SPRING’S ADVENT.

I looked forth on the world to-day,

As waked the rosy morn,

And every budding leaf and blade

Proclaimed the Spring was born.

The southern wind’s seductive wiles

My footsteps lured along

Far from the town’s unlovely ways,

Far from its madding throng.

O sweet the first glad greeting is

With nature, when the Spring

Is spreading forth her tender charms,

And flowers are blossoming!

O sweet to tread the soft green earth

When fresh the breezes blow,

Untrammelled by a thought of care,

And free to come or go!

The lambs were bleating on the hills

Where farmsteads nestling lie,

Safe sheltered from the rude fierce blasts

That storm the hill-tops high.

The swallow’s glanced on flashing wing;

Dear birds of promise they,

That speak the reign of winter past,

Dawn of a brighter day.

Down from the heavens the poet-lark

His numbers madly flung

In liquid notes of purest joy,

That through the valley rung;

And leaping streams, from winter’s yoke

So glad to be set free,

Took up the jocund minstrelsy,

And bore it to the sea.

In sportive glee the children trooped

The meadow-paths along,

And carolled forth, in happy voice,

A careless snatch of song.

Ah, well they know the sunlit spot

Where first the primrose sweet

Looks out upon the wooded copse

The waking earth to greet.

O happy children! life to you

Is full of light and flowers;

Athwart whose skies of tender blue

No threatening storm-cloud lowers.

I wonder, do ye ever think

Of children far away,

Who only see through vistas dim

God’s glorious light of day!

Whose lives are spent in narrow streets,

Or alleys foul with sin;

Where squalor, poverty, and death,

Alas! are rife within.

No fresh pure winds their tresses blow,

Green fields they never trod,

Or plucked the nodding flowers that grow

Fresh from the hand of God.

O little children! young, yet old

In life’s excess of woe,

I dread for you the dreary ways

Your faltering feet must go.

O little eyes, that never yet

Beheld a lovely thing,

I wonder what your joy shall be

Through God’s eternal Spring!

Charles H. Barstow.

Printed and Published by W. & R. Chambers, 47 Paternoster Row, London, and 339 High Street, Edinburgh.