ue,
Reflected in its placid face,

The ploughman stopped his team, to watch
The train, as swift it thundered by;
Some distant glimpse of life to catch,
He strains his eager, wistful eye.

His glossy horses mildly stand
With wonder in their patient eyes,
As through the tranquil mountain land
The snorting monster onward flies.

The morning freshness is on him,
Just wakened from his balmy dreams;
The wayfarers, all soiled and dim,
Think longingly of mountain streams:--

O for the joyous mountain air!
The long, delightful autumn day
Among the hills!--the ploughman there
Must have perpetual holiday!

And he, as all day long he guides
His steady plough with patient hand,
Thinks of the flying train that glides
Into some fair, enchanted land;

Where day by day no plodding round
Wearies the frame and dulls the mind;
Where life thrills keen to sight and sound,
With plough and furrows left behind!

Even so to each the untrod ways
Of life are touched by fancy's glow,
That ever sheds its brightest rays
Upon _the page we do not know_!

Agnes Maule Machar

THE FIRST PLOUGHING

Calls the crow from the pine-tree top
When the April air is still.
He calls to the farmer hitching his team
In the farmyard under the hill.
"Come up," he cries, "come out and come up,
For the high field's ripe to till.
Don't wait for word from the dandelion
Or leave from the daffodil."

Cheeps the flycatcher--"Here old earth
Warms up in the April sun;
And the first ephemera, wings yet wet,
From the mould creep one by one.
Under the fence where the flies frequent
Is the earliest gossamer spun.
Come up from the damp of the valley lands,
For here the winter's done."

Whistles the high-hole out of the grove
His summoning loud and clear:
"Chilly it may be down your way
But the high south field has cheer.
On the sunward side of the chestnut stump
The woodgrubs wake and appear.
Come out to your ploughing, come up to your ploughing,
The time for ploughing is here."

Then dips the coulter and drives the share,
And the furrows faintly steam.
The crow drifts furtively down from the pine
To follow the clanking team.
The flycatcher tumbles, the high-hole darts
In the yo