Page:The Poets and Poetry of the West.djvu/692

LUELLA CLAHK. LuELLA Clark, one of the daughters of Illinois, who contributes to the Ladies^ Repository in Cincinnati, gives promise of decided excellence in metrical composition. She is a teacher in the North-Western Female College, at Evanston, a pleasant village on Lake Michigan, a few miles from Chicago. I STOOD BENEATH THY BOUGHS. I STOOD beneath thy boughs, O tree ! With the sunshine all above, While a bird within thy sheltering leaves Sang all day to his love, And faintly fell, at intervals, The cooing of a dove. And I thought beneath thy boughs, tree ! How like is love to a bird ; And life a constant summer, where Its music shall be heard ; Alas ! I thought, when winter came, " How like is love to a bird ! " I look through the naked boughs afar. To the calm and blessed sky, And lo ! a clear, unwavering star Is set, serene on high ; And I think how like God's love that star So fair; its light so nigh. Through summer's glow, through winter's gloom ; Through change, and chill, and pain ; Through stormiest hours of strugghng life, God's love doth still remain ; Father, let, henceforth, that love Within tlais bosom I'eisn ! ( 676 UP THE HILL A-BERRYING. On a sunny summer morning. Early as the dew was dry, Up the hill I went a-berrying. Need I tell you, tell you why ? Farmer Davis had a daughter, And it happened that I knew, On such sunny mornings, Jenny Up the hill went berrying too. Lonely work is picking berries ; So I joined her on the hill. " Jenny, dear," said I, " your basket's Quite too large for one to fill." So we staid — we two — to fill it, Jenny talking — I was still — Leading where the way was steepest, Picking berries up the hill. "This is up-hill work," said Jenny: " So is life," said I ; " shall we Climb it each alone, or, Jenny, Will you come and chmb with me?" Redder than the blushing berries Jenny's cheek a moment grew ; While, without delay, she answered, " I will come and chmb with you." ) *