earliest bird--
The joyous breeze among the trees
New-clad in leaf and bloom,
And there the happy honey-bees
In dewy gleam and gloom.

So purely, sweetly on the sense
Of heart and spirit fell
Her song of Spring, its influence--
Still irresistible,--
Commands me here--with eyes ablur--
To mate her bright refrain.
Though I but shed a rhyme for her
As dim as Autumn rain.

KNEELING WITH HERRICK

Dear Lord, to Thee my knee is bent--
Give me content--
Full-pleasured with what comes to me,
Whate'er it be:
An humble roof--a frugal board,
And simple hoard;
The wintry fagot piled beside
The chimney wide,
While the enwreathing flames up-sprout
And twine about
The brazen dogs that guard my hearth
And household worth:
Tinge with the ember's ruddy glow
The rafters low;
And let the sparks snap with delight,
As fingers might
That mark deft measures of some tune
The children croon:
Then, with good friends, the rarest few
Thou boldest true,
Ranged round about the blaze, to share
My comfort there,--
Give me to claim the service meet
That makes each seat
A place of honor, and each guest
Loved as the rest.

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

THE RAINY MORNING

The dawn of the day was dreary,
And the lowering clouds o'erhead
Wept in a silent sorrow
Where the sweet sunshine lay dead;
And a wind came out of the eastward
Like an endless sigh of pain,
And the leaves fell down in the pathway
And writhed in the falling rain.

I had tried in a brave endeavor
To chord my harp with the sun,
But the strings would slacken ever,
And the task was a weary one:
And so, like a child impatient
And sick of a discontent,
I bowed in a shower of teardrops
And mourned with the instrument.

And lo! as I bowed, the splendor
Of the sun bent over me,
With a touch as warm and tender
As a father's hand might be:
And even as I felt its presence,
My clouded soul grew bright,
And the tears, like the rain of morning,
Melted in mists of light.

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

REACH YOUR HAND TO ME

Reach your hand to me, my friend,
With its heartiest caress--
Sometime there will come an end
To its present faithfulness--
Sometime I may ask in vain
For the touch of it again,
When between us land or sea
Holds it ever back from me.

Sometime I may need it so,
Groping somewhere in the night,
I