THE HALO.

"One London dealer in birds received, when the fashion was at its height, a single consignment of thirty-two thousand dead humming-birds; and an. other received at one time thirty thousand aquatic birds, and three hundred thousand pairs of wings."

THINK what a price to pay,

Faces so bright and gay,

Just for a hat!

Flowers unvisited, mornings unsung,
Sea-ranges bare of the wings that o'erswung —
Bared just for that!

Think of the others, too,

Others and mothers, too,
Bright eyes in hat!

Hear you no mother-groan floating in air,
Hear you no little moan, — birdlings' despair, -
Somewhere, for that?

Caught 'mid some mother-work,
Torn by a hunter Turk,

Just for your hat!

Plenty of mother-heart yet in the world:
All the more wings to tear, carefully twirled,
Women want that!

Oh, but the shame of it,

Oh, but the blame of it,
Price of a hat!

Just for a jauntiness brightening the street!
This is your halo, O faces so sweet,

REV. W. C. GANNETT.

THE WINGED HAT.

ANGELINA has a hat

With wings on every side;
Slaughter o' the innocents
Those pretty wings supplied.
Sign of barbarity,

Sign of vulgarity —
That winged hat.

The little bird of beauty born,
With joy in every motion,
By cruel hands is slain and torn,
For vulgar whim and notion.
Oh, the barbarity,

Oh, the vulgarity-
That winged hat.

Bridget, too, like Angelina,

Wears a winged hat,

With colors loud, she is quite proud,
Her gait, it tells you that.

Type of vulgarity,

Type of barbarity

That winged hat.

Boston Transcript.

THE MOCKING-BIRD.

WINGED mimic of the woods! thou motley fool! Who shall thy gay buffoonery describe? hine ever ready notes of ridicule

Pursue thy fellows still with jest and jibe.

Wit, sophist, songster, Yorick of thy tribe,
Thou sportive satirist of nature's school;
To thee the palm of scoffing we ascribe,

Arch mocker and mad Abbot of Misrule!
For such thou art by day—but all night long
Thou pour'st soft, sweet, pensive, solemn strain,
As if thou didst in this thy moonlight song
Like to the melancholy Jacques complain,
Musing on falsehood, folly, vice, and wrong,
And sighing for thy motley coat again.

1789-1847.

RICHARD HENRY WIlde.

HUMMING-BIRD.

WHEN the mild gold stars flower out,
As the summer gloaming goes,
A dim shape quivers about

Some sweet, rich heart of a rose.

If you watch its fluttering poise,
From palpitant wings will steal

A hum like the eerie noise

Of an elfin spinning-wheel.

And then from the shape's vague sheen
Deep lustres of blue will float,

That melt in luminous green

Round a glimmer of ruby throat.

But fleetly across the gloom

This tremulous shape will dart,
While searching for some new bloom,
To quiver about its heart.

And you, with thoughts of it stirred,
Will dreamily ask of them:

Who do you imagine cares,
Katie, for your small affairs?

Hold your peace; and, for the rest,

We'll concede you did your best.

Only your own counsel keep,
Letting honest people sleep.

If you did, then be it so;

If

you did n't, let it go.

CAROLINE A. MASON.

SAND MARTINS.

I PASSED an inland cliff precipitate :

From tiny eaves peeped many a sooty poll:

In each a mother martin sat elate,

And of the news delivered her small soul.

Fantastic chatter! hasty, glad, and gay,

66

66

Whereof the meaning was not ill to tell;

Gossip, how wags the world with you to-day?"

Gossip, the world wags well, the world wags well."

JEAN INGELOW.

THE CARRIER PIGEON.

WHO then oh, who is like our God so great,

Who makes the seed expand beneath the mountain's weight!

Who for a swallow's nest leaves one old castle wall,
Who lets for famished beetles savory apples fall;

Who bids a pigmy win where Titans fail in yoke,
And in what we deem fruitless roar and smoke,
Makes Etna, Chimborazo, still His praises sing,
And saves a city by a word lapped 'neath a pigeon's
wing'

VICTOR HUGO.

PIGEONS OF SAINT PAUL'S.

THE pigeons of Saint Mark's may fly
Near all the long lagoons,

They circle 'neath Italian sky,

On summer afternoons.

The silent city in the sea

Has magic that enthrals;
But still you have a charm for me,
O pigeons of Saint Paul's.

There, 'mid the city's ceaseless roar,
Wren's dome its head uprears,

As it has stood from days of yore,
For twice a hundred years.