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WHAT THE WINDS BRING.

WHICH is the wind that brings the cold?
The north-wind, Freddy, and all the snow;
And the sheep will scamper into the fold
When the north begins to blow.

Which is the wind that brings the heat?
The south-wind, Katy; and corn will grow,
And peaches redden for you to eat,

When the south begins to blow.

Which is the wind that brings the rain?
The east-wind, Arty; and farmers know
That cows come shivering up the lane
When the east begins to blow.

Which is the wind that brings the flowers?
The west-wind, Bessy; and soft and low
The birdies sing in the summer hours
When the west begins to blow.

EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN.

THE DANCING OF THE AIR.

AND now behold your tender nurse, the air, And common neighbor that aye runs around," How many pictures and impressions fair

Within her empty regions are there found, Which to your senses dancing do propound! For what are breath, speech, echoes, music, winds, But dancings of the air in sundry kinds?

For when you breathe, the air in order moves,

Now in, now out, in time and measure true;
And when you speak, so well she dancing loves,
That doubling oft, and oft redoubling new,
With thousand forms she doth herself endue:
For all the words that from your lips repair,
Are naught but tricks and turnings of the air.

Hence is her prattling daughter, Echo, born,
That dances to all voices she can hear:
There is no sound so harsh that she doth scorn,
Nor any time wherein she will forbear
The airy pavement with her feet to wear :
And yet her hearing sense is nothing quick,
For after time she endeth every trick.

And thou, sweet Music, dancing's only life,

The ear's sole happiness, the air's best speech, Loadstone of fellowship, charming-rod of strife, The soft mind's paradise, the sick mind's leech. With thine own tongue thou trees and stones canst teach,

That, when the air doth dance her finest measure, Then art thou born, the gods' and men's sweet pleasure.

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Where the rage of the vulture, the love of the turtle,

Now melt into sorrow, now madden to crime? Know ye the land of the cedar and vine,

Where the flowers ever blossom, the beams ever shine;

Where the light wings of Zephyr, oppressed with perfume,

Wax faint o'er the gardens of Gúl in her bloom?
Where the citron and olive are fairest of fruit,
And the voice of the nightingale never is mute;
Where the tints of the earth, and the hues of
the sky,

In color though varied, in beauty may vie,
And the purple of ocean is deepest in dye;
Where the virgins are soft as the roses they twine,
And all, save the spirit of man, is divine?
'Tis the clime of the East; 't is the land of the
Sun,

Can he smile on such deeds as his children have done?

O, wild as the accents of lover's farewell Are the hearts which they bear and the tales which they tell!

SYRIA.

LORD BYRON.

FROM "PARADISE AND THE PERI."

Now, upon Syria's land of roses
Softly the light of eve reposes,
And, like a glory, the broad sun
Hangs over sainted Lebanon,
Whose head in wintry grandeur towers,
And whitens with eternal sleet,
While summer, in a vale of flowers,
Is sleeping rosy at his feet.

To one who looked from upper air
O'er all the enchanted regions there,
How beauteous must have been the glow,
The life, how sparkling from below!

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THE VALE OF CASHMERE.

FROM "THE LIGHT OF THE HAREM."

WHO has not heard of the Vale of Cashmere,
With its roses the brightest that earth ever

gave,

Its temples, and grottoes, and fountains as clear
As the love-lighted eyes that hang over their

wave?

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man learned

--

To hew the shaft, and lay the architrave, ere he framed And spread the roof above them, The lofty vault, to gather and roll back The sound of anthems; in the darkling wood, Amidst the cool and silence, he knelt down, And offered to the Mightiest solemn thanks And supplication. For his simple heart Might not resist the sacred influences Which, from the stilly twilight of the place, And from the gray old trunks that high in heaven Mingled their mossy boughs, and from the sound Of the invisible breath that swayed at once All their green tops, stole over him, and bowed A last look of her mirror at night ere she His spirit with the thought of boundless power And inaccessible majesty. Ah, why goes! When the shrines through the foliage are gleam- Should we, in the world's riper years, neglect God's ancient sanctuaries, and adore ing half shown,

O, to see it at sunset, when warm o'er the lake
Its splendor at parting a summer eve throws,
Like a bride, full of blushes, when lingering to
take

And each hallows the hour by some rites of its Only among the crowd, and under roofs

own.

