She came to fields of golden flowers,
Which waved as when the breezy south
Kisses the young spring's rosy mouth,
Drying the fretful April showers;
Through the tall grass a murmur ran:
She passed; again the sun broke forth,
From east to west, from south to north.

The birds came headlong at her call,
And sang into her little ear
The angel's secrets. Without fear
The robin, from the beech-tree tall,
Led her confiding to his nest.
Among the sapphire eggs with care
She looked—no magic stone was there.

Where'er she went the shadows came,
Gathering behind her in a train
Sad and funereal, as when rain
Darkens the sun. She spoke a name
That made them follow—none refused—
Shapeless and dark: they are the shapes
That mock at man—our sorrows' apes.

From underneath their mushroom tent
The vassal fairies, half afraid,
Creeped out, and at her feet they laid
Rough acorn-bowls of pure dew sent
From cellars of King Oberon.
And showed her in the half-shut flowers
The black bees cringing from the showers.

She sang—the air grew dark with wings,
And musical with choral throngs,
The thrushes whistled endless songs,
The blue air with their gladness rings.
The very fledglings on the bough
Chirped every one, as best they could,
Joy filled the dark heart of the wood.

She called—and all the summer air
Grew iris with the coloured mail
Of beetles' glittering horn and tail.
All jewels had their rivals there:
Gold moved about the forest ground,
With glittering emerald and pearl,
And diamond wings that fold and furl.

She raised her hand—and from above
The amber cloud dissolved in rain,
Then leaping round her, like a train
Of dancing spirits mad with love,
Sprang the globed diamond-glistening drops.
Down fell the dew that gemmed the larch,
Bright o'er her rose the rainbow-arch.

She called—and from the cloven ground
Three fountains leaped up arrow swift,
As snap their chains the wild beasts bound;
Sprang forth the water's silver drift,
Tracking the lark up through the sky;
The silver columns joined the cloud
To earth, so frail and yet so proud.

She sighed—the music in the trees
Grew into slow and tearful song,
Mourning intolerable wrong.
A funeral murmur made the breeze
Sound as of stifling, sobbing words;
Yet every other thing on earth
But that sad wind seemed fall of mirth.

The gloom came lower, lower still,
Hiding reluctantly the earth;
The spring day, at that sunshine dearth,
Cowered timidly for fear of ill.
The lady witch's hour of doom
Was nigh she knew, so silent stood
The awe-struck trees in the hushed wood.

She called to her the old stern sea,
She beckoned on the ridgy shore,
Then ceased that wild complaining roar,
And music moved upon the wave,
Rising in solemn symphony.
The very storm-birds ceased their screams,
And floated silent as in dreams.

But once more all the waves began
To roar for her; with foaming lips
The breakers swept like an eclipse
Over the sky and cliffs; a tempest lashed
The billows on in legions. Can
Old Neptune tame such steeds as these,
And urge them wheresoe'er he please?

Then she, swift gliding like a snake,
Passed down the hard and level sands,
Wringing her little helpless hands,
To where the first waves, leaping, break;
Then as a creature bound and driven,
She passed into the whirlpool's hell.
Whither? I may not dare to tell.

SHOW CATTLE.

THE visitor who for the first time makes
his appearance in an Agricultural Show, will
certainly be a little confused, on his entrance
to the vast enclosure, by the sounds as well
as the sights; by the shrill defiant neighs of a
long line of stallions, the more plaintive
whinnying of mares alarmed for their foals, the
squeaks of the porcine tribe, unkindly disturbed
in their perpetual slumbering, and that speech
of cattle which we call lowing—and the French,
with even better imitation of the sound, term
beuglement—a sound that comes forth plaintively
and rapidly at the hours when the pampered
favourites of the herd-book—calves and even
well-grown yearlings, begin to cry aloud for their
wet-nurses—hardy cows—the peasants of their
race, overflowing with milk, and without any
particular ancestors.

If horses are not his only fancy, he turns
into the long lanes where the oldest pedigrees
are combined with the highest prices. The
butcher or the breeder, who hails from the
circle of counties round the cathedral city of
Hereford, may prefer to linger amongst the
small collection of white faces and spreading
horns. The Devonshire man, with all the
contempt of a poet for prose, may linger
rapturously amongst his own Orient aboriginal
plum-red line, but the multitude, high and low,
the Englishman, Irishman, and Scotchman—the
Frenchman, with imperial decorations in his
button-hole; the German, with spectacles and
the air of a professor, from Prussia; the nobleman,
a sort of Teutonic squire, from Mecklenburg;
the Swiss farmer, of the rich valleys;
and even the Dutchman, in spite of his prejudice
in favour of his own harsh black milk-
giving breed; the United States man, before
ploughshares were turned into fratricidal swords;
and not a few Australian colonists—will be
found crowding round the male representatives
of the most celebrated Short-horn herds and
the mild, placid, thorough-bred-looking heifers,
fine in face, smooth of horn, small in bone, broad