HAIL, beauteous stranger of the grove!

Thou messenger of Spring!

Now Heaven repairs thy rural seat,
And woods thy welcome sing.

What time the daisy decks the green, Thy certain voice we hear;

Hast thou a star to guide thy path,

Or mark thy rolling year?

Delightful visitant! with thee

I hail the time of flowers,

And hear the sound of music sweet
From birds among the bowers.

The school-boy, wandering through the wood, To pull the primrose gay,

Starts the new voice of Spring to hear,

And imitates thy lay.

What time the pea puts on the bloom

Thou fliest thy vocal vale;

An annual guest in other lands,
Another spring to hail.

Sweet bird! thy bower is ever green

Thy sky is ever clear;

Thou hast no sorrow in thy song,
No winter in thy year!

O could I fly, I'd fly with thee !
We'd make, with joyful wing,
Our annual visit o'er the globe,
Companions of the Spring.

TO A CITY PIGEON.

C. Seymour.

STOOP to my window, thou beautiful Dove!
Thy daily visits have touched my love;
I watch thy coming, and list the note
That stirs so low in thy mellow throat,
And my joy is high

To catch a glance of thy gentle eye.

Why dost thou sit on the heated eaves,

And forsake the wood, with its freshen'd leaves ? Why dost thou haunt the sultry street,

When the paths of the forest are cool and sweet? How canst thou bear

This noise of people-this breathless air?

Thou alone of the feather'd race

Dost look unscared on the human race;

Thou alone, with a wing to flee,

Dost love with man his haunts to be;
And the "gentle Dove"

Has become a name for trust and love.

A holy gift is thine, sweet bird!

Thou'rt named with childhood's earliest word;
Thou 'rt link'd with all that is fresh and wild
In the prison'd thoughts of the city child;
And thy even wings

Are its brightest image of moving things.

It is no light chance: thou art set apart,
Wisely, by Him who tamed the heart,
To stir the love for the bright and fair,
That else were seal'd in the crowded air.
I sometimes dream

Angelic rays from thy pinions stream.

Come! then, ever, when daylight leaves
The
page I read, to my humble eaves;
And wash thy breast in the hollow spout,
And murmur thy low, sweet music out-
I hear and see

Lessons of Heaven, sweet bird, in thee!

BIRDS OF PASSAGE.

J. H.

BIRDS, joyous birds of the wand'ring wing! Whence is it ye come with the flowers of spring? "We come from the shores of the green old

Nile,

From the land where the roses of Sharon smile; From the palms that wave through the Indian sky, From the myrrh-trees of glowing Araby.

"We have swept o'er cities, in song renown'd— Silent they lie, with the deserts round! We have cross'd proud rivers, whose tide hath roll'd

All dark with the warrior blood of old;

And each worn wing hath regain'd its home, Under peasant's roof-tree, or monarch's dome."

And what have ye found in the monarch's dome, Since last ye traversed the blue sea's foam?