Cauld blew the bitter biting north
Upon thy early, humble birth;
Yet cheerfully thou glinted forth
Amid the storm,

Scarce reared above the parent earth
Thy tender form.

The flaunting flowers our gardens yield, High sheltering woods and wa's maun shield. But thou beneath the random bield1

There, in thy scanty mantle clad,
Thy snawie bosom sunward spread,
Thou lifts thy unassuming head
In humble guise;

But now the share uptears thy bed,
And low thou lies!

Such is the fate of artless maid,
Sweet floweret of the rural shade!
By love's simplicity betrayed,

And guileless trust,

Till she, like thee, all soiled, is laid
Low i' the dust.

Such is the fate of simple bard,
On life's rough ocean luckless starred!
Unskilful he to note the card

Of prudent lore,

Till billows rage, and gales blow hard
And whelm him o'er!

Such fate to suffering worth is given,
Who long with wants and woes has striven,
By human pride or cunning driven

To misery's brink,

Till wrenched of every stay but Heaven, He, ruined, sink!

Even thou who mourn'st the daisy's fate, That fate is thine,-no distant date: Stern Ruin's ploughshare drives, elate, Full on thy bloom,

Till crushed beneath the furrow's weight, Shall be thy doom!

THE OLD OAKEN BUCKET'

How

By SAMUEL WOODWORTH

OW dear to my heart are the scenes of my childhood,

When fond recollection presents them to view; The orchard, the meadow, the deep, tangled wildwood,

And every loved spot that my infancy3 knew. The wide-spreading pond, and the mill that stood by it;

The bridge and the rock where the cataract fell; The cot of my father, the dairy house" nigh it,

And e'en the rude bucket which hung in the wellThe old oaken bucket, the iron-bound bucket,

The moss-covered bucket which hung in the well. That moss-covered bucket I hail as a treasure; For often at noon, when returned from the field, I found it the source of an exquisite pleasure,

The purest and sweetest that nature can yield.

1. Samuel Woodworth, the author of this familiar song, was an American, the editor of many publications and the writer of a great many poems; but no one of the latter is now remembered, except The Old Oaken Bucket.

2. This means that the author remembers fondly the scenes of his childhood, or remembers the things of which he was fond in his childhood.

3. As the term is used in the law-books, a person is an infant until he is twenty-one years of age; though, probably the word infancy here means the same as childhood.

4. Let us picture a large mill-pond with a race running out of one side of it past the old-fashioned mill, which has a big wooden water wheel on the outside of it.

5. The dairy house was probably a low, broad building through which the water from the stream ran. The milkpans were set on low shelves or in a trough so that the water could run around them and keep the milk cool.