The boy who, when walking and musing,
And thinking myself quite alane,
Would follow the path I was choosing,

And thrust his dear hand in my own; Were these not as the rays that are twinkling

On the waves of some clear, haunted stream? Were ye not as the stars that are sprinkling Night's firmament, dark without them?

LLOYD,

TO A CHILD.

DEAR CHILD! whom sleep can hardly tame,
As live and beautiful as flame,
Thou glancest round my graver hours
As if thy crown of wild-wood flowers
Were not by mortal forehead worn,
But on the summer-breeze were borne,
Or on a mountain streamlet's waves
Came glistening down from dreamy caves.

With bright, round cheek, amid whose glow
Delight and wonder come and go,
And eyes whose inward meanings play,
Congenial with the light of day,

And brow so calm, a home for thought
Before he knows his dwelling wronght;

Though wise indeed thou seemest not
Thou brightenest well the wise man's lot.

That shout proclaims the undoubting mind,
That laughter leaves no ache behind;
And in thy look and dance of glee,
Unforced, unthought of, simply free,
How weak the schoolman's formal art
Thy soul and body's bliss to part!
I hail thee Childhood's very lord,
In gaze and glance, in voice and word,
In spite of all foreboding fear,
A thing thou art of present cheer;
And thus to be beloved and known
As is a fountain's rushy tone,
As is the forest's leafy shade,
Or blackbird's hidden serenade:
Thou art a flash that lights the whole;
A gush from nature's vernal soul.

And yet, dear Child! within thee lives,
A power that deeper feeling gives,
That makes thee more than light or air,
Than all things sweet, and all things fair;
And sweet and fair as ought may be,
Diviner life belongs to thee,
For mid thine aimless joys began
The perfect heart and will of Man.

Thus what thou art foreshows to me
How greater far thou soon shalt be;

And while amid thy garlands blow
The winds that warbling come and go,
Ever within, not loud but clear,
Prophetic murmur fills the ear,
And says that every human birth
Anew discloses God to earth.

STERLING.

A LAY OF FAIRY LAND.

It is upon the Sabbath-day, at rising of the sun,
That to Glenmore's black forest side a shepherdess hath

gone,

From eagle and from raven to guard her little flock,
And read her Bible as she sits on greensward or on rock.

Her widow mother wept to hear her whispered prayer so sweet,

Then through the silence blessed the sound of her soft parting feet;

And thought, "while thou art praising God amid the hills so calm,

Far off this broken voice, my child! will join thy morning psalm."

So down upon her rushy couch her moistened cheek she laid,

And away into the morning hush is flown her highland

In heaven the stars are all bedimmed, but in its dewy mirth

A star more beautiful than they is shining on the earth.

-In the deep mountain hollow the dreamy day is done, For close the peace of Sabbath brings the rise and set of

sun;

The mother through her lowly door looks forth unto the

green,

Yet the shadow of the shepherdess is nowhere to be seen.

Within her loving bosom stirs one faint throb of fear "O! why so late!" a footstep- and she knows her child is near;

So out into the evening the gladdened mother goes, And between her and the crimson light her daughter's beauty glows.

The heather balm is fragrant

the heather bloom is fair, But 'tis neither heather balm nor bloom that wreathes round Mhairi's hair;

Round her white brows so innocent, and her blue quiet

eyes,

That look out bright, in smiling light, beneath the flowery dyes.

These flowers, by far too beautiful among our hills to grow, These gem-crowned stalks, too tender to bear one flake of

snow,

Not all the glens of Caledon could yield so bright a band, That in its lustre breathes and blooms of some warm foreign land.

"The hawk hath long been sleeping upon the pillar-stone. And what hath kept my Mhairi in the woodlands all alone?

And where got she those lovely flowers mine old eyes dimly see?

Where'er they grew it must have been upon a lovely tree."

"Sit down beneath our elder-shade, and I my tale will tell"

And speaking, on her mother's lap the wondrous chaplet fell;

It seemed as if its blissful breath did her worn heart

restore,

Till the faded eyes of age did beam as they had beamed of yore.

"The day was something dim, but the gracious sunshine fell

On me, and on our sheep and lambs, and our own little dell;

Some lay down in the warmth and some began to feed, And I took out the Holy Book, and thereupon did read.

"And while that I was reading of him who for us died, And blood and water shed for us from out his blessed side, An angel's voice above my head came singing o'er and o'er,

In Abernethy wood it sank, now rose in dark Glenmore.

;

"Mid lonely hills on Sabbath, all by myself to hear
That voice, unto my beating heart did bring a joyful fear
For well I knew the wild song that wavered o'er my head
Must be from some celestial thing, or from the happy dead.