WELCOME, pale primrose, starting up between

Dead matted leaves of ash and oak, that strew The every lawn, the wood and spinney through, 'Mid creeping moss and ivy's darker green;

How much thy presence beautifies the ground!
How sweet thy modest unaffected pride
Glows on the sunny bank, and wood's warm side!
And when thy fairy flowers in groups are found,
The schoolboy roams enchantingly along,

Plucking the fairest with a rude delight;

While the meek shepherd stops his simple song,
To gaze a moment on the pleasing sight,
O'erjoy'd to see the flowers that truly bring
The welcome news of sweet returning Spring!

Clare.

TO THE SWEET-BRIER.

OUR sweet autumnal western-scented wind
Robs of its odour none so sweet a flower,
In all the blooming waste it left behind,
As that sweet-brier yields it; and the shower
Wets not a rose that buds in beauty's bower
One-half so lovely; yet it grows along

The poor girl's pathway; by the poor man's
door.

Such are the simple folks it dwells among ; And humble as the bud, so humble be the song.

I love it, for it takes its untouch'd stand
Not in the vase that sculptors decorate;
Its sweetness all is of my native land;
And e'en its fragrant leaf has not its mate
Among the perfumes which the rich and great

Bring from the odours of the spicy East.

You love your flowers and plants, and will you hate
The little four-leaved rose that I love best,

That freshest will awake, and sweetest go to rest?

Brainard.

WILD FLOWERS.

I DREAM'D that, as I wander'd by the way,

Bare winter suddenly was changed to spring, And gentle odours led my steps astray,

Mix'd with a sound of waters murmuring Along a shelving bank of turf, which lay

Under a copse, and hardly dared to fling

Its green arms round the bosom of the stream,

But kiss'd it and then fled, as thou might'st in a dream.

There grew pied wind-flowers and violets;

Daisies, those pearl'd Arcturi of the earth,

The constellated flower that never sits;

Faint oxlips; tender blue-bells, at whose birth
The sod scarce heaved; and that tall flower that wets
Its mother's face with heaven-collected tears,
When the low wind, its playmate's voice, it hears.

And in the warm hedge grew lush eglantine,

Green cowbind and the moonlight-colour'd May, And cherry blossoms, and white cups, whose wine Was the bright dew yet drain'd not by the day; And wild roses, and ivy serpentine,

With its dark buds and leaves, wandering astray, And flowers azure, black, and streak'd with gold; Fairer than any waken'd eyes behold.

And nearer to the river's trembling edge

There grew broad flag-flowers, purple prankt with white, And starry river buds among the sedge,

And floating water-lilies, broad and bright,

Which lit the oak that overhung the hedge

With moonlight beams of their own watery light;

And bulrushes and reeds of such deep green

As soothed the dazzled eye with sober sheen.

Methought that of these visionary flowers

I made a nosegay, bound in such a way
That the same hues which in their natural bowers
Were mingled or opposed, the like array
Kept these imprison'd children of the hours
Within my hand-and then, elate and gay,
I hasten'd to the spot whence I had come,
That I might there present it !-oh, to whom?

Shelley.