Sweet Spring, thou turn'st, with all thy goodly train,
Thy head with flames, thy mantle bright with flowers!
The zephyrs curl the green locks of the plain,

The clouds for joy in pearls weep down their showers.
WILLIAM DRummond.

Of all the joyous seasons of the year, that of the joyous Spring delights me most. Everything is bursting into freshness, new life, and beauty. We have had a May-day which began with a golden shower, after a period of cold dry weather. All nature teemed in an instant with verdure. The air was soft and balmy, and everything looked smiling and cheerful.

O, Nature! holy, meek, and mild,
Thou dweller on the mountain wild ;
Thou haunter of the lonesome wood,
Thou wanderer by the secret flood;
Thou lover of the daisied sod,

Where Spring's white foot hath lately trod;
Oh! lead me forth o'er dales and meads,

E'en as her child the mother leads;

And while we saunter, let thy speech

God's glory and his goodness preach.*

These are the sort of aspirations, which a lover of nature is constantly breathing, as he looks

A. CUNNINGHAM.

around him. His heart expands as he views the many gifts bestowed upon man, some for his use, others for his gratification. If he walks in a shady grove at this season of the year, he is ready to exclaim

Here softest beauties open to my view:

Here many a flow'r expands its blushing charms;
Here the thick foliage wears a greener hue,

And lofty trees extend their leafy arms:
All things conspire to deck the milder scene,
And nature's gentlest form here smiles serene.

Each feather'd songster here with chauntings gay,
Full sweetly wakes the 'incense breathing morn,'
And here the nightingale, with warbling lay,

Full sweetly hails the evening's lov'd return.
That heart whom this soft music cannot move,
Is deaf to pity, and is dead to love.

The music of the grove is, indeed, one of the greatest charms of a walk through some open glade, or shady coppice, during a smiling day in Spring, when the birds, as our good father, Isaac Walton, remarks, "seem to have a friendly contention with an echo, whose dead voice seemed to live in a hollow tree." Here, one of my favourite birds, the speckled Thrush, may be heard.

Sweet thrush! whose wild untutor'd strain

Salutes the opening year,

Renew those melting notes again,

And sooth my ravish'd ear.

While evening spreads her shadowy veil,

With pensive steps I'll stray,

And soft on tiptoe gently steal

Beneath thy favourite spray.*

I have quoted these pretty lines, because they were evidently written by one who could fully appreciate the charms of nature. Nor is this the only female poet who has celebrated the songs of birds. The Sky-lark has had many admirers, and its grateful notes, ascending as they appear to do to the very heavens, in order to celebrate the praises of its Maker, have been sung by poets in all ages.

Singing to other spheres, is lost in light,

Till, fondly lured, she turns her faithful breast

Downward through fields of blue. The warbling strain

Near and more near she swells; then hushed again,

Falls like a shadow from the sunny dome.†

Waller, also, gives a pretty description of the

lark rising upon the wing on a sunny day.

The lark that shuns on lofty boughs to build

Her humble nest, lies silent in the field;

But if the promise of a cloudless day,

Aurora, smiling, bids her rise and play,

Singing, she mounts; her airy wings are stretched

Towards heaven, as if from heaven her notes she fetched.

Nor should the following affecting lines of Henry Kirke White be omitted, in which he contrasts

* MISS HORD.

† MRS. CONder.

the joyousness of the "sprightly lark" with his own hopeless condition.

Yon brook will glide as softly as before,

Yon landscape smile, yon golden harvest glow,
Yon sprightly lark on mounting wings will soar,

When Henry's name is heard no more below.

Among these quotations from poets who have celebrated the songs of birds, the following sonnet, by Milton, on the Nightingale, is peculiarly beautiful.

O nightingale, that on yon bloomy spray,

Warblest at eve, when all the woods are still ;
Thou with fresh hope the lover's heart dost fill,
While the jolly hours lead on propitious May.
Thy liquid notes that close the eve of day,
First heard before the shallow cuckoo's bill,
Portend success in love; O, if Jove's will
Have link'd that amorous power to thy soft lay,
Now timely sing, ere the rude bird of hate

Foretel my hopeless doom in some grove nigh;
As thou from year to year hast sung too late
For my relief, yet hadst no reason why:

Whether the Muse or Love, call thee his mate,
Both them I serve, and of their train am I.

In enumerating the list of birds which have been noticed by our poets, the Wood-lark should not be omitted. It is one of our sweetest songsters.

The thrush

And wood-lark, o'er the kind contending throng
Superior heard, run through the sweetest length
Of notes.*

* THOMSON.

Our poet of nature then notices the following birds

The black-bird whistles from the thorny brake:
The mellow bullfinch answers from the grove:
Nor are the linnets, o'er the flowering furze
Pour'd out profusely, silent. Join'd to these
Innum❜rous songsters, in the fresh'ning shade
Of new-sprung leaves, their modulations mix
Mellifluous.

He then adds

The stock-dove breathes

A melancholy murmur through the whole.

The following lines, by Mr. Roscoe, have always struck me as particularly pleasing.

I love to see at early morn,

The squirrel sit before my door,
There crack his nuts, and hide his shells,
And leap away to seek for more.

I love in hedge-row paths, to see
The linnets hop from spray to spray;

Or mark, at evening's balmy close,
The red-breast hop across my way.

For sure, when nature's free-born train
Approach, with song and gambol here,

Some secret impulse bids them feel

The foot-steps of a friend are near.

Charlotte Smith's ode to Spring may not be

generally known ;—

Again the wood, and long withdrawing vale,

In many a tint of tender green are drest,