"WHAT fairings will ye that I bring?" Said the King to his daughters three; "For I to Vanity Fair am boun,

Now say what shall they be?"

Then up and spake the eldest daughter,
That lady tall and grand :
"O, bring me pearls and diamonds great,
And gold rings for my hand."

Thereafter spake the second daughter,
That was both white and red:
"For me bring silks that will stand
alone,

And a gold comb for my head."

Then came the turn of the least daughter,

That was whiter than thistle-down, And among the gold of her blithesome hair

Dim shone the golden crown.

"There came a bird this morning, And sang 'neath my bower eaves, Till I dreamed, as his music made me, 'Ask thou for the Singing Leaves.'" Then the brow of the King swelled crimson

With a flush of angry scorn: "Well have ye spoken, my two eldest, And chosen as ye were born;

II.

He mounted and rode three days and nights

Till he came to Vanity Fair, And 't was easy to buy the gems and the silk,

But no Singing Leaves were there.

Then deep in the greenwood rode he,
And asked of every tree,
"O, if you have ever a Singing Leaf,
I pray you give it me !"

But the trees all kept their counsel,
And never a word said they,
Only there sighed from the pine-tops
A music of seas far away.

Only the pattering aspen

Made a sound of growing rain, That fell ever faster and faster, Then faltered to silence again.

"O, where shall I find a little foot-page

That would win both hose and shoon, And will bring to me the Singing Leaves If they grow under the moon?"

Then lightly turned him Walter the page,

By the stirrup as he ran : "Now pledge you me the truesome word Of a king and gentleman,

"That you will give me the first, first thing

You meet at your castle-gate, And the Princess shall get the Singing Leaves,

Or mine be a traitor's fate."

The King's head dropt upon his breast
A moment, as it might be ;
'T will be my dog, he thought, and said,
"My faith I plight to thee."

Then Walter took from next his heart
A packet small and thin,
"Now give you this to the Princess
Anne,

The Singing Leaves are therein."

III.

leaves."

A maiden to meet him ran,

Mornward!" the angelic watchers say, Passed is the sorest trial;

No plot of nian can stay

The hand upon the dial;

THE dandelions and buttercups Gild all the lawn; the drowsy bee Stumbles among the clover-tops, And summer sweetens all but me: Away, unfruitful lore of books, For whose vain idiom we reject The soul's more native dialect,

If we, who watched in valleys here below, Toward streaks, misdeemed of morn, our faces turned

When volcan glares set all the east aglow,

We are not poorer that we wept yearned;

Dull to interpret or conceive
What gospels lost the woods retrieve!
Away, ye critics, city-bred,
Who set man-traps of thus and so,
And in the first man's footsteps tread,
Like those who toil through drifted

snow!

Away, my poets, whose sweet spell Can make a garden of a cell!

and

Though earth swing wide from intent,

God's

strain!

To-day I will be a boy again;
The mind's pursuing element,
Like a bow slackened and unbent,
In some dark corner shall be leant.
The robin sings, as of old, from the
limb!

The catbird croons in the lilac-bush! Through the dim arbor, himself more dim,

Silently hops the hermit-thrush,

fox,

Probe wainscot-chink and empty box;
Here no hoarse-voiced iconoclast
Insults thy statues, royal Past;
Myself too prone the axe to wield,
I touch the silver side of the shield
With lance reversed, and challenge

peace,

A willing convert of the trees.

How chanced it that so long I tost

O unestranged birds and bees!
O face of nature always true!
O never-unsympathizing trees!
O never-rejecting roof of blue,
Whose rash disherison never falls
On us unthinking prodigals,
Yet who convictest all our ill,
So grand and unappeasable!
Methinks my heart from each of these
Plucks part of childhood back again,
Long there imprisoned, as the breeze
Doth every hidden odor seize

Of wood and water, hill and plain;
Once more am I admitted peer
In the upper house of Nature here,
And feel through all my pulses run
The royal blood of breeze and sun.

Upon these elm-arched solitudes
No hum of neighbor toil intrudes;
The only hammer that I hear
Is wielded by the woodpecker,
The single noisy calling his
In all our leaf-hid Sybaris;

The good old time, close-hidden here,
Persists, a loyal cavalier,

With foolish anchors hugging close
The beckoning weeds and lazy ooze,
Nor had the wit to wreck before
On this enchanted island's shore,
Whither the current of the sea,
With wiser drift, persuaded me?

O, might we but of such rare days
Build up the spirit's dwelling-place!
A temple of so Parian stone
Would brook a marble god alone,
The statue of a perfect life,
Far-shrined from earth's bestaining
strife.

Alas! though such felicity

In our vext world here may not be,
Yet, as sometimes the peasant's hut
Shows stones which old religion cut
With text inspired, or mystic sign
Of the Eternal and Divine,
Torn from the consecration deep
Of some fallen nunnery's mossy sleep,
So, from the ruins of this day
Crumbling in golden dust away,
The soul one gracious block may draw,
Carved with some fragment of the law,
Which, set in life's uneven wall,
Old benedictions may recall,

And lure some nunlike thoughts to take
Their dwelling here for memory's sake.

MASACCIO.

(IN THE BRANCACCI CHAPEL.)

HE came to Florence long ago,
And painted here these walls, that shone
For Raphael and for Angelo,
With secrets deeper than his own,
Then shrank into the dark again,
And died, we know not how or when.

The shadows deepened, and I turned
Half sadly from the fresco grand;