The tickled ears no heart-felt raptures raise; Nae unison hae they with our Créator's praise. The priest-like father reads the sacred page, How Abram was the friend of Or Moses bade eternal warfare wage With Amalek's ungracious progeny; Or how the royal Bard did groaning lie Beneath the stroke of Heaven's avenging ire: Or Job's pathetic plaint, and wailing cry; Or rapt Isaiah's wild, seraphic fire; Or other holy seers that tune the sacred lyre. Perhaps the Christian volume is the theme, How guiltless blood for guilty man was shed; How He, who bore in Heaven the second name, Had not on earth whereon to lay his head: How his first followers and ser vants sped; The precepts sage they wrote to many a land: How he, who lone in Patmos banished, Saw in the sun a mighty angel stand; And heard great Babylon's doom pronounced by Heaven's command. Then kneeling down, to Heaven's Eternal King, The saint, the father, and the husband prays: Hope "springs exulting on triumphant wing," That thus they all shall meet in future days: There ever bask in uncreated rays, No more to sigh, or shed the bitter tear, Together hymning their Creator's praise, In such society, yet still more dear; While circling time moves round in an eternal sphere. The bright scenes of my youth, — all gone out now. How eagerly its flickering blaze doth catch On every point now wrapped in time's deep shade! Into what wild grotesqueness by its flash And fitful checkering is the picture made! When I am glad or gay, Let me walk forth into the brilliant sun, And with congenial rays be shone upon: When I am sad, or thought-bewitched would be, Let me glide forth in moonlight's mystery, But never, while I live this changeful life, This past and future with all wonders rife, Never, bright flame, may be denied to me 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 shadows 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! Tempered with well-boiled water! 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 thinking. 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, Of Oxford's domes: Old Horace, rake Anacreon, by The Holy Book by which we live and die. IV. Old friends to talk! Ay, bring those chosen few, Him for my wine, him for my stud, 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 |