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SWEETSCENTED VERNAL GRASS.

GRASS of the field! the morning sun

Shines on thy verdure fair;
But, ere his daily course is run,
He'll scorch thy golden hair.

In warning tone the Psalmist says,
"All living flesh is grass ;"
But, ah! with ever heedless gaze,
Mortals their emblems pass.

Youth, thoughtless of impending doom,
Rejoicing in the morn,

Forgets that evening's hour of gloom
Must see his beauty shorn.

And even when that hour is come,
Man turns his thoughts away,
And sinks into his last long home,
Forgetting he is clay.

LE BOUQUET DES SOUVENIRS.

SOLOMON, in all his wisdom, never taught more wholesome lessons, than these silent monitors convey to a thoughtful mind, and an “understanding heart." Surely the heathen knew better how to join and read these mystic letters than we Christians, who cast a more careless eye on these common hieroglyphics, and disdain to suck Divinity from the flowers of Nature.

SOUTHEY.

WHERE do we finer strokes and colours see
Of the Creator's real Poetry?

But we despise these His inferior ways,

(Though no less full of miracle and praise.)
Upon the flowers of heaven we gaze;

The stars of earth no wonder in us raise.
Though these perhaps do more than they
The life of man sway.

COWLEY.

WHITE STONECROP.

WHERE men who 've braved the cannon's roar,

Are pale with speechless dread,

The stonecrop calmly mantles o'er

The rugged bed.

ΑΝΟΝ.

THEN from his rocky pulpit, I heard cry

The Stonecrop: "See how loose to earth I grow, And draw my juicy nurture from the sky.

So drive not thou, fond man, thy root too low; But loosely clinging here,

From God's supernal sphere

Draw life's unearthly food,—catch Heaven's un

dying glow."

REV. R. W. EVANS.

Do not depreciate any pursuit which leads men to contemplate the works of their Creator. The Linnæan traveller has in his pursuit an object that occupies his time, and fills his mind, and satisfies his heart. Nor is the pleasure which he partakes in investigating the structure of a plant, less pure, or less worthy than what you derive from perusing the noblest productions of human genius.

SOUTHEY.

THE desire which tends to know
The works of God; thereby to glorify
The great workmaster; leads to no excess
That reaches blame, but rather merits praise
The more it seems excess;

For wonderful indeed are all His works.

MILTON,

BLACK-STALKED SPLEENWORT.

WHERE the copse-wood is the greenest,
Where the fountain glistens sheenest,
Where the morning dew lies longest,
There the lady fern grows strongest.

SIR W. SCOTT.

THE ferns are waving all statelier here
With seed-stored fronds thickly laid,
And shedding, when hastily brush'd by the deer,
Their light fertile dust o'er the glade.

ANON.

THY place is not where art exults to raise the tender flower,

By terraced walk or deck'd parterre, or fenced or shelter'd bow'r;

Nor where the straitly-level'd walls of tangled boughs between

The sunbeams sweep the velvet swards, and streams through alleys green.

ANON.

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