The steps of friends thy slumbers may not break,
Nor fond familiar voice arouse again.

Death's silent shadow veils thy darkened brow:
Why didst thou linger? Thou art happier now.

DEFINITIONS.—2. View ́less, invisible. Prime, full strength. 3. Winds, blows. 5. Wạn'ton, loose; unrestrained. Lăt'tiçe-pāne, a pane covered with rods, or bars, forming a network.

35. THE BAREFOOT BOY.

JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER was born at Haverhill, Massachusetts, December, 1807. He received but little early education. He has written many volumes of poetry, and has likewise contributed numerous essays and treatises-biographical, political, and philanthropic-to the literature of the times. Snow-Bound, The Barefoot Boy, and Maud Muller are among his most popular productions. His poems exhibit vigor, a rugged picturesqueness, and great power in giving expression to popular sentiment. He shows himself to be a true lover of reform, and utters powerful appeals to the nobler feelings of mankind. He lives at Danvers, Massachusetts.

1. BLESSINGS on thee, little man,

Barefoot boy, with cheek of tan !
With thy turned-up pantaloons,
And thy merry whistled tunes;
With thy red lip, redder still
Kissed by strawberries on the hill;
With the sunshine on thy face,
Through thy torn brim's jaunty grace.
From my heart I give thee joy :
I was once a barefoot boy.

Prince thou art: the grown-up man

Only is republican.

Let the million-dollared ride ;

Barefoot, trudging at his side,
Thou hast more than he can buy,
In the reach of ear and eye,—

Outward sunshine, inward joy.
Blessings on thee, barefoot boy!

2. Oh for boyhood's painless play,
Sleep that wakes in laughing day,
Health that mocks the doctor's rules,
Knowledge never learned of schools,
Of the wild bee's morning chase,
Of the wild-flower's time and place,
Flight of fowl and habitude
Of the tenants of the wood;
How the tortoise bears his shell,
How the woodchuck digs his cell
And the ground-mole sinks his well;
How the robin feeds her young,
How the oriole's nest is hung;
Where the whitest lilies blow,
Where the freshest berries grow,
Where the ground-nut trails its vine,
Where the wood-grape's clusters shine
Of the black wasp's cunning way,-
Mason of his walls of clay,-
And the architectural plans
Of gray hornet artisans !

For, eschewing books and tasks,
Nature answers all he asks;
Hand in hand with her he walks,
Face to face with her he talks,
Part and parcel of her joy,
Blessings on the barefoot boy!

3. Oh for boyhood's time of June, Crowding years in one brief moon,

When all things I heard or saw,
Me, their master, waited for.

I was rich in flowers and trees,
Humming-birds and honey-bees;
For my sport the squirrel played,
Plied the snouted mole his spade;
For my taste the blackberry-cone
Purpled over hedge and stone;
Laughed the brook for my delight
Through the day and through the night;
Whispering at the garden-wall,
Talked with me from fall to fall;
Mine the sand-rimmed pickerel pond,
Mine the walnut slopes beyond,
Mine, on bending orchard trees,
Apples of Hesperides!
Still, as my horizon grew,
Larger grew my riches too:
All the world I saw or knew
Seemed a complex Chinese toy
Fashioned for a barefoot boy.

4. Oh for festal dainties spread,
Like my bowl of milk and bread,----
Pewter spoon and bowl of wood,-
On the door-stone gray and rude!
O'er me like a regal tent,
Cloudy-ribbed, the sunset bent,
Purple-curtained, fringed with gold,
Looped in many a wind-swung fold;
While, for music, came the play
Of the pied frogs' orchestra,

And, to light the noisy choir,
Lit the fly his lamp of fire.
I was monarch: pomp and joy
Waited on the barefoot boy.
5. Cheerily, then, my little man,
Live and laugh, as boyhood can.
Though the flinty slopes be hard,
Stubble-speared the new-mown sward,
Every morn shall lead thee through
Fresh baptisms of the dew;
Every evening from thy feet

Shall the cool wind kiss the heat:
All too soon these feet must hide
In the prison-cells of pride,
Lose the freedom of the sod,
Like a colt's for work be shod,
Made to tread the mills of toil
Up and down in ceaseless moil:
Happy if their track be found
Never on forbidden ground;
Happy if they sink not in

Quick and treacherous sands of sin!

Ah! that thou couldst know thy joy
Ere it passes, barefoot boy!

DEFINITIONS.—1. Jäun'ty, airy; showy. 2. Hăb'i tūde, mode of living. Är chi tĕet ́ūr al, pertaining to the art of building. Är'ti şans, workmen. Es chew'ing, avoiding. 3. Pick'er el, a freshwater fish belonging to the pike family. 4. Fès'tal, pertaining to a holiday or feast. Pied, spotted. Or'ehes trà, band of musicians. 5. Sward, the grassy surface of land. Moil, labor.

NOTE.-3. Apples of Hes per'i dēş, in mythology, the golden apples that grew in the orchards of the daughters of Hesperus. These orchards were supposed to have been situated in Africa, and were guarded by a watchful dragon, which was slain by Hercules, who carried off the fruit.

36.-SPRING.

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW, the best known of American poets, was born February 27, 1807, at Portland, Maine. Shortly after graduating from Bowdoin College, he was offered a professorship of Modern Languages in his alma mater. He spent some years in Europe studying languages in order to prepare for this position, and it is in a measure owing to this fact that his translations from the Danish, Swedish, Dutch, German, French, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese are of such excellence. He wrote for the North American Review, and published many volumes of poetry. Among his best-known poetical productions are Evangeline, which takes very high rank, The Golden Legend, Hiawatha, The Courtship of Miles Standish, The Spanish Student, Psalm of Life, and Excelsior. His most notable prose works are Hyperion, Outre-Mer, and Kavanagh. Longfellow had a great fondness for recording acts of self-devotion. As a man, his life was beautiful. It has been said of him that man ever lived more completely in the light." He died March 24, 1882. The prose extract is from Hyperion.

no

1. It was a sweet carol which the Rhodian children sang of old in spring, bearing in their hands, from door to door, a swallow, as herald of the season:

"The Swallow is come!

The Swallow is come!
Oh fair are the seasons, and light
Are the days that she brings
With her dusky wings,

And her bosom snowy white!"

2. A pretty carol, too, is that which the Hungarian boys, on the islands of the Danube, sing to the returning stork in spring:

"Stork! Stork! poor Stork!
Why is thy foot so bloody?
A Turkish boy hath torn it:
Hungarian boy will heal it

With fiddle, fife, and drum."

3. But what child has a heart to sing in this capricious clime of ours, where spring comes sailing in from the sea,