The fields were covered over

With colors as she went; Daisy, buttercup, and clover Below her footsteps bent;

Summer shed its shining store;
She was happy as she pressed them
Beneath her little feet;

She plucked them and caressed them;
They were so very sweet,

They had never seemed so sweet before,
To Red Riding Hood, the darling,
The flower of fairy lore.

How the heart of childhood dances
Upon a sunny day!

It has its own romances,

And a wide, wide world have they!
A world where Phantasie is king,
Made all of eager dreaming;
When once grown up and tall-
Now is the time for scheming-
Then we shall do them all!

Do such pleasant fancies spring
For Red Riding Hood, the darling,
The flower of fairy lore?

She seems like an ideal love,
The poetry of childhood shown,
And yet loved with a real love,
As if she were our own,-

A

younger sister for the heart; Like the woodland pheasant,

Her hair is brown and bright;
And her smile is pleasant,
With its rosy light.

Never can the memory part

With Red Riding Hood, the darling,

The flower of fairy lore.

Did the painter, dreaming
In a morning hour,
Catch the fairy seeming
Of this fairy flower?

Winning it with eager eyes
From the old enchanted stories,
Lingering with a long delight
On the unforgotten glories
Of the infant sight?

Giving us a sweet surpise

In Red Riding Hood, the darling,
The flower of fairy lore?

Too long in the meadow staying,
Where the cowslip bends,
With the buttercups delaying
As with early friends,

Did the little maiden stay.
Sorrowful the tale for us;

We, too, loiter 'mid life's flowers,

A little while so glorious,

So soon lost in darker hours.

All love lingering on their way,
Like Red Riding Hood, the darling,
The flower of fairy lore.

DICK AND I.

MISS MULOCK.

We're going to a party, my brother Dick and I,
The best, grandest party we ever did try;
And I'm very happy-but Dick is so shy!

I've got a white ball-dress, and flowers in my hair, And a scarf, with a brooch too, mamma let me

wear:

Silk stockings and shoes with high heels, I declare!

There is to be music-a real soldier's band:
And I mean to waltz, and eat ice, and be fanned
Like a grown-up young lady, the first in the land.

But Dick is so stupid, so silent and shy;
Has never learnt dancing so says he won't try—
Yet Dick is both older and wiser than I.

And I'm fond of my brother-this darling old
Dick:

I'll hunt him in corners wherever he stick,
He's bad at a party-but at school he's a brick!

So good at his Latin, at cricket, football,
Whatever he tries at. And then he's so tall!
Yet at play with the children he's best of us all.

And his going to the party is just to please me, Poor Dick! so good-natured. How dull he will be!

But he says I shall dance "like a wave o' the sea."

That's Shakspere, his Shakspere, he worships him

So,

Our Dick he writes poems, though none will he show;

I found out his secret, but I won't tell: no, no.