Evoe

In the presence of Spring, our beautiful Spring,
Blithe bird of the bosom! the heart will sing.

A Spirit of Joy in the oldest breast
Is stirring, and making it young as the rest:

Quickens new life to leap in each limb,
And laugh out of eyes that were wintry and dim;

So the old Wine stirs in his winter gloom,
And wants to waken, and climb, and bloom,
As he used to do in the world outside,
When the grapes grew big in their purple of pride.

He would laugh in the light, he would flush in the
foam;
In a care-drowning wave he would rosily roam;
For his blood is so mellow, so merry, so warm,
Into spirit of joy it would fain transform,
Rioting ruddily, ripple and play,
And in human life keep holiday —
Break on the brain in a luminous spray,
Tinting with heaven our earthiest clay;
In a fiery chariot mount on his way,
With spirit-company, lordly and gay,
And pass like a soul that is losf in day.

So the Spirit of Joy in the oldest breast
Is stirring, and making it young as the rest;

Wakes a new life to leap in each limb,
And laugh out of eyes that were wintry and dim.

Blithe bird of the bosom! the heart will sing
In the presence of Spring, our beautiful Spring.

English John Talbot, Shakspeare's terribly brave,
Great Fighter, lay in his forgotten grave.
It was but yesterday they found his dust,
The sheath of that old Sword long gone to rust
In English earth; his burial-place recover
In lands owned by a certain Lordly Lover.
And, lo! a Rose had sprung from out his tomb,
And climbed about the Lover's life to bloom:
A peerless flower of the old Hero's stock —
The t enderest gush from that heroic rock.
Not oft doth Fate vouchsafe so plain a sign,
Prefiguring the lives that are to twine.
All sweetness to this wedded life be given;
Its root so deep in earth, its perfect flower in
heaven.