MARION'S THOUGHTS.
LITTLE maid Marion, walking slow
Down the long wood-path, thick with snow,
Watching the snowflakes large and white,
Like stars and crescents and flowers of light,
Wondered much in her wise young brain
If the dreary old winter were coming again.
Up in the elm, that very day,
A little bird whistled his roundelay;
A fly, just waked from his winter's sleep,
Was scaling the window's slippery steep;
And the swelling buds on the poplar-tree
In their varnished wrappings were plain to see.
Peering and groping with fingers small,
In the sheltered beds by the garden wall,
She was sure she had heard, down deep below,
The Jonquils donning their hoods of snow,
And my Lady Crocus, under the mold,
Weaving her mantle of purple and gold.
Little maid Marion, walking slow,
Felt on her forehead the west wind blow,
Saw the clouds from the brightening sky,
Like routed armies go scurrying by,
And heard from the boughs of the thorn-tree near,
The brave little songster piping clear.
"Ha, ha! " laughed the jolly old sun again,
"The blossoms quicken in snow and rain."
The sun slid down from the poplars high,
The buds showed clear against the sky,
And little maid Marion, smiling, thought,
"The spring is coming just when it ought."
Christian Weekly.