This last bit of it ran across a school section that had been left in prairie sod till then.

The early flowers sleep shaded In the cool green noonday glooms; The broken light falls shuddering On the cold white face of the tombs, Without, the world is smiling In the infinite love of God, But the sunlight fails and falters When it falls on the churchyard sod.

Strike sail!" "If I am captive and a slave, the time shall come when God Will bring me freed, to tread once more my own, my native sod!

He was the first that bent the knee When the STANDARD waved abroad, He was the first that charged the foe On Preston's bloody sod; And ever, in the van of fight, The foremost still he trod, Until, on bleak Culloden's heath, He gave his soul to God, Like a good old Scottish cavalier, All of the olden time!

"Mind you, my friends, I'm not saying we are not going to find plenty of stumps and roots and a tough sod in this furrow we are going to plow.

So they trooped in, a somewhat less faultlessly attired party than they had gone out, for Sally's curls were more rebellious than ever, Josephine's skirts had a mud stain on their hem, Jarvis's rent showed plainly, and everybody's foot-gear was decidedly the worse for the run over wet sod and fresh earth.

Here and there clumps of tall pines stand in the bare, brown sod as if to guard the young outshoots clustering about them in wanton dispersion.

'Twas there her spring-time vows were sworn, And there upon its frozen sod, While wintry midnight reigned forlorn, She knelt, and held her hands to God.

The smaller masses of slate, rising abruptly from the dry, grassy sod in leaning slabs, look like ancient tombstones in a deserted burying-ground.

They proceeded to the grave of poor Sarah Wingfield, which lay at the east of the church, beneath one of the tall elms, and Nizza, as she stood by the rounded sod covering the remains of the unfortunate girl, could not restrain her tears.

Dipping over banks in the inlets of the creeks, the fortunate find the rosy apples of the miniature manzanita, barely, but always quite sufficiently, borne above the spongy sod.

Anon, it might be a piece of torn sod, or a disturbed patch of weedy path; but, save for such trifles, he found nothing.

There again we'll meet our children, Who, on Flodden's trampled sod, For their king and for their country Rendered up their souls to God.

But when you do till at this season beware lest the land be worked while it is muddy: or when, having been sprinkled by a shower, it is in the condition which the country people call varia and cariosa, that is to say, when, after a long drought, a light rain has moistened the surface of the upturned sod but has not soaked to the bottom of the furrow.

He had nearly reached the limit of the farm, and entered his neck of woods, when the breathing of a cow trying to nip some comfort from the frosty sod delighted his ear.

No ray of fortune on it shone, It forced its weary way alone; Up-springing from the barren sod, Untilled, save by affliction's rod.

Up to that fateful moment, the prairie of the farm and of the township had been virgin sod; but now it bowed its neck to the yoke of wedlock.

Grim death may claim his victims from out our whirling ranks, Our plumes may be down-trodden in the grimy, bloody sod:

Sometime ago he was ill, and we were sadly afraid he would die; he used to sit from day to day, with ruffled feathers and drooping wings; his food was left untasted, and his pleasant voice was seldom heard; but in two or three weeks he began to grow better, and to eat his food as usual, and to pick amongst the green grass of the little sod we had placed in his cage.

But if your meadow should be outside the forest reserve, and the sheep have been there, you will find little but the shorter, paler G. Newberryii, and in the matted sods of the little tongues of greenness that lick up among the pines along the watercourses, white, scentless, nearly stemless, alpine violets.

[Illustration] Here's the purple aster, And the golden-rod, And the blue fringed gentian, By the meadow sod.

With sure eye, He saw the horses keep the arrow-track; He saw the swift share cut the measured sod; He saw the furrow folding to the right, Ready with nimble foot to aid at need.

The inscription in verse is as follows: Those hoof beats die not on fame's crimson sod But will live on in song and in story.

Yet earth's oblivious sod, Albeit her body dies, Will bury not her live words fair and holy.

O'er the grey matted moss, and pansied sod, With step sublime the glowing Goddess trod, Gilt with her beamy eye the conscious shade, And with her smile celestial bless'd the maid.