The Youths Coronal | Page 5

the wing;
See, it is dripping
with blood!
Fair was the morn, and I wished them to rise,
Enjoying its beauties with me.
The air was all fragrance--all splendor
the skies,
While bright shone the earth and the sea.

Little I thought, when so freely I went,
Employing my earliest breath,

To wake them with song, it could be their intent
To pay me with
arrows and death!
Fear that my nestlings would feel them forgot,
Helped me a moment
to fly;
Else I had given up life on the spot,
Under my murderer's
eye.
Yet, I can never brood o'er you again,
Closing you under my breast!

Its coldness would chill you; my blood would but stain
And spoil
the warm down of your nest.
Ere the night-coming, your mother will lie,
All motionless, under the
tree;
Where, deafened, and silent, I still shall be nigh,
While you
will be moaning for me!
=The Young Sportsman=
Harry had a dog and gun;
And he loved to set the one,
Barking, out
upon the run,
While he held the other,
Often charged so heavily,

'Twas a dangerous thing to be
With so young a wight as he

Mindless of his mother.
Earnestly she warned her child
To forego a sport so wild;
While he,
turning, frowned or smiled,
And away would sidle.
For, to give him
short and long,
Harry had a head so strong,
In the right or in the
wrong,
It was hard to bridle.
On his gunning madly bent,
Often in his clothes a rent
Told the
reckless way he went,
Over hedge and brambles.
Homeward then
would Harry slouch,
With his gun and empty pouch,
Looking like a
scaramouch
Coming from his rambles.
Sometimes when he scaled a wall,
Headlong there to pitch and fall,

Ratling stones, and gun and all.
Down together tumbled.
Tray

would bark to tell the news
Of his master with a bruise,
Hatless,
and with grated shoes,
Lying flat and humbled!
Where he saw the bushes stirred,
Harry, sure of hare or bird,

Drew,--and at a flash was heard
Noise like little thunder.
When he
ran his game to find,
Disappointment 'mazed his mind;--
Finding
he'd but shot the wind,
Dumb he stood with wonder!
Over muddy pool or bog,
Not so nimble as his dog,
When he
walked the plank or log,
There his balance losing,
Splash! he
went--a rueful plight!
If his face before was white,
'Twas like
morning turned to night,
Much against his choosing.
Now, like many a hasty one,
Whether quadruped or gun,
Or a
mother's wayward son
Given to disaster,
Harry's gun was rather
quick;
And it had a naughty trick,--
It would snap itself, and kick

Fiercely at its master.
So, this snappish habit grew
With a power for him to rue;
Just as all
bad habits do
Grow, as age increases.
When, one day, with noise
and smoke,
Over-charged, the barrel broke,
Harry's hand the
mischief spoke--
It was blown to pieces!
Tray came crouching round, and growled,--
Saw the gore, and
whined, and howled,
While his owner groaned and scowled,
And
the blood was running.
With the horrors of his state,
And with
anguish desperate,
Then poor Harry owned too late,
He was sick of
gunning!
While his mother bent to mourn

As her froward son was borne,

With his hand all burnt and torn,
Faint and pale, before her,
Harry's
pain must be endured,--
And the wound--it might be cured;
But, for
fingers uninsured,
There was no restorer!
=The Pebble and the Acorn=

"I am a Pebble! I yield to none!"
Were the swelling words of a tiny
stone,
"Nor time nor season can alter me;
I am abiding, while ages
flee.
The pelting hail and the drizzling rain
Have tried to soften me,
long, in vain;
And the dew has tenderly sought to melt,
Or touch
my heart; but it was not felt.
There's none to tell you about my birth,

For I am as old as the big, round earth.
The children of men arise,
and pass
Out of the world, like blades of grass;
And many foot that
on me has trod
Is gone from sight, and under the sod!
I am a Pebble!
but who art thou,
Rattling along from the restless bough?"
The Acorn was shocked at this rude salute,
And lay for a moment
abashed and mute:
She never before had been so near
This gravelly
ball, the mundane sphere;
And she felt for a time at loss to know

How to answer a thing so coarse and low.
But to give reproof of a
nobler sort
Than the angry look, or the keen retort,
At length she
said, in a gentle tone,
"Since it has happened that I am thrown,

From the lighter element where I grew,
Down to another, so hard and
new,
And beside a personage so august,
Abased, I'll cover my head
with dust,
And quick retire from the sight of one
Whom time, nor
season, nor storm, nor sun,
Nor the gentle dew, nor the grinding heel

Has ever subdued, or made to feel!"
And soon in the earth she sank
away
From the cheerless spot where the Pebble lay.
But 'twas not long ere the soil was broke
By the jeering head of an
infant oak!
As it arose, and its branches spread,
The Pebble looked
up, and, wondering, said,
"Ah, modest Acorn! never to tell
What
was enclosed in its simple shell;--

That the pride of the forest was
folded up
In the narrow space of its