Sow the seed, and let it lie-
Not a single grain shall die;
Fair and yellow, full and mellow,
Waves the harvest by-and-by!

Behold, on some chill Alpine height,
A little snowflake soft and white,
Slides downward in its silent course,
And, sliding, ever gathers force;
It gathers force, it takes a form,
And now, a voice of wreck and storm,
It rushes, crushes, thunders down
In earthquake on the doomèd town.
E'en so, my lads, e'en so, my lads,
The little fault will grow, my lads;
Slight at first, and soft and white,
Lo! it gathers day and night,
Gathers, hardens, shapes, and grows;
Solid ice, not pliant snows,

Massy, dread, beyond control,

With mountain-weight and thunder-roll.
Shaking, quaking, bursting, breaking,
It crushes down the hapless soul.

FREDERICK LANGBRIDge.

Aunt C. Snowflakes are good things, too, in their right place; but the simile is excellent. We will finish, though, with a more cheerful poem, one by

the American Bishop of California, Dr. Cleveland Coxe, showing how the child's love of little earthly things may go step by step to the highest and best.

A BALLAD.

The first dear thing that ever I loved
Was a mother's gentle eye,

That smiled as I woke on the dreamy couch

That cradled my infancy.

I never forget the joyous thrill

That smile in my bosom stirred,

Nor how it could charm me against my will,
Till I laughed like a joyous bird.

And the next fair thing that ever I loved
Was a bunch of summer flowers,
With odours, and hues, and loveliness,
Fresh as from Eden's bowers.

I never can find such hues again,

Nor smell such a sweet perfume;
And if there be odours as sweet as those,
'Tis I that have lost my bloom.

And the next dear thing that ever I loved
Was a favourite little maid,

Half-pleased, half-awed by the frolic boy
That tortured her doll and played.

I never can see the gossamer

Which rude, rough zephyrs tease,

But I think how I tossed her flossy locks
With my whirling bonnet's breeze.

And the next good thing that ever I loved
Was a bowkite in the sky,

And a little boat on the brooklet's surf,
And my dog for company;

And a jingling hoop, with many a bound,
To my measured strike and true,
And a rocket sent up to the firmament,
When Even was out so blue.

And the next fair thing I was fond to love
Was a field of wavy grain,

Where a reaper mowed, as a ship in sail,
On the billowy, billowy main ;

And the next was a fiery prancing horse
That I felt like a man to stride;
And the next was a beautiful sailing boat,
With a helm it was hard to guide.

And the next dear thing I was fond to love Is tenderer far to tell

'Twas a voice, and a hand, and a gentle eye That dazzled me with its spell;

And the loveliest things I had loved before
Were only the landscape now,

On the canvas bright, where I pictured her
In the glow of my early vow.

And the last dear thing I was fond to love
Was the holy service high,

That lifted my soul to joys above,

And pleasures that do not die;

And I felt in my spirit drear and strange,

To think of the race I ran,

That I loved the sole thing that knew no change In the soul of boy or man.

And then I said, "One thing there is

That I of the Lord desire

That ever while I on the earth shall live,
I will of the Lord require

That I may dwell in His temple blest
As long as my life shall be,

And the beauty fair of the Lord of Hosts

In the home of His glory see.

Bp. CLEVELAND COXE.

Alice. Gracie is begging for some fairy verses. Aunt C. We must go to our greatest poet for them, Shakspere. Here is his description of Queen Mab

She comes

In shape no bigger than an agate-stone

On the fore-finger of an alderman,

Drawn with a team of little atomies

Athwart men's noses as they lie asleep:

Her waggon-spokes made of long-spinners' legs;
The cover, of the wings of grasshoppers;
The traces, of the smallest spider's web;
The collars, of the moonshine's watery beams:
Her whip, of cricket's bone; the lash, of film:
Her waggoner, a small grey-coated gnat
Not half so big as a round little worm
Prick'd from the lazy finger of a maid:
Her chariot is an empty hazel-nut,