’Tis the time o’ the year, if the quicken-bough be staunch, The green, like a breaker, rolls steady up the branch, And surges in the spaces, and floods the trunk, and heaves In little angry spray that is the under-white of leaves; And from the thorn in companies the foamy petals fall, And waves of jolly ivy wink along a windy wall. * * * * * ’Tis the time o’ the year in early light and glad, The lark has a music to drive a lover mad; The downs are dripping nightly, the breathéd damps arise, Deliciously the freshets cool the grayling’s golden eyes, And lying in a row against the chilly North, the sheep Inclose a place without a wind for tender lambs to sleep. The out-of-door atmosphere which Miss Guiney has managed to infuse into these lines is fairly palpable. What sense of moisture in the dew-heavy air is in the second stanza, and what elation and buoyancy of returning life vitalizes the first! While on this phase of her work there is another poem as magnetically charged, and full of ozone, but its objective side incidental to a subjective query which nature and science force to the lips: The spur is red upon the briar, The sea-kelp whips the wave ashore; The wind shakes out the colored fire From lamps a-row on the sycamore; The tanager with flitting note Shows to wild heaven his wedding-coat; The mink is busy; herds again Go hillward in the honeyed rain; The midges meet. I cry to Thee Whose heart Remembers each of these: Thou art My God who hast forgotten me. Bright from the mast, a scarf unwound, The lined gulls in the offing ride; Along an edge of marshy ground, The shad-bush enters like a bride. Yon little clouds are washed of care That climb the blue New England air, And almost merrily withal The tree-frog plays at evenfall His oboe in a mossy tree. So, too, Am I not Thine? Arise, undo This fear Thou hast forgotten me. From the nature side these lines are pictures, taken each by each they are free-hand strokes with pigment. Note the picturesque quality, for illustration, in the words, Bright from the mast, a scarf unwound, The lined gulls in the offing ride, and their imaginative vision with no hint of the fantastic; for one need only have it glimpsed before him to know that he has seen the same effect a score of times. Miss Guiney comes to the world without, as if no eyes but hers had looked upon it; she brings no other image upon the lens of her vision, and hence the imprint is as newly mirrored, and as fresh with each changing view as a moving reflection upon the surface of the water. The subjective touch in the above poem: I cry to Thee, Whose heart Remembers each of these: Thou art My God who hast forgotten me!—