What is it?

It's Birdie's own springtime perfume concoction.

God's Will

I know, I know where violets blow
Upon a sweet hillside,
And very bashfully they grow
And in the grasses hide---
It is the fairest field, I trow,
In the whole world wide.

One spring I saw two lassies go,
Brown cheek and laughing eye;
They swung their aprons to and fro,
They filled them very high
With violets---then whispered low
So strange, I wondered why.

I know where violet tendrils creep
And crumbled tombstones lie,
The green churchyard is silence-deep;
The village folk go by,
And lassies laugh and women weep,
And God knows why.

Robert Louis Munger

THE SNOW had begun in the gloaming,
And busily all the night
Had been heaping field and highway
With a silence deep and white.

Every pine and fir and hemlock
Wore ermine too dear for an earl,
And the poorest twig on the elm-tree
Was ridged inch deep with pearl.

From sheds new-roofed with Carrara
Came Chanticleer's muffled crow,
The stiff rails softened to swan's-down,
And still fluttered down the snow.

I stood and watched by the window
The noiseless work of the sky,
And the sudden flurries of snow-birds,
Like brown leaves whirling by.

I thought of a mound in sweet Auburn
Where a little headstone stood;
How the flakes were folding it gently,
As did robins the babes in the wood.

Up spoke our own little Mabel,
Saying, "Father, who makes it snow?"
And I told of the good All-father
Who cares for us here below.

Again I looked at the snow-fall,
And thought of the leaden sky
That arched o'er our first great sorrow,
When that mound was heaped so high.

I remembered the gradual patience
That fell from that cloud like snow,
Flake by flake, healing and hiding
The scar that renewed our woe.

And again to the child I whispered,
"The snow that husheth all,
Darling, the merciful Father
Alone can make it fall!"

Then, with eyes that saw not, I kissed her;
And she, kissing back, could not know
That my kiss was given to her sister,
Folded close under deepening snow.

James Russell Lowell

Gentian

SO all day long I followed through the fields
The voice of Autumn, calling from afar;
And now I thought: "Yon hazel thicket yields
A glimpse of her," and now: "These asters are
Sure sign that she of late has passed this way;
Lo! here the traces of her yellow car."

And once I looked and seemed to see her stand
Beneath a golden maple's black-drawn boughs;
But when I reached the place, naught but a band
Of crickets did perform their tuneful vows
To the soon fading grass, and through the leaves
The quiet sunlight, falling, blessed my brows.

Till, as the long rays lengthened from the west,
I came upon an altar of gray stone,
O'er which a creeper flung with pious zest
Her flickering flames. About that altar lone,
The crowding sumac burned with steady fire;
Before it, stately, stood a priestess; one

Who turned to me her melancholy eyes.
I saw her beauty, ripe with color's breath,
Yet veiled, as when on wood and hill there lies
A mist, a shadow, as of coming death.
And while I gazed she faded; swift I clutched
Her fringed cloak, which rent, my grasp beneath.

And she was gone. As fluttered to the ground
Its many fragments, I with sudden fears,
Stooped, vainly seeking them, when all around
The blue fringed gentian smiled up through my tears,
As one who knows his welcome will be warm,
Although sad news to his beloved he bears.

~Elizabeth Green Crane~

LOVELIEST of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.



Now, of my threescore years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.



And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.

A. E. Housman (1859 - 1936)

No door the tenement requires,
And seldom needs a laboured roof;
Yet is it to the fiercest sun
Impervious, and storm-proof.

So warm, so beautiful withal,
In perfect fitness for its aim,
That to the Kind by special grace
Their instinct surely came.

And when for their abodes they seek
An opportune recess,
The hermit has no finer eye
For shadowy quietness.

These find, 'mid ivied abbey-walls,
A canopy in some still nook;
Others are pent-housed by a brae
That overhangs a brook.

There to the brooding bird her mate
Warbles by fits his low clear song;
And by the busy streamlet both
Are sung to all day long.

Or in sequestered lanes they build,
Where, till the flitting bird's return,
Her eggs within the nest repose,
Like relics in an urn.

But still, where general choice is good,
There is a better and a best;
And, among fairest objects, some
Are fairer than the rest;

This, one of those small builders proved
In a green covert, where, from out
The forehead of a pollard oak,
The leafy antlers sprout;

For She who planned the mossy lodge,
Mistrusting her evasive skill,
Had to a Primrose looked for aid
Her wishes to fulfil.

High on the trunk's projecting brow,
And fixed an infant's span above
The budding flowers, peeped forth the nest
The prettiest of the grove!

The treasure proudly did I show
To some whose minds without disdain
Can turn to little things; but once
Looked up for it in vain:

'Tis gone--a ruthless spoiler's prey,
Who heeds not beauty, love, or song,
'Tis gone! (so seemed it) and we grieved
Indignant at the wrong.

Just three days after, passing by
In clearer light the moss-built cell
I saw, espied its shaded mouth;
And felt that all was well.

The Primrose for a veil had spread
The largest of her upright leaves;
And thus, for purposes benign,
A simple flower deceives.

Concealed from friends who might disturb
Thy quiet with no ill intent,
Secure from evil eyes and hands
On barbarous plunder bent,

Rest, Mother-bird! and when thy young
Take flight, and thou art free to roam,
When withered is the guardian Flower,
And empty thy late home,

Think how ye prospered, thou and thine,
Amid the unviolated grove
Housed near the growing Primrose-tuft
In foresight, or in love.

Here is continual worship;---Nature, here,
In the tranquility that thou dost love,
Enjoys thy presence. Noiselessly, around,
From perch to perch, the solitary bird
Passes; and yon clear spring, that, midst its herbs,
Wells softly forth and wandering steeps the roots
Of half the mighty forest, tells no tale
Of all the good it does. Thou hast not left
Thyself without a witness, in these shades,
Of thy perfections.

William Cullen Bryant

Henry David Thoreau

Lorenz Hart