face;
Yet she neither moved nor wept.
Rose a nurse of ninety years,
Set his child upon her knee--
Like summer tempest came her tears--
"Sweet my child, I live for thee."

_Alfred, Lord Tennyson._

September

Sweet is the voice that calls
From babbling waterfalls
In meadows where the downy seeds are flying;
And soft the breezes blow,
And eddying come and go
In faded gardens where the rose is dying.

Among the stubbled corn
The blithe quail pipes at morn,
The merry partridge drums in hidden places,
And glittering insects gleam
Above the reedy stream,
Where busy spiders spin their filmy laces.

At eve, cool shadows fall
Across the garden wall,
And on the clustered grapes to purple turning;
And pearly vapors lie
Along the eastern sky,
Where the broad harvest-moon is redly burning.

Ah, soon on field and hill
The wind shall whistle chill,
And patriarch swallows call their flocks together,
To fly from frost and snow,
And seek for lands where blow
The fairer blossoms of a balmier weather.

The cricket chirps all day,
"O fairest summer, stay!"
The squirrel eyes askance the chestnuts browning;
The wild fowl fly afar
Above the foamy bar,
And hasten southward ere the skies are frowning.

Now comes a fragrant breeze
Through the dark cedar-trees
And round about my temples fondly lingers,
In gentle playfulness,
Like to the soft caress
Bestowed in happier days by loving fingers.

Yet, though a sense of grief
Comes with the falling leaf,
And memory makes the summer doubly pleasant,
In all my autumn dreams
A future summer gleams,
Passing the fairest glories of the present!

_George Arnold._

The Old Kitchen Floor

Far back, in my musings, my thoughts have been cast
To the cot where the hours of my childhood were passed.
I loved all its rooms from the pantry to hall,
But the blessed old kitchen was dearer than all.
Its chairs and its tables no brighter could be
And all its surroundings were sacred to me,
From the nail in the ceiling to the latch on the door,
And I loved every crack in that old kitchen floor.

I remember the fireplace with mouth high and wide
And the old-fashioned oven that stood by its side
Out of which each Thanksgiving came puddings and pies
And they fairly bewildered and dazzled our eyes.
And then old St. Nicholas slyly and still
Came down every Christmas our stockings to fill.
But the deares