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Look up to Heaven! the industrious Sun
Already half his race hath run;

He cannot halt nor go astray,
But our immortal Spirits may.

Lord! since his rising in the East,
If we have faltered or transgressed,
Guide, from Thy love's abundant source,
What yet remains of this day's course :

Help with Thy grace, through life's short day, Our upward and our downward way;

And glorify for us the west,

When we shall sink to final rest.

Wordsworth.

TO A BUTTERFLY.

Stay near me- -do not take thy flight!
A little longer stay in sight!

Much converse do I find in thee,

Historian of my infancy!

Float near me; do not yet depart !

Dead times revive in thee;

Thou bring'st, gay creature as thou art,
A solemn image to my heart,

My father's family!

Oh! pleasant, pleasant were the days,
The time, when in our childish plays,
My sister Emmeline and I
Together chased the butterfly!

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Upon the prey-with leaps and springs
I followed on from brake to bush;
But she, God love her! feared to brush
The dust from off its wings.

Wordsworth.

THE MOTHER'S RETURN.

Since

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A month, sweet Little-ones, is past
dear Mother went away,
And she to-morrow will return;
To-morrow is the happy day.

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O blessed tidings! thought of joy!
The eldest heard with steady glee;
Silent he stood: then laughed amain,-
And shouted, "Mother, come to me!"

Louder and louder did he shout,

With witless hope to bring her near ; "Nay, patience! patience, little boy! Your tender mother cannot hear!"

I told of hills, and far-off towns,

And long, long vales to travel through; He listens, puzzled, sore perplexed, But he submits; what can he do?

No strife disturbs his sister's breast ;
She wars not with the mystery
Of time and distance, night and day;
The bonds of our humanity.

Her joy is like an instinct, joy
Of kitten, bird, or summer fly;
She dances, runs, without an aim,
She chatters in her ecstacy.

Her brother now takes up the note,
And echoes back his sister's glee;
They hug the infant in my arms,
As if to force his sympathy.

Then, settling into fond discourse,
We rested in the garden bower:
While sweetly shone the evening sun
In his departing hour.

We told o'er all that we had done,— Our rambles by the swift brook's side Far as the willow-skirted pool,

Where two fair swans together glide.

We talked of change, of winter gone,

Of green leaves on the hawthorn spray, Of birds that build their nests and sing, And "all since Mother went away!"

To her these tales they will repeat,

To her our new-born tribes will show,
The goslings green, the ass's colt,
The lambs that in the meadow go.

But, see, the evening star comes forth!
To bed the children must depart :
A moment's heaviness they feel,
A sadness at the heart:

'Tis gone—and in a merry fit They run upstairs in gamesome race : I, too, infected by their mood,—

I could have joined the wanton chase.

Five minutes past-and O, the change!
Asleep upon their beds they lie;
Their busy limbs in perfect rest,
And closed the sparkling eye.

By a "female friend" of Wordsworth.

LUCY GRAY;

OR, SOLITUde.

Oft I had heard of Lucy Gray:
And, when I crossed the wild,
I chanced to see at break of day,
The solitary child.

No mate, no comrade Lucy knew:
She dwelt on a wide moor,
-The sweetest thing that ever grew
Beside a human door!

You yet may spy the fawn at play,
The hare upon the green;
But the sweet face of Lucy Gray
Will never more be seen.

"To-night will be a stormy night—
You to the town must go ;

And take a lantern, Child, to light
Your mother through the snow."

"That, Father! will I gladly do: 'Tis scarcely afternoon

The minster-clock has just struck two, And yonder is the moon!"

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