FOR CHILDREN. 127

Think only of the dismal tales,
And the mysteries I should know,
If my longl ife had but begun,
Three thousand years ago!
Mary Howitt.

 

LAPLAND.

*€ Wir blue cold nose and wrinked brow,
Traveller, whence comest thou ?”
“From Lapland’s woods and hills of frost,

By the rapid rein-deer crost ;

Where tapering grows the gloomy fir

And the stunted! juniper;

Where the wild hare and the crow

Whiten in surrounding snow ;

Where the shivering huntsmen tear

His fur coat from the grim white bear ;

Where the wolf and arctic fox

Prow] along the lonely rocks ;

And tardy suns to deserts drear

Give days and nights of half-a-year ;

—From icy oceans, where the whale

Tosses in foam his lashing tail ;

Where the snorting sea-horse shows

His ivory teeth in grinning rows; °

Where, tumbling in their seal-skin boat,

Fearless the hungry fishers float,

And from teeming? seas supply

The food their niggard plains deny,

Atkin.

1 Stunted—hindered from growth, dwarf.
2 Teeming—full, abundant