So it's Jeremiah, Jeremiah,
What have you to say

When you meet the garland girls
Tripping on their way?

All around my gala hat

I wear a wreath of roses
(A long and lonely year it is
I've waited for the May!)
If any one should ask you,

The reason why I wear it is

My own love, my true love

Is coming home to-day.

And it's buy a bunch of violets for the lady

(It's lilac-time in London; it's lilac-time in London!)

Buy a bunch of violets for the lady

While the sky burns blue above:

On the other side the street you'll find it shady

(It's lilac-time in London; it's lilac-time in London!) But buy a bunch of violets for the lady, And tell her she's your own true love.

There's a barrel-organ carolling across a golden street
In the City as the sun sinks glittering and slow;

And the music's not immortal; but the world has made it

sweet

And enriched it with the harmonies that make a song com

plete

In the deeper heavens of music where the night and morning

meet,

As it dies into the sunset-glow;

And it pulses through the pleasures of the City and the pain
That surround the singing organ like a large eternal light,
And they've given it a glory and a part to play again
In the Symphony that rules the day and night.

And there, as the music changes,

The song runs round again.
Once more it turns and ranges
Through all its joy and pain,
Dissects the common carnival
Of passions and regrets;

And the wheeling world remembers all
The wheeling song forgets.
Once more La Traviata sighs
Another sadder song:

Once more Il Trovatore cries

A tale of deeper wrong;

Once more the knights to battle go
With sword and shield and lance
Till once, once more, the shattered foe

Has whirled into a dance!

Come down to Kew in lilac-time, in lilac-time, in lilac-time;

Come down to Kew in lilac-time (it isn't far from London!) And you shall wander hand in hand with love in summer's wonderland;

Come down to Kew in lilac-time (it isn't far from London!) Alfred Noyes

THE SONG OF HONOR

I climbed a hill as light fell short,
And rooks came home in scramble sort,
And filled the trees and flapped and fought

And sang themselves to sleep;

An owl from nowhere with no sound
Swung by and soon was nowhere found,
I heard him calling half-way round,
Holloing loud and deep;

A pair of stars, faint pins of light,
Then many a star, sailed into sight,
And all the stars, the flower of night,
Were round me at a leap;

To tell how still the valleys lay
I heard a watchdog miles away,—
And bells of distant sheep.

I heard no more of bird or bell,
The mastiff in a slumber fell,
I stared into the sky,

As wondering men have always done
Since beauty and the stars were one
Though none so hard as I.

It seemed, so still the valleys were,
As if the whole world knelt at prayer,
Save me and me alone;

So pure and wide that silence was
I feared to bend a blade of grass,
And there I stood like stone.

There, sharp and sudden, there I heard

Ah! some wild lovesick singing bird

Woke singing in the trees?

The nightingale and babble-wren
Were in the English greenwood then,

And you heard one of these?

The babble-wren and nightingale
Sang in the Abyssinian vale
That season of the year!

Yet, true enough, I heard them plain,
I heard them both again, again,

As sharp and sweet and clear
As if the Abyssinian tree

Had thrust a bough across the sea,
Had thrust a bough across to me
With music for my ear!

I heard them both, and oh! I heard
The song of every singing bird
That sings beneath the sky,

And with the song of lark and wren

The song of mountains, moths and men. And seas and rainbows vie!

I heard the universal choir,

The Sons of Light exalt their Sire

With universal song,

Earth's lowliest and loudest notes,

Her million times ten million throats

Exalt Him loud and long,

And lips and lungs and tongues of Grace

From every part and every place
Within the shining of His face,
The universal throng.

I heard the hymn of being sound
From every well of honor found
In human sense and soul:

The song of poets when they write
The testament of Beauty sprite
Upon a flying scroll,

The song of painters when they take
A burning brush for Beauty's sake
And limn her features whole-

The song of all both high and low
To some blest vision true,

The song of beggars when they throw

The crust of pity all men owe

To hungry sparrows in the snow,

Old beggars hungry too

The song of kings of kingdoms when

They rise above their fortune Men,
And crown themselves anew

The song of courage, heart and will
And gladness in a fight,

Of men who face a hopeless hill
With sparking and delight,

The bells and bells of

song

that ring

Round banners of a cause or king

From armies bleeding white