Evangeline.

LONGFELLOW.

VANGELINE brought the draught-board out of its corner.
Soon was the game begun. In friendly contention the

old men

Laughed at each lucky hit or unsuccessful manœuvre,
Laughed when a man was crowned, or a breach was

made in the king-row.

Meanwhile, apart, in the twilight gloom of a window's embra

sure,

Sat the lovers, and whispered together, beholding the moon

rise

Over the pallid sea and the silvery mist of the meadows.
Silently, one by one, in the infinite meadows of heaven,
Blossomed the lovely stars, the forget-me-nots of the angels.
Thus passed the evening away.

The Village.

E. ELLIOT.

WEET village! where my early days were passed,
Though parted long, we meet, we meet at last!
Like friends, imbrowned by many a sun and wind,
Much changed in mien, but more in heart and mind,
Fair, after many years, thy fields appear,

With joy beheld, but not without a tear.

I met thy little river miles before

I saw again my natal cottage door;

Unchanged as truth, the river welcomed home
The wanderer of the sea's heart-breaking foam;
But the changed cottage, like a time-tried friend,
Smote on my heart-strings, at my journey's end.
For now no lilies bloom the door beside!
The very house-leek on the roof hath died!
The windowed gable's ivy bower is gone,
The rose departed from the porch of stone:
The pink, the violet, have fled away,

The polyanthus and auricula!

And round my home, once bright with flowers, I found
Not one square yard, one foot of garden ground.

Path of the quiet fields! that oft of yore
Called me at morn on Shenstone's page to pore;
Oh! poor man's pathway! where, "at evening's close,"
He stopped to pluck the woodbine and the rose,
Shaking the dew-drop from the wild-brier bowers,
That stooped beneath their load of summer flowers,
Then eyed the west, still bright with fading flame,
As whistling homeward by the wood he came ;
Sweet, dewy, sunny, flowery footpath, thou
Art gone for ever, like the poor man's cow!