l!

What joy in dreaming ease to lie
Amid a field new shorn;
And see all round, on sunlit slopes,
The piled-up shocks of corn;
And send the fancy wandering o'er
All pleasant harvest-fields of yore!

I feel the day; I see the field;
The quivering of the leaves;
And good old Jacob, and his horse,--
Binding the yellow sheaves!
And at this very hour I seem
To be with Joseph in his dream!

I see the fields of Bethlehem,
And reapers many a one
Bending unto their sickles' stroke,
And Boaz looking on;
And Ruth, the Moabitess fair,
Among the gleaners stooping there!

Again, I see a little child,
His mother's sole delight,--
God's living gift of love unto
The kind, good Shunamite;
To mortal pangs I see him yield,
And the lad bear him from the field.

The sun-bathed quiet of the hills,
The fields of Galilee,
That eighteen hundred years ago
Were full of corn, I see;
And the dear Saviour take his way
'Mid ripe ears on the Sabbath-day.

Oh golden fields of bending corn,
How beautiful they seem!
The reaper-folk, the piled-up sheaves,
To me are like a dream;
The sunshine, and the very air
Seem of old time, and take me there!

Mary Howitt.

_Little Christel_

I

Slowly forth from the village church,--
The voice of the choristers hushed overhead,--
Came little Christel. She paused in the porch,
Pondering what the preacher had said.

_Even the youngest, humblest child
Something may do to please the Lord;_
"Now, what," thought she, and half-sadly smiled,
"Can I, so little and poor, afford?--

_"Never, never a day should pass,
Without some kindness, kindly shown,_
The preacher said"--Then down to the grass
A skylark dropped, like a brown-winged stone.

"Well, a day is before me now;
Yet, what," thought she, "can I do, if I try?
If an angel of God would show me how!
But silly am I, and the hours they fly."

Then the lark sprang singing up from the sod,
And the maiden thought, as he rose to the blue,
"He says he will carry my p