Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: INVITATION TO NATURE-STUDY MATURE pleadingly calls from her beau- tiful bowers, From her sweetly entrancing schools, Where the pens are the sunbeams, and the books are the flowers, And her ink stands as rain in the pools. All the year, as she calls for more pupils, she paints Pretty pictures on each flowery page; To seduce to her school those whose interest is cool, And to give us who love her our wage. By the sweetest refrains of the birds she invites, By the singing of stream and of brook, And the stars, the entrancing play-suns of the nights, Are prospectus, she asks you to look. 8 Invitation to Nature-Study When the winter's cold session is on there 's the snow,— Cotton-plant of the sky, dropping leaves, Holding pentagram marvels whose tale you should know, And the tree-covering carpet of wonder it weaves:— When the streamlets are guarded by glass window-panes, Where they shivering wait for the rains; But they 're happy, so happy they cannot forget, Though asleep, Nature's guarding them 'T is in winter, enthroned o'er the scenery sublime In her grandest attire, Nature reigns; As she audience gives, in this stern, courtly time, With dew-jewels they construct for her fanes. Beauty's fanes that are formed by the feathery snow-flakes, That, reflecting the light, look like miniature moons; Invitation to Nature-Study 9 In their flight through the kingdom of stars each one takes Of star-form and starlight. Where are lovelier festoons? Then there 's spring, when the winter is wearing away, When the sunbeams awake for their play; And they knock on that tiny brown cell 'neath the fence, Where all winter it clung for defense. Soon a hole 's in it seen, then a head slow ...