WEATHER SIGNS.
The sun is bright, the sky is clear,
But grandma says a storm is near;
And when I asked how she could know,
She said the peacock told her so,
When, perching on the old fence rail,
He screamed so loud and dropped his tail;
And the shy cuckoo on the wing
Repeated over the same thing;
And “More wet!” all the bob-whites cried
That in the grassy meadows hide;
The soot that from the chimney fell
Came down, it seems, this news to tell;
The kettle sang the self-same tune
When it boiled dry so very soon;
The grass this morning said so, too,
That hung without a drop of dew;
And the blue swallows, flying low
Across the river, to and fro.
So all these told her very plain
That ere the evening it would rain;
But who told them, and when, and how?
That’s what I want to find out now.
St. Nicholas.