How the great MASTER, reverend, solemn, wise, Fixed on his face those calm, majestic eyes, Full of grave meaning, where a child might read The Hebraist’s patience and the Pilgrim’s creed. But warm with flashes of parental fire That drew the stripling to his second sire; How kindness ripened, till the youth might dare Take the low seat beside his sacred chair, While the gray scholar, bending o’er the young, _Spelled the square types of Abraham’s ancient tongue_, Or with mild rapture stooped devoutly o’er His small coarse leaf, alive with curious lore; Tales of grim judges, at whose awful beck Flashed the broad blade across a royal neck, Or learned dreams of Israel’s long lost child Found in the wanderer of the western wild. The revival of nature at the approach of spring has been often described by poets, but the following passage prints the scenes fresh and bright on the heart and imagination, as if it had never before found its painter. The reader cannot fail to notice the nice propriety of the descriptive epithets, and the combination of the naturalist’s minute observation with the poet’s suggestive imagination, in the whole representation: Winter is past; the heart of Nature warms Beneath the wrecks of unresisted storms; _Doubtful at first, suspected more than seen_, The southern slopes are fringed with tender green; On sheltered banks, beneath the dripping eaves, Spring’s earliest nurslings spread their glowing leaves, Bright with the hues from wider pictures won, White, azure, golden—drift, or sky, or sun;— The snowdrop, bearing on her _patient breast_ The frozen trophy torn from winter’s crest; The violet, gazing on the arch of blue Till her own iris wears its deepened hue; The spendthrift crocus, bursting through the mould Naked and shivering with his cup of gold. Swelled with new life, the darkening elm on high Prints her thick buds against the spotted sky; On all her boughs the stately chestnut cleaves The gummy shroud that wraps her embryo leaves; The house-fly, stealing from his narrow grave, _Drugged with the opiate that November gave_, From shaded chinks of lichen-crusted walls, In languid curves, the gliding serpent crawls; The bog’s green harper, thawing from his sleep, Twangs a hoarse note and tries a shortened leap; On floating rails that face the softening noons _The still shy turtles range their dark platoons_, Or toiling, aimless, o’er the mellowing fields, Trail through the grass their tessellated shields.