We have had a great many translations of the Holy Scriptures; the best of all would be their translation into the daily practice of Christian people.
THE WILD AZALEA.
A MEMORY OF THE HIGHLANDS.
Up on the hills where the young trees grow,
Looking down on the fields below—
Long-leaved chestnuts and maples low;
Up where lingereth late the sun,
When the soft spring day is nearly done,
Dying away in the west;
Up where the poplar's silver stem
Bends by the marsh's grass-fringed hem,
By the soft May wind caressed;
Up where the long, slim shadows fall
From the scarlet oak and the pepperidge tall,
Where the birds and the squirrels tirelessly call,
Where in autumn the flowers of the gentian blue
Look up with their eyes so dark and true,
Up into the hazy sky,
Dreaming away as the red leaves drop,
And the acorn falls from its deep brown cup,
And the yellow leaves float by;
Up where the violets, white and blue,
Bloom in sunshine and the dew,
Tenderly living their still life through,
Where the deep-cut leaves of the liverwort grow,
And the great white flowers of the dogwood blow
Over the pale anemones;—
Cometh a perfume spicily shed
From the wild Azalea's full-wreathed head
Lifted among the trees.
There where the sun-flecked shadows lie,
Quivering light as the breeze laughs by,
And the leaves all dance 'neath the soft spring sky;
Blossoming bright when the twigs grow green,
And the sunlight falls with a tenderer sheen
Than comes with the summer noon,
Blossoming bright where the laurel gleams,
Lifting its sculptured flowers to the beams
Of the warm, glad sun of June.
And so it smiles to itself all day,
Where it stands alone by the mountain way,
Hearing the merry young leaves at play;
And soft on the stones its smile is cast,
And it laughs with the wind as it saunters past,
The fresh, young wind of May:
And happily thus it lives its life
Till the woods with sounds of summer are rife,
When it silently passes away.
And once again to the hills we go,
When the sun shines warm on the fields below
Where the midsummer lilies are all aglow,
When shadows are thicker, and scarcely the breeze
Stirs a leaf on the gleaming poplar trees,
And low are the streamlet's tones;
For the bright Azalea we look in vain,
And long for its smile to gladden again
Our hearts and the old gray stones.