Fair daffodils! we weep to see
You haste away so soon;
As yet the early-rising sun
Has not attained his noon:
Stay, stay
Until the hastening day
Has run
But to the evensong;
And, having prayed together, we
Will go with you along.
We have short time to stay as you,
We have as short a spring;
As quick a growth to meet decay,
As you, or anything:
We die,
As your hours do; and dry
Away
Like to the summer's rain,
Or as the pearls of morning dew,
Ne'er to be found again.–Robert Herrick
"It's from Auntie Nan!" cried Phyllis, in frantic haste to cut the string. "It's from Auntie Nan! I know her writing! What can it be?"
By this time the string was unfastened, and the brown paper torn off. Phyllis slipped the cover.
"Oh!" she said, as though her breath were quite taken away.
"Oh!" and her pink little face was buried in the box. "Oh, where did you come from?"
The pink, pink bloom of the arbutus smiled up at her, and the delicious fragrance filled the whole room.
There were great masses of the small, fragrant blossoms. Phyllis happily lifted them from their box, and filled a big glass bowl with them. This she placed on the table in the dining-room. Their sweetness greeted all as they entered the room.
In the bottom of the box was tucked a note from Auntie Nan. It was directed to Phyllis. Would you like to read the letter?
"Dear little Spring Blossom:–Here are some of your little sisters come to keep your birthday with you. I know you will be glad to welcome them, especially when I tell you that I found them huddled snugly under some brown leaves and half covered with snow.
"'We are Phyllis's birthday blossoms,' they seemed to say, as I brushed away the leaves and the snow, and they looked bravely out.
"So I gathered every one I could find; and I send them to you, little girl, because they make me think of a certain sweet little pink and white baby your mamma sent for me to come and see just eight years ago.
"Are you not glad that you, too, are a little Mayflower, and that your birthday comes on the very first day?
"You know, your friend, the poet, Whittier, calls these little wild wood flowers which I am sending 'The first sweet smiles of May'?
"Did I say that these flowers grew out on the hill among the pines where you played last summer? They tell me that the arbutus is particularly fond of pine-woods and light sandy soil.
"Do you not call them brave to peep forth so very early? But, you see, they were really very well protected by their own heart-shaped leaves, which kept alive and green all winter just for the sake of those blossoms which were to come.
"I think it is no wonder that the Pilgrims, after that first hard, hard winter, were so happy to welcome this little messenger of spring. They called it the Mayflower. We people of New England still call it the Mayflower, but by others it is called the trailing arbutus. Sometimes, too, I have heard it called 'mountain laurel.'
"I have no doubt but that the story of the Pilgrims is quite true, for the flower still grows in its lovely sweetness all about the hills of Plymouth.
"Are you not glad that I call them your flowers, Phyllis? Are you not glad that to us, you, too, are one of 'the first sweet smiles of May?'
"Wishing that all Mayflowers may bloom more and more sweetly as the seasons go, I am,"Your loving"Auntie Nan.