoughts, and conveying in all their natural history a certain mute commentary on human life."-Emerson's " Representative Men." YE field flowers! the gardens eclipse you, 'tis true, For ye waft me to summers of old, When the earth teemed around me with fairy delight, I love you for lulling me back into dreams Of the blue Highland mountains and echoing streams— THE VOICE OF SPRING. Not a pastoral song has a pleasanter tune Than ye speak to my heart, little wildings of June; Where I thought it delightful your beauties to find, Even now what affections the violet awakes! What landscapes I read in the primrose's looks, Earth's cultureless buds, to my heart ye were dear, Had scathed my existence's bloom; Once I welcome you more, in life's passionless stage; 183 CAMPBELL. VII. THE VOICE OF SPRING. "THE change of seasons well deserves our admiration. It cannot be attributed to chance, for in fortuitous events there can be neither order nor stability. Now in all countries of the earth, the seasons succeed each other with the same regularity as the nights do the days, and change the appearance of the earth precisely at the appointed times. We see it successively adorned, sometimes with herbs and leaves, sometimes with flowers, and sometimes with fruits. Afterwards, it is deprived of its ornaments, and appears in a state of death till spring comes, and gives it, so to speak, a resurrection. Spring, summer, and autumn, nourish men and animals, by an abundant provision of fruits; and although nature appears dead in winter, yet that season is not without its blessings, for it moistens and fertilizes the earth; and by that preparation the ground becomes capable of producing plants and fruits in due season."-Sturm. I COME, I come! ye have called me long |