vase's debris brandishing its green spikes;
He wants to pull it out, but the stem is stubborn.
The child persists, and tears his fingers with the pointed arrows.

Thus grew love in my simple heart;
I believed I sowed but a spring flower;
'Tis a large aloe, whose root breaks
The porcelain vase with the brilliant figures.

PRAYER

As a guardian angel, take me under your wing;
Deign to stoop and put out, smiling,
Your maternal hand to my little hand
To support my steps and keep me from falling!

For Jesus the sweet Master, with celestial love,
Suffered little children to come to him;
As an indulgent parent, he submitted to their caresses
And played with them without showing weariness.

O you who resemble those church pictures
Where one sees, on a gold background, august Charity
Preserving from hunger, preserving from cold,
A fair and smiling group sheltered in her folds;

Like the nursling of the Divine mother,
For pity's sake, lift me to your lap;
Protect me, poor young girl, alone, an orphan,
Whose only hope is in God, whose only hope is in you!

THE POET AND THE CROWD

One day the plain said to the idle mountain:--
Nothing ever grows upon thy wind-beaten brow!
To the poet, bending thoughtful over his lyre,
The crowd also said:--Dreamer, of what use art thou?

Full of wrath, the mountain answered the plain:--
It is I who make the harvests grow upon thy soil;
I temper the breath of the noon sun,
I stop in the skies the clouds as they fly by.

With my fingers I knead the snow into avalanches,
In my crucible I dissolve the crystals of glaciers,
And I pour out, from the tip of my white breasts,
In long silver threads, the nourishing streams.

* * * * *

The poet, in his turn, answered the crowd:--
Allow my pale brow to rest upon my hand.
Have I not from my side, from which runs out my soul,
Made a spring gush to slake men's thirst?

THE FIRST SMILE OF SPRING

While to their perverse work
Men run panting,
March that laughs, in spite of showers,
Quietly gets Spring ready.

For the little daisies,
Slyly, when all sleep,
He irons little collars
And chisels gold studs.

Through the orchard and the vineyard,
He goes, cunning hair-dresser,
With a swan-puff,
And powders snow-white the almond-tree.

Nature rests in her bed;
He goes down to t