Go, strew the path where age doth tread, And tell him of the silent dead.

But whilst to thoughtless ones and gay,
Ye breathe these truths severe,
To those who droop in pale decay,
Have ye no words of cheer?
Oh, yes! ye weave a double spell,
And death and life betoken well.

Go, then, where wrapt in fear and gloom
Fond hearts and true are sighing,
And deck with emblematic bloom
The pillow of the dying;

And softly speak, nor speak in vain,
Of the long sleep and broken chain;

And say, that He who from the dust
Recalls the slumbering flower,
Will surely visit those who trust

His mercy and his power;

Will mark where sleeps their peaceful clay, And roll, ere long, the stone away.

75

CHAPTER III.

CHILDREN AND FLOWERS.

'Age is naturally cold and repulsive, and, like a gay masker, frequently puts on the semblance of a former period of life, whose bloom and beauty no sunshine will ever restore again, Every care-worn lineament, and furrowed wrinkle, betrays a warring thought and deceptive purpose. Youth is ever open to the sunshine, and glad as are the flowers that bloom beneath a summer's heaven."-EPHON.

Childhood is especially the season of flowers, and hence the poets have very appropriately compared that early period of our existence to the spring-time of the year, when,—

"There's perfume upon every wind,
Music in every tree-

Dews for the moisture-loving flowers-
Sweets for the sucking bee;

The sick come forth for the healing breeze,

The young are gathering flowers,

And life is a tale of poetry,

That is told by golden hours."-N. P. WILLIS. It is then that flowers are to us a source of exquisite, soul-thrilling delight; we revel amid them as careless and free-hearted as their own worshipper, the butterfly; inhaling their fragrance, and gazing on their beautiful tints with a pleasure for which we know not how to account; it is an admiration implanted in us by the Great Maker for the most lovely of His creations:

"Go, mark the matchless workings of the power,
That shuts within the seed the future flower;
Bids these in elegance of form excel

In colour these, and those delight the smell;
Sends nature forth, the daughter of the skies,
To dance on earth, and charm all human eyes."

COWPER.

Let the infant, peevish and fretful from suffering under one of the many disorders to which infancy is peculiarly liable, be shown a flower, and how quickly will the tears be changed to smiles; how eagerly will he endeavour to obtain it, clapping his little chubby hands, and crowing again with excess of glee; and when in possession of the prize so much coveted, how will he strive, by chuckling laughter, and broken lispings, to express his admiration, turning it round and round, and viewing it on all sides, his eyes sparkling the while, like the bubbles on a sun-lit fountain :

""Tis now the poetry of life to thee!

With fancies fresh and innocent as flowers,
And manners sportive as the free-wing'd air;
Thou see'st a friend in every smile; thy days
Like singing birds, in gladness speed along,
And not a tear that trembles on thy lids,
But shines away, and sparkles into joy."
ROBERT MONTGOMERY.

Even the universal desire manifested by children to pull flowers in pieces, we are inclined to think, arises from an impression that by so doing, they will be enabled to discover the source of such delightful sensation, and take their fill at once, as the boy in the fable is said to have destroyed the bird which laid golden eggs, in order to enrich himself with the precious

store he supposed it to contain; and this impression is further confirmed by watching the earnestness with which they proceed in the work of destruction, carefully examining every petal until the whole are plucked off, and the disappointment with which they turn from the scattered fragments :

"Oh, forbear to cull

In merest wilfulness, thou petted child!

And scatter the hard paths with beautiful

Young flowers and sweet, though world-despised and wild."

ANON.

What an emblem, are those shattered flowers, of the objects of our desires in riper years; how eagerly do we grasp them, and what disappointment ensues to find them wither in our hands, without yielding the happiness we unreasonably expected from them ;-and why? not because they are incapable of so doing, but that we, like foolish children, wishing to obtain a surfeit of sweets, enjoyed them not temperately. We are

even, as the poet says,

"Like babes, that pluck an early bud apart

To know the dainty colour of its heart."

THOMAS HOOD.

Man! Man! thou art ever repining and discontented; but didst thou not abuse the good gifts showered around thee by a gracious Providence, how happy might'st thou be in this beautiful world, exclaiming,

"These are thy wonders, Lord of Love!

To make us see we are but flowers that glide,
Which when we once can find and prove,

Thou hast a garden for us where to bide;
Who would be more,

Swelling through store,

Forfeit their paradise by their pride."

GEORGE HERBERT

But we are wandering from the path of our subject and must crave the reader's indulgence, while we retrace our steps, premising however, that it will not be the last time, by many, that we shall have occasion to do the like, being as one who walketh in a pleasant garden, where each fresh object holds out a greater temptation than the last, to make us pause and examine its beauties, until we become fairly confused by admiration, and dazzled with excess of light.

"A mother kind walks forth in the even,
She, with her little son, for pleasure given

To tread the fringed banks of an amorous flood,
That with its music courts a sylvan wood;

There ever talking to her only bliss,

That now before, and now behind her is,
She stoops for flowers, the choicest may be had,
And bringing them to please her little lad,
Spies in his hand some baneful flower or weed,
Whereon he 'gins to smell, perchance to feed,
With a more earnest haste she runs to him

And pulls them from him. "WILLIAM BROWNE. Who can look upon the above picture, limned by the hand of one of Britain's sweetest pastoral poets, without having the tenderest recollections awakened within him, of a parent, now perchance sleeping in the cold church-yard, or if not so, divided from him by a wide gulph of worldly cares and interests, no longer exercising a judicious control over his actions; no longer with a firm yet gentle hand, pulling from him the baneful weeds of folly, and flowers, beautiful in appearance, and endued with fragrancy, but fraught with a subtile poison, which pleasure scatters over the pathway of man, luring him to tarry in her voluptuous bowers, and #teep his soul in sensual delights, whereafter come