SPRING, AND ITS MORAL ANALOGIES.

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The next observation on the Spring season is, how reluctantly the worse gives place to the better! While the Winter is forced to retire, it is yet very tenacious of its reign; it seems to make many efforts to return; it seems to hate the beauty and fertility that are supplanting it. For months we are liable to cold, chilling, pestilential blasts, and sometimes biting frosts. A portion of the malignant power lingers, or returns to lurk, as it were, under the most cheerful sunshine; so that the vegetable beauty remains in hazard, and the luxury of enjoying the Spring is attended with danger to persons not in firm health. It is too obvious to need pointing out, how much resembling this there is in the moral state of things-in the hopeful advance and improvement of the youthful mind, in the early, and, indeed, the more advanced, stages of the Christian character, and in all the commencing improvements of human society.

We may contemplate next the lavish, boundless diffusion, riches, and variety of beauty in the Spring. Survey a single confined spot, or pass over leagues, or look from a hill. Infinite affluence everywhere. And so you know, too, that it is over a wide portion of the globe at the same time. It is under your feet, extends all around you, spread out to the horizon. And all this created within a few weeks! To every observer the immensity, variety, and beauty are obvious. But to the perceptions of the skilful naturalist all this is indefinitely multiplied.

Reflect, what a display is here of the boundless resources of the Great Author. He flings forth, as it were, an unlimited wealth-a deluge of beauty, immeasurably beyond all that is strictly necessary, an immense quantity that man never sees, not even in the mass. It is true that man is not the only creature for which the gratification is designed; but it is man alone, of the earth's inhabitants, that can take any account of it as beauty, or as wisdom, and power, and goodness. Such unlimited profusion may well assure us that He who can (shall we say) afford thus to lavish treasures so far beyond what is simply necessary, can never fail of resources for all that is or ever shall be necessary.

THE COWSLIP.

"The flowery May, who from her green lap throws The yellow cowslip, and the pale primrose."

OWING adorers of the gale,

Ye cowslips delicately pale,

Upraise your loaded stems;

Unfold your cups in splendour: speak!
Who decked you with that ruddy streak,
And gilt your golden gems?

Violets, sweet tenants of the shade,
In purple's richest pride arrayed,
Your errand here fulfil;
Go, bid the artist's simple stain
Your lustre imitate, in vain,

And match your Maker's skill.

Daisies, ye flowers of lowly birth,
Embroiderers of the carpet earth,

That stud the velvet sod;

Open to Spring's refreshing air,

In sweetest smiling bloom declare

Your Maker, and my God.

THE COWSLIP.

Now in my walk with sweet surprise
I see the first Spring cowslip rise,

The plant whose pensile flowers
Bend to the earth their beauteous eyes
In sunshine, as in showers.

Low on a mossy bank it grew,
Where lichens, purple, red, and blue,
Among the verdure crept;
Its yellow ringlets, dropping dew,
The breezes lightly swept.

O welcome, as a friend! I cried,
A friend through many a season tried,
And never sought in vain,

When May, with Flora at her side,
Is dancing on the plain.

Where thick thy primrose blossoms play,
Lovely and innocent as they,

O'er coppice, lawns, and dells,
In bands the village children stray
To pluck thy nectared bells.

Unchanging still from year to year,
Like stars returning in their sphere
With undiminished rays,

Thy vernal constellations cheer

The dawn of lengthening days.

And O, till Nature's final doom,
Here unmolested may they bloom
From scythe and plough secure ;
This bank their cradle and their tomb,
While earth and skies endure.

FIELD FLOWERS.

YE field flowers! the gardens eclipse you, 'tis true,
Yet, wildings of Nature, I doat upon you,

For ye waft me to summers of old,

When the earth teemed around me with fairy delight, And when daisies and buttercups gladdened my sight, Like treasures of silver and gold.

I love you for lulling me back into dreams

Of the blue Highland mountains, and echoing streams,
And of broken glades breathing their balm;
While the deer was seen glancing in sunshine remote,
And the deep mellow cush of the wood-pigeon's note
Made music that sweetened the calm.

Even now what affections the violet awakes,
What loved little islands, twice seen in their lakes,

Can the wild water-lily restore;

What landscapes I read in the primrose's looks, And what pictures of pebbled and minnowy brooks In the vetches that tangled their shore!

Earth's cultureless buds, to my heart ye were dear,
Ere the fever of passion, or ague of fear,

Hath scathed my existence's bloom;

Once I welcome you more, in life's passionless stage, With the visions of youth to revisit my age,

And I wish you to grow on my tomb.

HYMN FOR MAY.

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HYMN FOR MAY.

"He hath made everything beautiful in his time."-Ecclesiastes iii. 11.

NOTHING fair on earth I see

But I straightway think on Thee;
Thou art fairest in mine eyes,
Source in whom all beauty lies!

When the golden sun forth goes,
And the east before him glows,
Quickly turns this heart of mine
To Thy heavenly form divine.

On Thy light I think at morn,
With the earliest break of dawn;
Ah, what glories lie in Thee,
Light of all Eternity!

When I watch the moon arise

'Mid Heaven's thousand golden eyes,
Then I think, more glorious far

Is the Maker of yon star.

Or I cry in Spring's sweet hours,
When the fields are gay with flowers,

As their varied hues I see,

What must their Creator be!