Here the music of prayer from a minaret swells, Here the Magian his urn full of perfume is swinging,

And here, at the altar, a zone of sweet bells Round the waist of some fair Indian dancer is ringing.

That our frail hands have raised? Let me, at
least,

Here, in the shadow of this aged wood,
Offer one hymn, - thrice happy if it find
Acceptance in his ear.

Father, thy hand

Or to see it by moonlight, — when mellowly Hath reared these venerable columns, thou

shines

The light o'er its palaces, gardens, and shrines; When the waterfalls gleam like a quick fall of stars,

Didst weave this verdant roof. Thou didst look

down Upon the naked earth, and forthwith rose All these fair ranks of trees. They in thy sun

And the nightingale's hymn from the Isle of Budded, and shook their green leaves in thy

Chenars

Is broken by laughs and light echoes of feet
From the cool shining walks where the young

people meet.

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herbs,

Wells softly forth and wandering steeps the roots
Of half the mighty forest, tells no tale
Of all the good it does. Thou hast not left
Thyself without a witness, in these shades,
Of thy perfections. Grandeur, strength, and grace
Are here to speak of thee. This mighty oak,
By whose immovable stem I stand and seem
Almost annihilated, not a prince,

In all that proud old world beyond the deep,
E'er wore his crown as loftily as he
Wears the green coronal of leaves with which
Thy hand has graced him. Nestled at his root
Is beauty, such as blooms not in the glare
Of the broad sun. That delicate forest flower
With scented breath, and look so like a smile,
Seems, as it issues from the shapeless mould,
An emanation of the indwelling Life,
A visible token of the upholding Love,
That are the soul of this wide universe.

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My heart is awed within me when I think
Of the great miracle that still goes on,
In silence, round me, the perpetual work
Of thy creation, finished, yet renewed
Forever. Written on thy works I read
The lesson of thy own eternity.

Lo all grow old and die; but see again,
How on the faltering footsteps of decay
Youth presses, ever gay and beautiful youth
In all its beautiful forms. These lofty trees
Wave not less proudly that their ancestors
Moulder beneath them. O, there is not lost
One of Earth's charms! upon her bosom yet,
After the flight of untold centuries,
The freshness of her far beginning lies,
And yet shall lie. Life mocks the idle hate

Of his arch-enemy Death, yea, seats himself
Upon the tyrant's throne, the sepulchre,
And of the triumphs of his ghastly foe
Makes his own nourishment. For he came forth
From thine own bosom, and shall have no end.

There have been holy men who hid themselves
Deep in the woody wilderness, and gave
Their lives to thought and prayer, till they out-
lived

The generation born with them, nor seemed
Less aged than the hoary trees and rocks
Around them; and there have been holy men
Who deemed it were not well to pass life thus.

But let me often to these solitudes

Retire, and in thy presence reassure
My feeble virtue. Here its enemies,
The passions, at thy plainer footsteps shrink
And tremble, and are still. O God! when thou
Dost scare the world with tempests, set on fire
The heavens with falling thunderbolts, or fill,

With all the waters of the firmament,

The swift dark whirlwind that uproots the woods
And drowns the villages; when, at thy call,
Uprises the great deep, and throws himself
Upon the continent, and overwhelms
of these tremendous tokens of thy power,
Its cities, who forgets not, at the sight
His pride, and lays his strifes and follies by?
O, from these sterner aspects of thy face
Spare me and mine, nor let us need the wrath
Of the mad unchainèd elements to teach
Who rules them. Be it ours to meditate,
In these calm shades, thy milder majesty,
And to the beautiful order of thy works
Learn to conform the order of our lives.
WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.

THE PRIMEVAL FOREST.

FROM THE INTRODUCTION TO "EVANGELINE."

THIS is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks,

Bearded with moss, and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight,

Stand like Druids of eld, with voices sad and prophetic,

Stand like harpers hoar, with beards that rest on their bosoms.

Loud from its rocky caverns, the deep-voiced neighboring ocean

Speaks, and in accents disconsolate answers the wail of the forest.

This is the forest primeval; but where are the hearts that beneath it

Leaped like the roe, when he hears in the woodland the voice of the huntsman ?

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW,

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