Thy dear, life-imaging, close sympathy. What but my hopes shot upwards e'er so bright? What but my fortunes sank so low in night? Why art thou banished from our hearth and hall, Thou who art welcomed and beloved by all? Was thy existence then too fanciful For our life's common light, who are so dull? Did thy bright gleam mysterious converse hold With our congenial souls? secrets too bold? Well, we are safe and strong; for now we sit Beside a hearth where no dim sha dows flit; Where nothing cheers nor saddens, but a fire Warms feet and hands, nor does to more aspire; By whose compact, utilitarian heap, The present may sit down and go to sleep, Nor fear the ghosts who from the dim past walked, And with us by the unequal light of the old wood-fire talked. E. S. H. GIVE ME THE OLD. I. OLD wine to drink! Ay, give the slippery juice That drippeth from the grape thrown loose Within the tun; Plucked from beneath the cliff And ripened 'neath the blink Of India's sun! Peat whiskey hot, Tempered with well-boiled water! These make the long night shorter, Forgetting not Good stout old English porter. II. Old wood to burn! Ay, bring the hillside beech From where the owlets meet and screech, And ravens croak; The crackling pine, and cedar sweet; Bring too a clump of fragrant peat, Dug 'neath the fern; The knotted oak, A fagot too, perhap, Whose bright flame, dancing, winking, Shall light us at our drinking; While the oozing sap Shall make sweet music to our think ing. III. Old books to read! Ay, bring those nodes of wit, The brazen-clasped, the vellum-writ, Time-honored tomes! The same my sire scanned before, The same my grandsire thumbèd o'er, The same his sire from college bore, The well-earned meed Of Oxford's domes: Old Homer blind, Old Horace, rake Anacreon, by Old Tully, Plautus, Terence lie; Mort Arthur's olden minstrelsie, Quaint Burton, quainter Spenser, ay! And Gervase Markham's venerieNor leave behind The Holy Book by which we live and die. IV. Old friends to talk! Ay, bring those chosen few, The wise, the courtly, and the true, So rarely found; Him for my wine, him for my stud, In mountain walk! With soulful Fred; and learned Will, R. H. MESSINGER. TO A CHILD. I WOULD that thou might always be As innocent as now, That time might ever leave as free I would life were all poetry That nought but chastened melody The silver stars may purely shine, But they who kneel at woman's shrine Breathe on it as they bow. N. P. WILLIS. THE CHILDREN'S HOUR. BETWEEN the dark and the daylight, When the night is beginning to lower, Comes a pause in the day's occupations That is known as the children's hour. I hear in the chamber above me From my study I see in the lamplight, Descending the broad hall-stair, And still with favor singled out, Marred less than man by mortal fall, Her disposition is devout, No faithless thought her instinct shrouds, But fancy checkers settled sense, Like alteration of the clouds On noonday's azure permanence. Pure courtesy, composure, ease, Declare affections nobly fixed, And impulse sprung from due degrees Of sense and spirit sweetly mixed. Her modesty, her chiefest grace, The cestus clasping Venus' side, Is potent to deject the face Of him who would affront its pride. Wrong dares not in her presence speak, Nor spotted thought its taint disclose Under the protest of a cheek Outbragging Nature's boast, the rose. In mind and manners how discreet! Than any other planet in Heaven, Than with another to be well. I saw her dance so comely, So goodly speak, and so friendly, glad |