204 THE DEATH OF THE FLOWERS. Not unaccepted such pure omen came; That gentle voice the present God revealed, And back the Ionian chief returned in shame, Checked by the virtue of that simple shield. THE DEATH OF THE FLOWERS. — Bryant. THE melancholy days have come, the saddest of the year, Of wailing winds, and naked woods, and meadows brown and sear. Heaped in the hollows of the grove, the withered leaves lie dead; They rustle to the eddying gust, and to the rabbit's tread. The robin and the wren are flown, and from the shrubs the jay, And from the wood-top calls the crow, through all the gloomy day. Where are the flowers, the fair young flowers, that lately sprang and stood In brighter light and softer airs, a beauteous sister hood? Alas! they all are in their graves; the gentle race of flowers Are lying in their lowly beds, with the fair and good of ours. The rain is falling where they lie, but the cold November rain Calls not, from out the gloomy earth, the lovely ones again. THE DEATH OF THE FLOWERS. 205 The wind-flower and the violet, they perished long ago, And the brier-rose and the orchis died amid the summer glow; But on the hill the golden-rod, and the aster in the wood, And the yellow sunflower by the brook, in autumn beauty stood, Till fell the frost from the clear, cold heaven, as falls the plague on men, And the brightness of their smile was gone, from upland, glade, and glen. And now, when comes the calm, mild day, as still such days will come, To call the squirrel and the bee from out their winter home, When the sound of dropping nuts is heard, though all the trees are still, And twinkle in the smoky light the waters of the rill, The south wind searches for the flowers whose fra grance late he bore, And sighs to find them in the wood and by the stream no more. And then I think of one who in her youthful beauty died, The fair, meek blossom that grew up and faded by my side: In the cold, moist earth we laid her, when the forest cast the leaf, And we wept that one so lovely should have a life so brief; Yet not unmeet it was that one, like that young friend of ours, So gentle, and so beautiful, should perish with the flowers. 206 THE CORAL GROVE. THE CORAL GROVE. - Percival. DEEP in the wave is a coral grove, Where the purple mullet and gold-fish rove; Their boughs, where the tides and billows flow; For the winds and the waves are absent there, The fan-coral sweeps through the clear, deep sea; And is safe, when the wrathful spirit of storms The purple mullet and gold-fish rove Through the bending twigs of the coral grove. A HAPPY LIFE. 207 A HAPPY LIFE.-Sir Henry Wotton. How happy is he born and taught, And simple truth his utmost skill; Whose passions not his masters are; Of public fame or private breath; Who envies none that chance doth raise, How deepest wounds are given by praise, Who hath his life from rumors freed; Who God doth late and early pray And entertains the harmless day This man is freed from servile bands 208 GOOD TEMPER. VIRTUE. KNOWLEDGE AND WISDOM. Cowper. KNOWLEDGE and Wisdom, far from being one, Have oft times no connection. Knowledge dwells In heads replete with thoughts of other men; Wisdom, in minds attentive to their own. Knowledge, a rude, unprofitable mass, The mere materials with which Wisdom builds, · Till smoothed, and squared, and fitted to its place, Does but encumber whom it seems to enrich! Knowledge is proud that he has learned so much, Wisdom is humble that he knows no more. GOOD TEMPER. — More. SINCE trifles make the sum of human things, THE sturdy rock, for all his strength, |