No gaudier crown has sunflower’s head,

With dew and fragrance round it shed.

Rich vitreous tubes each breeze shakes down,

What shafts and columns gird our town!

Fretwork and tinsel fairy fair,

Wondrous stalactites everywhere.

And so the emulation grows

Till Sol dissolves the wafted snows.

—George Bancroft Griffith.

THE BIRDS IN THEIR WINTER HOME.
(In the Woods.)