Bursting from purpled buds, lift bended heads
And gaze around with open-eyed delight,
And the wood's lady, Iovely primrose, sheds
The blessing of her odour, soft and bland
Among the vernal grass and velvet moss.
I stoop to pluck her — yet arrest my hand —
It seems so cruel to inflict the loss
Of her sweet presence on the little nook
She lighted like a star.
                                    About my feet
A lavish wealth of beauty greets each look,
And in the perfumed air a chorus sweet
Of vernal rapture echoes ; full and soft
The cuckoo's muffled cry searches the wood,
And from the tallest elm rings forth aloft
Upon the listening ear a circling flood
Of song from Philomel's delicious throat ;
And, 'mid her pauses, further off I hear
The constant thrush's scarce inferior note,
With all its changes, vigorous and clear.

And now the wood is cross'd, and I behold
A burst of glory! for the cowslips spread
A veritable Field of Cloth of Gold
Laid out for me, and me alone, to tread!

I will not tread it. Musingly I lean
Upon the stile, and lovingly recal
The story of the sleeping Imogen.
(I never see a cowslip but I fall
To murmuring dreamily, "On her left breast
A mole cinque-spotted, like the crimson drops
I' the bottom of a cowslip.") There I rest,
And gaze, and dream, while all the tall tree-tops,
Pregnant with sappy buds, sigh answering
To the wind's wooing, so forgivingly
Of all his winter buffets.
                                       Darling Spring,
For this most happy dream my thanks to thee!

A JACKDAW UPON A WEDDING.

ABOUT the middle of the last century there
was written, by one of the masters of
Westminster School, a delightful little poem
concerning a jackdaw. The master's patronymic
was Bourne; and he could not have been very
much hated by the Westminster boys of the
time as a pedagogue, or as a man, since they
and all his contemporaries agreed to change
his christian name of Vincent into the
affectionate diminutive of " Vinny." The "Jackdaw,"
was composed originally in the Latin
tongue; but it was translated — and, very
exquisitely translated too — into our vernacular by
William Cowper. It is, I conscientiously
believe, the very sweetest little canzonet that ever
was penned. When you have once read it, you
must needs read it again; and then perforce
you must learn it by heart, and after that it
remains indelibly fixed upon your memory. No
one ever forgot the " Jackdaw" who could once
repeat it without book. The gravest, loftiest
minds have loved so to dwell upon its simple
verse and kind philosophy. There was a potent,
learned divine once who lay a dying, and in his
laboured breathing was observed trying to
repeat something. They put their ears to his lips,
expecting to hear the expression of some last
solemn wish. No; he was only murmuring a
stanza — the stanza — from Vinny Bourne's
" Jackdaw." When that true American
gentleman, Mr. Richard Rush, was minister from
the then United States to this country, he dined
frequently with George Canning ; and he tells
us that on one occasion — the times were
dark and troublous — the Minister of State,
who had been throughout dinner and desert
silent and preoccupied, began playing with his
nutcrackers, and softly muttering:

      There is a bird who by his note,
      And by the blackness of his coat,
          You might suppose a crow ;
      A strict frequenter of the church,
      Where, bishop-like, he finds a perch,
        And dormitory too.

They were the opening lines of the "Jackdaw."
I would transcribe the entire poem,
but that you can buy Vinny Bourne's whole
works for ninepence on any bookstall, and am
sanguine enough to hope that by the time you
and I become better acquainted, you will be able
to recite the " Jackdaw" more trippingly than
the reminiscent. For the nonce it is but needful
for you to listen to the penultimate stanza. The
philosophic, bishop-looking, black-coated bird is
sitting, " secure and at his ease," at the top of
the church-steeple, whence he surveys " the
bustle and the raree-show that occupy mankind
below" him:

        He sees that this great round-about,
        The world, and all its motley rout,
           Church, army, physic, law —
        Its customs and its bus'nesses
        Is no concern at all of his,
           And says: — what says he? — " CAW!"

Then, I come to the point at once. It is my
signal privilege, at ten o'clock in the morning of
TUESDAY, THE TENTH OF MARCH, 1863, to occupy
the secure and easy position of Vinny Bourne's
bird. If I am not on the summit of the steeple
it is because there is no steeple, but many
pinnacles, to SAINT GEORGE'S CHAPEL, WINDSOR,
and standing ground on any one of them would
merely afford me a view of the castle-yard, and
the Great Park, and Eton's antique spires, and
old Upton church far beyond: things all very
charming in their way, but of which I do not,
on this instant March morning, desire to take
cognisance. I have a better point of espial
than "the plate which turns and turns to
indicate from what side blows the weather." I
am perched high up in the organ-loft of the
chapel of Saint George, whence in perfect
security and ease I can behold the " bustle and
the raree show," occupying the court of England
below. Yes; there they all are in one great
motley round-about " church, army, physic,
law," and I have nothing whatever to do with
them. Their customs and their business are no
concern at all of mine, save in so far that with
a voice more or less harsh and croaking, I am
expected to say " caw:" and that that simple
criticism will be uttered with a beak dipped in
ink, and held in close proximity to sundry slips
of paper; and that, this coming night, sundry
industrious persons called compositors will