Klondyke Roses
When melts at last the lingering snow
In sunny days of May or June,
Amid the velvet mosses grow
Shy roses, fragrant-smelling.
A fated sisterhood is theirs,
They sigh their souls out wistfully;
No bee makes love to them or hears
Their tender love a-telling.
They dream, perhaps, of distant lands,
(O lands, that seem as far-off spheres;)
Of love-lit eyes and tender hands
That pluck far happier roses.
But while they dream the days pass by
And August comes with ebon nights,
And sombre is September's sky—
And then their sad life closes.
A Song for the Return of Birds
Haste, little songsters, and return
To your nests in the silent wood;
The birches are lonely and they yearn
For your twittering brotherhood.
The leaves are green on the wakened trees
And the snow has left the moss;
The sighing breeze
With its symphonies
Suggests our greatest loss—
Haste, little birds, haste home!
Haste little songsters, for the Spring
Has come with her laughing train
Of radiant blossoms; and now the King
Is here, and the pattering rain.
The nights are warm and the days are long,
There is no more ice or frost;
And oh! we long
For a songbird's song,
For a music the woods have lost—
Haste, little birds, haste home!