down some dim intervale.

For thou art lightly gone;
Gone is the flute-like note, the yearning strain,
And all the air forlorn
Is breathless till it hear thy voice again.

But thou wilt not return;
Thou hast the secret of thy joy to keep,
And other hearts must learn
Thy tuneful message, ere the world may sleep,--

Sleep lulled by many a dream
Of sylvan sounds that woo the ear in vain,
While still thy numbers seem
To voice the pain of bliss, the bliss of pain.

MARY C. PECKHAM.

A FOREST BEAUTY.

Last spring, or possibly it was early in June, I was walking, in company
with an intelligent farmer, through a bit of heavy forest that bordered
some fields of corn and wheat, when a golden, flame-like gleam from the
midst of the last year's leaves and twigs on the ground at my feet
attracted my sight. I stooped and picked up a large fragment of a flower
of the _Liriodendron Tulipifera_ which had been let fall by some
foraging squirrel from the dark-green and fragrant top of the giant tree
nearest us. Strange to say, my farmer friend, who owned the rich Indiana
soil in which the tree grew, did not know, until I told him, that the
"poplar," as he called the tulip-tree, bears flowers. For twenty years
he had owned this farm, during which time he had cut down acres of
forest for rails and lumber, without ever having discovered the gorgeous
blossom which to me is the finest mass of form and color to be seen in
our American woods. As I had a commission from an artist to procure a
spray of these blooms for her, I at once began to search the tree-top
with my eyes. The bole, or stem, rose sixty feet, tapering but slightly,
to where some heavy and gnarled limbs put forth, their extremities lost
in masses of peculiarly dark, rich foliage. At first I could distinguish
no flowers, but at length here and there a suppressed glow of orange
shot with a redder tinge showed through the dusky gloom of the leaves.
Lo! there they were, hundreds of them, over three inches in diameter,
bold, gaudy, rich, the best possible examples of nature's pristine
exuberance of force and color. Two gray squirrels were frisking about
among the highest sprays, and it was my good fortune that my friend
carried on his shoulder a forty-four-calibre rifle; for, though it was
death to the nimble little animals, it proved to be the instrument with
which I procured my coveted flowers. It suggested the probability that,
if bullets could f