Show The BlueBell I have just received some merry thoughts from a bluebell which out of gratitude I record How long has that bell been rinping its fragrant music and swinging forth its un heard melodies among brackens and briars and primroses and woodroof and that world of poetic wild scents and forms RO many so beautiful which a tangled tan-gled bank over a tottering burn among lie I leafy woods discloses Spirits more beautiful than fairies behold those scenes or they would be waste That bell was ringing merrily in the breeze when Adam and Eve were married It chimed its dirge over Abel and has died and sprun up again while Nineveh and Babylon have come and gone and empires have lived and died forever Solomon in all his glory was not like thee What allcidc i at an evidence have I in this blue drooping flower of the regularity and en durance and Gods will since creations dawn i Amidst all revolutions of heaven and earth hurricanes and earthquakes floods and fires invasions and dispersions disper-sions signs in the sun moon and stars perplexity and distress of nations noth ng has happened to injure this fragile bluebell It has been pres red throughout through-out all generations The forces of this stormy and troubled earth which have rent rocks have been so beautifully ad justed from age to age that this head I though drooning has not been broken and this stalk though frail still stands erect This is central peace subsisting at the heart of endless agitation The bluebell swung in breezes tempered tem-pered to its strength centuries before the children of Japheth spied the chalky cliffs of Dover It has been called by many a name from the days of the painted warrior war-rior to the days of Burns but it has ever been thosame It will sing on with its own woodland music to all who can hear its spirit until time song shall be no J L more The bluebell may sing the funeral I knell of the human race NORMAN MACLEOD |