Or, if ye stay, To note the consecrated hour, Teach me the airy way, Above the crowd, On upward wings could I but fly, I'd bathe in yon bright cloud, And seek the stars that gem the sky. "Twere Heaven indeed Through fields of trackless light to soar, On Nature's charms to feed, And Nature's own great God adore. THE FAMILY MEETING. WE are all here! Sister, brother, All who hold each other dear. You that I love with love so dear. Each chair is filled- we're all at May each repeat, in words of bliss, Fond Memory, to her duty true, We're all all here! TO MY CIGAR. YES, social friend, I love thee well, By thee, they cry, with phizzes long, And oft, mild friend, to me thou art, A monitor, though still; Thou'rt like the man of worth, who To goodness every day, The odor of whose virtue lives When, in the lonely evening hour, Brings back their faded forms to O'er history's varied page I pore, view. Man's fate in thine I see. Oft as thy snowy column grows, Awhile like thee the hero burns, And smokes and fumes around, And then, like thee, to ashes turns. And mingles with the ground. Life's but a leaf adroitly rolled, And time's the wasting breath, That late or early, we behold, Gives all to dusty death. From beggar's frieze to monarch's robe, One common doom is passed; Sweet Nature's works, the swelling globe, Must all burn out at last. Art's chiselled boast and Glory's tro phied shore Must live in numbers, or can live no more. While sculptured Jove some nameless waste may claim, [fame: Still rolls the Olympic car in Pindar's Troy's doubtful walls in ashes passed away, Yet frown on Greece in Homer's deathless lay; Rome, slowly sinking in her crumbling fanes, Stands all immortal in her Maro's strains; So, too, yon giant empress of the isles, On whose broad sway the sun forever smiles, To Time's unsparing rage one day must bend, And all her triumphs in her Shakespeare end! O thou! to whose creative power We dedicate the festal hour, While Grace and Goodness round the altar stand, Learning's anointed train, and Beauty's rose-lipped band Realms yet unborn, in accents now unknown, Thy song shall learn, and bless it for their own. [roves, Deep in the West as Independence His banners planting round the land he loves, Where Nature sleeps in Eden's infant grace, In Time's full hour shall spring a glorious race, Thy name, thy verse, thy language, shall they bear, And deck for thee the vaulted temple there. Our Roman-hearted fathers broke Thy parent empire's galling yoke; But thou, harmonious master of the mind, | Around Once But Nature's laureate bards shall And never die. their sons a gentler chain shalt bind; more in thee shall Albion's sceptre wave, what her monarch lost, her monarch-bard shall save. And in the Silent Land his shade confest Reached the calm dust, and there, That she, of all the seven, loved him composed and queenly, Gazed, but the missal trembled in The third hung feebly on the portals moaning, With whitened lips, and feet that stood in sand, maiden, came, best. LAURA, MY DARLING. LAURA, my darling, the roses have blushed At the kiss of the dew, and our chamber is hushed; Our murmuring babe to your bosom has clung, And hears in his slumber the song that you sung; and all her I watch you asleep with your arms round him thrown, luxurious Your links of dark tresses wound in with his own, Half for such homage to the dead And the wife is as dear as the gentle atoning By smiles on one who fanned a later flame In her slight soul, her fickle steps attended. The fifth and sixth were sisters; at the same young bride Of the hour when you first, darling, came to my side. Laura, my darling, our sail down the stream Not braver he that leaps the wall But no, she blushed and took my arm! We let the old folks have the high way, And started toward the Maple Farm Along a kind of lovers' by-way. I can't remember what we said, 'Twas nothing worth a song or story; Yet that rude path by which we sped Seemed all transformed and in a glory. The snow was crisp beneath our feet, The moon was full, the fields were gleaming: By hood and tippet sheltered sweet, Her face with youth and health were beaming. The little hand outside her muff, O sculptor, if you could but mould it! So lightly touched my jacket-cuff, To keep it warm I had to hold it. |