finny race,

Then, issuing cheerful, to thy sport repair. Chief should the western breezes curling play, And light o'er ether bear the shadowy clouds. High to their fount, this day, amid the hills And woodlands warbling round, trace up the brooks;

The next, pursue their rocky-channeled maze, Down to the river, in whose ample wave Their little naiads love to sport at large. Just in the dubious point, where with the pool

Is mixed the trembling stream, or where it boils

Arverted platone, un from the bo

There throw, nice-judging, the delusive fly;
And as you lead it round in artful curve,
With eye attentive mark the springing game.
Straight as above the surface of the flood
They wanton rise, or urged by hunger, leap,
Then fix, with gentle twitch, the barbed hook;
Some lightly tossing to the grassy bank,
And to the shelving shore slow-dragging some,
With various hand proportioned to their
force.

If yet too young, and easily deceived,

A worthless prey scarce bends your pliant

rod,

Him, piteous of his youth, and the short space

Month of little hands with daisies,
Lovers' love and poet's praises;
O thou merry month complete,
May, thy very name is sweet!
May was maid in olden times,
And is still in Scottish rhymes;
May's the blooming hawthorn bough,
May's the month that's laughing now.
I no sooner write the word,
Than it seems as though it heard,
And looks up, and laughs at me,
Like a sweet face, rosily,

Like an actual color, bright
Flushing from the paper's white;
Like a bride that knows her power,
Startled in a summer bower.

If the rains that do us wrong
Come to keep the winter long,
And deny us thy sweet looks,
I can love thee, sweet, in books,
Love thee in the poet's pages,
Where they keep thee green for ages;
Love and read thee, as a lover
Reads his lady's letters over,
Breathing blessings on the art
Which commingles those that part.

And, groping blindly above it for light,

Climbs to a soul in grass and flowers; The flush of life may well be seen

Thrilling back over hills and valleys; The cowslip startles in valleys green,

The buttercup catches the sun in its chalice, And there's never a leaf nor a blade too mean To be some happy creature's palace; The little bird sits at his door in the sun, Atilt like a blossom among the leaves, And lets his illumined being o'errun

With the deluge of summer it receives; His mate feels the eggs beneath her wings, And the heart in her dumb breast flutters

The heart forgets the sorrow and ache; The soul partakes of the season's youth,

Like burned-out craters healed with snow.

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.

And the sulphurous rifts of passion and woe