These my May-day reveries have begun lightly, and ended, as May-days
themselves have done, in sad thoughts. But sad thoughts and life's
troubles are, or ought to be, the heart's discipline. For this purpose
do they come to us, and we should go forth from them purer and better.
THE SNOW-DROP.
BY MRS. M.A. LIVERMORE.
The gentle, laughing, spring had come
With eye and cheek so bright;
The bird glanced through the clear, blue air,
On wing of golden light;
And earth, in gladness, lay and smiled,
To see the beauteous sight.
The streams went singing to the sea,
And dancing to their song;
Its carpet, had the young grass spread
The hills and vales among;
Yet not a flower its bloom had shed,
The fresh green earth along.
Not yet the violet had unsealed
Its blue and loving eye;
Nor had the primrose dared unfold,
For fear that it might die;
And on the tree-tops shook the leaves,
Which oped to kiss the sky.
But so it chanced, one gentle day,
While softly wept the rain,
And sadly sighed the mourning breeze,
The flowers to see again;
A silvery snow-flake fell to earth,
Escaped from winter's chain.
And daintily it laid itself
Where greenest grass was spread,
And where the bland and warm south-wind,
Soft-footed, loved to tread,
And here the white-robed fugitive
Made for itself a bed.
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