She hastes with joyous steps and quick, (we know what children are,)

And, spying soon her father out, she shouted from afar "Oh, father, dearest father, such a plaything I have found, I never saw so fair a one on our own mountain ground.”

Her father sat at table then, and drank his wine so mild, And, smiling with a parent's smile, he asks the happy child, “What struggling creature hast thou brought so carefully to me?

Thou leap'st for very joy, my pet: come, open, let us see!”

She opes her kerchief carefully, right gladly you may deem, And shows her eager sire the plough, the peasant, and the

team;

And when she'd placed before his sight the new-found pretty toy,

She clasped her hands, and screamed aloud, and cried for very joy.

But her father looked quite sadly down, and shaking slow his head,

“What hast thou brought me home, my child?—This is no toy," he said.

"Go, take it quickly back again, and put it down below; The peasant is no plaything, girl; how couldst thou think him so?

"Be off! without a sigh or sob, and do my will," he said; “You know, without the peasant, girl, we'd none of us have bread.

'Tis from the peasant's hardy stock the race of giants are: The peasant is no plaything, child: no! God forbid he

were."

Richardson's German Ballads.

THE INCHCAPE ROCK.

No stir in the air, no stir in the sea,
The ship was as still as she could be;
Her sails from heaven received no motion,
Her keel was steady in the ocean.

Without or sign or sound of their shock,
The waves flowed over the Inchcape Rock;
So little they rose, so little they fell,
They did not move the Inchcape Bell.
The Abbot of Aberbrothok

Had placed that bell on the Inchcape Rock;
On a buoy in the storm it floated and swung,
And over the waves its warning rung.
When the rock was hid by the surge's swell,
The mariners heard the warning bell;
And then they knew the perilous rock,
And blest the Abbot of Aberbrothok.
The sun in heaven was shining gay,
All things were joyful on that day;
The sea-birds scream'd as they wheel'd round,
And there was a joyance in their sound.
The buoy of the Inchcape Bell was seen
A darker speck on the ocean green;
Sir Ralph the Rover walked his deck,
And he fixed his eye on the darker speck.
He felt the cheering power of Spring,—
It made him whistle, it made him sing;
His heart was mirthful to excess;
But the Rover's mirth was wickedness.
His eye was on the Inchcape float:
Quoth he, "My men, put out the boat,
And row me to the Inchcape Rock,

And I'll plague the Abbot of Aberbrothok."

The boat is lower'd, the boatmen row,
And to the Inchcape Rock they go ;—
Sir Ralph bent over from the boat,
And he cut the bell from the Inchcape float.
Down sank the bell with a gurgling sound,
The bubbles rose and burst around;

Quoth Sir Ralph, "The next who comes to the rock
Won't bless the Abbot of Aberbrothok."

Sir Ralph the Rover sail'd away;

He scour'd the seas for many a day;

And now, grown rich with plunder'd store,
He steers his course for Scotland's shore.
So thick a haze o'erspreads the sky,
They cannot see the sun on high;
The wind hath blown a gale all day,
At evening it hath died away.

On the deck the Rover takes his stand,
So dark is it they see no land.

Quoth Sir Ralph, "It will be lighter soon,
For there is the dawn of the rising moon."
"Canst hear," said one, "the breakers roar?
For methinks we should be near the shore:
Now where we are I cannot tell,

But I wish I could hear the Inchcape Bell."
They hear no sound-the swell is strong;
Though the wind hath fallen they drift along,
Till the vessel strikes with a shivering shock-
"Mercy! it is the Inchcape Rock."

Sir Ralph the Rover tore his hair,
And beat his breast in his despair—
The waves rush in on every side,

And the ship sinks down beneath the tide.

Southey.

THE MAN AND THE SNAKE.

ONCE on a time, as Æsop tells,
A man, in winter's iron weather,
Found on the bare and wind-swept Fells*
A snake, its coils frost-bound together.

He raised the creature from the ground,
And was about to fling it by,

When lo, some spark of life he found
Still glowing in its evil eye.

The man, whose large compassion ranged
E'en to that reptile most unblest,
Sudden his idle purpose changed,

And placed the serpent in his breast.

Under his kindly bosom's glow,

Slowly the stiffened coils outdrew;
The thickening blood resumed its flow,
The snaky instincts waked anew.
The man was glad to feel awake,
The crawling life within his vest;
For to have harbored e'en a snake

Is pleasure in a gen'rous breast.

Sudden he stops, with shriek and start—

Then falls a corpse, all swollen and black! The snake's fell tooth had pierced the heart, Whose warmth to life had brought it back.

Punch.

*Fells, steep, barren hills.

THE LINNET CHOIR.

A LINNET choir sang in a chestnut crown,—
A hundred, perhaps, or more,-

Till the stream of their song ran warbling down

And entered a cottage door;

And this was the burden of their lay,

As they piped in the yellow tree:"I love my sweet little lady-bird, And I know that she loves me:

'Chip, chip, cherry chip, cherry, cherry, cherry chip!' We linnets are a merry band,

A happy company."

It chanced a poet passed that way,
With a quick and merry thought,
And, listening to the roundelay,

His ear their language caught:
Quoth he, as he heard the minstrels sing,
"What heavenly harmony!

I shall steal that song, and carry it home

To my dear family

'Chip, chip, cherry chip, cherry, cherry, cherry chip!'"

And that song they sing now every eve,

His children, wife, and he.

Capern.