always turn out best. They get an early start; they have rugged constitutions. Late chickens cannot stand the heavy dews, or withstand the predaceous hawks. In April all nature starts with you. You have not come out your hibernaculum too early or too late; the time is ripe, and if you do not keep pace with the rest, why, the fault is not in the season.

SPRING POEMS.

SPRING POEMS.

THERE is no month oftener on the tongues of the poets than April. It is the initiative month; it opens the door of the seasons; the interest and expectations of the untried, the untasted, lurk in it.

"From you have I been absent in the spring," says Shakespeare in one of his sonnets,

"When proud-pied April, dressed in all his trim,
Hath put a spirit of youth in every thing,

That heavy Saturn laughed and leaped with him."

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The following poem from Tennyson's "In Memoriam," might be headed “ April,” and serve as descriptive of parts of our season:

"Now fades the last long streak of snow,

Now bourgeons every maze of quick
About the flowering squares, and thick

By ashen roots the violets blow.

"Now rings the woodland loud and long,
The distance takes a lovelier hue,
And drowned in yonder living blue
The lark becomes a sightless song.

"Now dance the lights on lawn and lea,
The flocks are whiter down the vale,

And milkier every milky sail

On winding stream or distant sea;

"Where now the sea-mew pipes, or dives
In yonder greening gleam, and fly

The happy birds, that change their sky
To build and brood; that live their lives

"Can trouble live with April days?"

Yet they are not all jubilant chords that this season
awakens. Occasionally there is an undertone of
vague longing and sadness, akin to that which one
experiences in autumn. Hope for a moment assumes
the attitude of memory and stands with reverted look.
The haze that in spring as well as in fall sometimes
descends and envelops all things, has in it in some way
the sentiment of music, of melody, and awakens
pensive thoughts. Elizabeth Akers, in her "April,"
has recognized and fully expressed this feeling. I give
the first and last stanzas:

"The strange, sweet days are here again
The happy-mournful days;

The songs which trembled on our lips
Are half complaint, half praise.

This poet has also given a touch of spring in her

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