THE AGES OF MAN. Youth, fond youth! to thee in life's gay morning, New and wonderful are heaven and earth; Health the hills, content the fields adorning, Nature rings with melody and mirth; Love invisible, beneath, above, Conquers all things; all things yield to love. Time, swift time, from years their motion stealing, Unperceived hath sober manhood brought: Truth, her pure and humble forms revealing, Peoples fancy's fairy-land with thought; Then the heart, no longer prone to roam, Loves, loves best, the quiet bliss of home. Age, old age, in sickness, pain, and sorrow, Creeps with lengthening shadow o'er the scene; Life was yesterday, 'tis death to-morrow, And to-day the agony between : Then how longs the weary soul for thee, Bright and beautiful eternity!

I should be loath to fall Beside the common way, Weltering in mire, and spurn'd by all, Till trodden down to clay. Nor would I choose to die All on a bed of grass, Where thousands of my kindred lie, And idly rot in mass. Nor would I like to spread My thin and wither'd face In hortus siccus, pale and dead, A mummy of my race. No,-on the wings of air Might I be left to fly, I know not and I heed not where, A waif of earth and sky! Or flung upon the stream, Curl'd like a fairy-boat, As through the changes of a dream, To the world's end to float! Who that hath ever been, Could bear to be no more? Yet who would tread again the scene He trod through life before? On, with intense desire, Man's spirit will move on; It seems to die, yet like Heaven's fire, It is not quench’d, but gone.

ASPIRATIONS OF YOUTH.

HIGHER, higher will we climb
Up the mount of glory,
That our names may live through time
In our country's story:
Happy, when her welfare calls,
He who conquers, he who falls,
Deeper, deeper let us toil
In the mines of knowledge-
Nature's wealth and learning's spoil
Win from school and college;
Delve we there for richer gems
Than the stars of diadems.

THE ADVENTURE OF A STAR.

ADDRESSED TO A YOUNG LADY.

Onward, onward will we press
Through the path of duty;
Virtue is true happiness,
Excellence true beauty :
Minds are of supernal birth,
Let us make a heaven of earth.
Close and closer then we knit
Hearts and hands together,
Where our fireside comforts sit
In the wildest weather:
0! they wander wide, who roam
For the joys of life, from home.
Nearer, dearer bands of love
Draw our souls in union,
To our Father's house above,
To the saints' communion;
Thither every hope ascend,
There may all our labours end.

A STAR would be a flower;
So down from heaven it came,
And in a honeysuckle bower
Lit up its little fame.
There on a bank, beneath the shade,
By sprays, and leaves, and blossoms made,
It overlook'd the garden ground,
-A landscape stretching ten yards round;
( what a change of place
From gazing through eternity of space!
Gay plants on every side
Unclosed their lovely blooms,
And scatter'd far and wide
Their ravishing perfumes :
The butterfly, the bee,
And many an insect on the wing,
Full of the spirit of the spring,
Flew round and round in endless glee,
Alighting here, ascending there,
Ranging and revelling everywhere.

THE FALLING LEAF.

Now all the flowers were up, and drest
In robes of rainbow-colour'd light;
The pale primroses look'd their best,
Peonies blush'd with all their right;
Dutch tulips from their beds
Flaunted their stately heads;
Auriculas, like belles and beaux,
Glittering with birth-night splendour, rose ;

WERE I a trembling leaf,
On yonder stately tree,
After a seasjo gay and brief,
Condemn'd to fade and fee;

And polyanthuses display'd
The brilliance of their gold brocade :
Here hyacinths of heavenly blue
Shook their rich tresses to the morn,
While rose-buds scarcely show'd their hue,
But coyly linger'd on the thorn,
Till their loved nightingale, who tarried long,
Should wake them into beauty with his song.
The violets were past their prime,
Yet their departing breath
Was sweeter, in the blast of death,
Than all the lavish fragrance of the thyme.

Our star, in melancholy state, Still sigh'd to find itself alone, Neglected, cold, and desolate, Unknowing and unknown. Lifting at last an anxious eye, It saw that circlet empty in the sky Where it was wont to roll, Within a hair-breadth of the pole: In that same instant, sore amazed, On the strange blank all nature gazed; Travellers, bewilder'd for their guide, In glens and forests lost their way; And ships, on ocean's trackless tide, Went fearfully astray. The star, now wiser for its folly, knew Its duty, dignity, and bliss at home; So up to heaven again it flew, Resolved no more to roam. One hint the humble bard may send To her for whom these lines are pena'd: - may it be enough for her To shine in her own character ! O may she be content to grace, On earth, in heaven, her proper place!

Amidst this gorgeous train,
Our truant star shone forth in vain ;
Though in a wreath of periwinkle,
Through whose fine gloom it strove to twinkle,
It seem'd no bigger to the view
Than the light-spangle in a drop of dew.
-Astronomers may shake their polls,
And tell me,-every orb that rolls
Through heaven's sublime expanse
Is sun or world, whose speed and size
Confound the stretch of mortal eyes,
In nature's mystic dance:
It may be so
For aught I know,
Or aught indeed that they can show;
Yet till they prove what they aver,
From this plain truth I will not stir,
-A star's a star but when I think
Of sun or world, the star I sink ;
Wherefore in verse, at least in mine,
Stars, like themselves, in spite of fate, shall

shine.

MAKE WAY FOR LIBERTY.

On the exploit of Arnold Winkelried at the battle of Sem

pach, in which the Swiss, fighting for their indepead. ence, totally defeated the Austrians, in the fourteenth century.

