For budding stem, for leafy cell,

For dew-bedropped, and green retreat,
Thy trembling notes' incessant swell,
The offering of thine incense sweet.

God, who first called thee into life,
To feed, to sing, and to enjoy,

He called thee too to taste of heav'n,
To dwell beneath this azure sky,
With these the feeling soul was given
To thrill with love and extasy!

He breathed the trembling spirit here,
Alive to all of Nature's charms,
Which greets her with the adoring tear,
And lives enraptured in her arms.

Does evening draw her misty veil,
And hang on every flower and tree,
While crowding songsters swell the gale-
To thee the sense is extasy.

Or, when dark lurid clouds hang round, Which glittering seams of lightning part, The thundering crash, the deep resoundWith shuddering pleasure fill thine heart.

Or, dost thou taste the breeze of morn,
When the sun flames upon the east,
And sparkling dewdrops deck the thorn,
Is it not rapture to thy breast?

Or, when the moon is riding high,
While silvery clouds around her roll
O'er heaven's wide, starry, canopy-

What whispers to thy swelling soul?

Hath God thus highly strung thine heart—
Mysterious rapture bid thee know—
And would'st thou from these scenes depart,
And to the world for pleasure go?

By empty aims, debasing cares,

And worthless hopes thy bosom torn,
By coldness chilled, oppressed by glare,
To mediocrity be worn.

Then wretched in its last estate,

And heartless in the path that's trod,

Grow discontented with thy fate,

And cast a murmuring thought to God!

"Artless lines enough, my dear," said the fond mother," and full of all the inaccuracies of a young unpractised hand, but interesting to me, because they paint my Emilia;" -and she passed her hand calmly and kindly over her daughter's shining hair-" too truly paint her, I am afraid, my dear enthusiast," continued she, looking fondly at her daughter's upturned face.

They were sitting upon the terrace; the mother upon a green garden-seat, the daughter upon the grass at her feet.

"Too truly!" said she, patting the loved cheek glowing with health and animation. "And yet..." and she looked at the paper which she held in her hand, and then at her daughter again; "there is nothing sickly in all this—nothing affected or namby-pamby, which, you know, I detest: high strung, perhaps, that heart has been by the Almighty, but to me it seems destined for high, heroic things."

The daughter's eyes glistened, but she said nothing, and the mother went on as if speaking to herself.

"Heroic! did I say?-You are thinking -and she took Emilia's hand-" of deeds of high courage of strenuous effort-of vanquished difficulty-of victory achieved-of dragons and monsters of the wilderness-of Una, and her lion-of Clarinda, and her lance

-or rather of Joan of Arc and a country saved. That is the sort of thing that was in

your foolish little head. Come, tell truthsay it was so, my Emilia!"

"Ah, mamma! what is the use of confessing to the divine? It was some sort of confused stuff of that sort, when you used the word heroic-a very big word for you, mamma." 'Well, my dear, I think it is a very great compliment to the power of your verses that they have, for the moment, excited such a very sober person as I am to the 'Ercles vein.'"

She gazed at her daughter again. She was, what she said, a very sober person, who rarely, if ever, indulged in the slightest exaggeration or even warmth of expression; and still more rarely suffered herself to be betrayed into anything beyond the demonstration of calm and well disciplined feeling: but now she looked at her daughter's ardent, animated, yet most truthful and ingenuous countenance, sighed and repeated again the word heroic.

but

"Ah, my poor little poet! you are come three centuries too late into the world; heroism is not out of date, though the

outer garb and vesture of it are so changed that perhaps you poets-who, you know, are apt a little too much to be caught by the outsides of things perhaps you poets might not know it again.

"Heroism-To those who consider rightly, it is a far nobler thing now: when it is no longer a sound to mark the glowing excitement, the lofty enthusiasm, which fights and struggles in the brilliant midday, gilded by the sun, all warm and genial; but the slow, silent, death-struggle of the soul in solitude, darkness, and obscurity, against the heavy, wearying, every-day evils of every-day actual life sacrifices of the hourly and the small, but the sum of which is existence-not offered in the fervour of the moment, but given, as it were, by inches; the heroic devotion to others, and those others, not even worthy! far from grateful, too often resentful; combining patience, perseverance, endurance, gentleness, and disinterestedness-that is the heroism of our day, my dear poet!"

"I know, dear mamma, that you are