TIONS

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.

5 Where are the flowers, the fair young flowers, that lately sprang and stood

In brighter light and softer airs, a beauteous sisterhood?

Alas! they all are in their graves, the gentle race of 10 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

15 Calls not from out the gloomy earth the lovely ones again.

The wind-flower and the violet, they perished long

ago,

And the brier-rose and the orchis died amid the sum20 mer glow;

But on the hills the golden-rod, and the aster in the wood,

And the yellow sun-flower by the brook in autumn beauty stood,

25 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 fragrance 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

of ours,

young friend

So gentle and so beautiful, should perish with the

flowers.

WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.

Permission of D. Appleton & Co.

From Bryant's Poetical Works.

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PAUL AND VIRGINIA.

AN EXTRACT.

One Sunday, at daybreak, their mothers having gone to mass at the church of the Shaddock Grove, the children perceived a negro woman beneath the plantains which surrounded their habitation. She 5 appeared almost wasted to a skeleton, and had no other garment than a piece of coarse cloth thrown around her. She threw herself at the feet of Virginia, who was preparing the family breakfast, and said, "My good young lady, have pity on a poor run10 away slave. For a whole month I have wandered among these mountains, half dead with hunger, and often pursued by the hunters and their dogs. I fled from my master, a rich planter of the Black River, who has used me as you see; and she showed her 15 body marked with scars from the lashes she had received. She added, "I was going to drown myself, but hearing you lived here, I said to myself, 'Since there are still some good white people in this country, I need not die yet."" Virginia answered with emotion,-"Take courage, unfortunate creature! here is something to eat" and she gave her the breakfast she had been preparing, which the slave in a few minutes devoured. When her hunger was appeased, Virginia said to her," Poor woman! I should like to go and ask forgiveness for you of your master. Surely the sight of you will touch him with pity.

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