Now, to return (for we have wander'd far)
To what was nothing but a simple star;

-Where all was jollity around,
No fellowship the stranger found.
Those lowliest children of the earth,
That never leave their mother's lap,
Companions in their harmless mirth,
Were smiling, blushing, dancing there,
Feasting on dew, and light, and air,
And fearing no mishap,
Save from the hand of lady fair,
Who, on her wonted walk,
Pluck'd one and then another,
A sister or a brother,
From its elastic stalk;
Happy, no doubt, for one sharp pang, to die
On her sweet bosom, withering in her eye.
Thus all day long that star's hard lot,
While bliss and beauty ran to waste,
Was but to witness on the spoti
Beauty and bliss it could not taste,
At length the sun went down, and then
Its faded glory came again,
With brighter, bolder, purer light,
It kindled through the deepening night,
Till the green bower, so dim by day,
Glow'd like a fairy-palace with its beams;
In vain, for sleep on all the borders lay,
The flowers were laughing in the land of

“MAKE way for liberty !"--he cried;
Made way for liberty, and died !

In arms the Austrian phalanx stood,
A living wall, a human wood!
A wall, where every conscious stone
Seem'd to its kindred thousands grown;
A rampart all assaults to bear,
Till time to dust their frames should wear;
A wood like that enchanted grove'
In which with fiends Rinaldo strove,
Where every silent tree possess'd
A spirit prison'd in its breast,
Which the first stroke of coming strife
Would startle into hideous life,
So dense, so still, the Austrians stood,
A living wall, a human wood!
Impregnable their front appears,
All horrent with projected spears,
Whose polish'd points before them shine,
From flank to flank, one brilliant line,
Bright as the breakers' splendours run
Along the billows, to the sun.

Opposed to these a hovering band
Contended for their native land:
Peasants, whose new-found strength had broke
From manly necks th' ignoble yoke,
And forged their fetters into swords,
On equal terms to fight their lords :
And what insurgent rage had gain'd,
In many a mortal fray maintain'd;
• See Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered, canto xviii.

An earthquake could not overthrow A city with a surer blow.

Thus Switzerland again was free: Thus death made way for liberty!

Marshallid once more at freedom's call,
They came to conquer or to fall,
Where he who conquer'd, he who fell,
Was deem'd a dead, or living Tell!
Such virtue had that patriot breathed,
So to the soil his soul bequeathed,
That wheresoe'er his arrows flew,
Heroes in his own likeness grew,
And warriors sprang from every sod
Which his awakening footstep trod.

FOR THE FIRST LEAF OF A LADY'S

ALBUM.

And now the work of life and death Hung on the passing of a breath; The fire of conflict burnt within, The battle trembled to begin ; Yet, while the Austrians held their ground, Point for attack was nowhere found, Where'er the impatient Switzers gazed, The unbroken line of lances blazed ; That line 'twere suicide to meet, And perish at their tyrants' feet, How could they rest within their graves, And leave their homes, the homes of slaves ? Would they not feel their children tread With clanging chains above their head ?

FLOWER after flower comes forth in spring, Bird after bird begins to sing ; Till copse and field in richest bloom, Sparkle with dew, and breathe perfume,While hill and valley, all day long, And half the night, resound with song, So may acquaintance, one by one, Come like spring-flowers to meet the sun, And o'er these pages pure and white, Kind words, kind thoughts, kind prayers indite Which sweeter odour shall dispense Than vernal blossoms to the sense ; Till woods and streams less fair appear Than autographs and sketches here: -Or like the minstrels of the grove, Pour strains of harmony and love, The music made by heart to heart, In which the least can bear a part, More exquisite than all the notes of nightingales' and thrushes' throats. Thus shall this book, from end to end, Show in succession friend on friend, By their own living hands portray'd, In prose and verse, in light and shade, By pen and pencil, -till her eye, Who owns the volume shall descry On many a leaf some lovely trace, Reminding of a lovelier face! With here and there the humbler line, Recalling such a phiz as mine.

It must not be: This day, this hour, Annihilates th' oppressor's power; All Switzerland is in the field, She will not fly, she cannot yieldShe must not fall; her better fate Here gives her an immortal date. Few were the number she could boast; But every freeman was a host, And felt as though himself were he On whose sole arm hung victory.

It did depend on one, indeed; Behold him,-Arnold Winkelried ! There sounds not to the trump of fame The echo of a nobler name. Unmark'd he stood amid the throng: In rumination deep and long, Till you might see, with sudden grace, The very thought come o'er his face, And by the motion of his form Anticipate the bursting storm ; And by th' uplifting of his brow Tell where the bolt would strike, and how.

THE FIRST LEAF OF AN ALBUM.

Ut pictura, poesis.-Hor. de Art. Poet.

Two lovely sisters here unite
To blend improvement with delight;
Painting and poetry engage
By turns to deck the Album's page.

But 'twas no sooner thought than done,
The field was in a moment won :-

“ Make way for liberty !” he cried,
Then ran, with arms extended wide,
As if his dearest friend to clasp ;
Ten spears he swept within his grasp.

“ Make way for liberty !” he cried ;
Their keen points met from side to side:
He bow'd amongst them like a tree,
And thus made way for liberty.

Swift to the breach his comrades fly;
“ Make way for liberty!” they cry,
And through the Austrian phalanx dart,
As rush'd the spears through Arnold's heart;
While, instantaneous as his fall,
Rout, ruin, panic, scatter'd all :

75

Here may each glowing picture be
The quintessence of poesy,
With skill so exquisitely wrought,
As if the colours were pure thought,-
Thought from the bosom's inmost cell,
By magic tints made visible,
That, while the eye admires, the mind
Itself, as in a glass, inay find.
And may the poet's verse, alike,
With all the power of painting strike;
So freely, so divinely trace,
In every line the line of grace;
And beautify, with such sweet art,
The image-chamber of the heart,