RICHARD HENRY STODDARD. THE FLIGHT OF YOUTH. THERE are gains for all our losses, There are balms for all our pain: But when youth, the dream, departs, It takes something from our hearts, And it never comes again. We are stronger, and are better, AN OLD SONG REVErsed. "THERE are gains for all our losses." So I said when I was young. If I sang that song again, Which but suits an idle tongue. Youth has gone, and hope gone with it, Gone the strong desire for fame. Laurels are not for the old. Take them, lads. Give Senex gold. What's an everlasting name? When my life was in its summer One fair woman liked my looks: Now that Time has driven his plough In deep furrows on my brow, I'm no more in her good books. "There are gains for all our losses?" Grave beside the wintry sea, Where my child is, and my heart, For they would not live apart, What has been your gain to me? No, the words I sang were idle, "There's a loss for every gain!" AT LAST. WHEN first the bride and bridegroom wed, They love their single selves the best; A sword is in the marriage-bed. Their separate slumbers are not They quarrel, and make up again, tolled, Death having taken their best of life, They lose themselves, and find each other; [wife, They know that they are husband, For, weeping, they are father, mother! THE TWo brideS. I SAW two maids at the kirk, And both were fair and sweet: One in her wedding-robe, And one in her winding-sheet. The choristers sang the hymn, The sacred rites were read, And one for life to life, And one to death was wed. They were borne to their bridal-beds, In loveliness and bloom; One in a merry castle, And one in a solemn tomb. One on the morrow woke In a world of sin and pain; But the other was happier far, And never awoke again. ABRAHAM LINCOLN. THIS man whose homely face you look upon, Was one of nature's masterful, great men; Born with strong arms, that unfought battles won; Direct of speech, and cunning with the pen. Chosen for large designs, he had the art Of winning with his humor, and he went Straight to his mark, which was the human heart; Wise, too, for what he could not break he bent. Upon his back a more than Atlasload, The burden of the Commonwealth, was laid; He stooped, and rose up to it, though the road Shot suddenly downwards, not a Hold, warriors, councillors, kings! To this dear benefactor of the HOW ARE SONGS BEGOT AND BRED. How are songs begot and bred? Tell me first how folded flowers And the blasted limb of the churchyard yew, It shakes like a ghostly hand. The dead are engulfed beneath it, Than earth in all her graves! SONGS UNSUNG. LET no poet, great or small, Not because we woo it long, Every song that has been sung Was before it took a voice, For the poet of its choice. May they come to-day to me! I am ready to repeat Whatsoever they impart; They know how to heal the heart: What are my white hairs, forsooth, How the south wind shapes its tune, I have still the soul of youth, The harper, he, of June. None may answer, none may know, RATTLE THE WINDOW. RATTLE the window, winds, The gray sea heaves and heaves, Try me, merry Muses, now. I can still with numbers fleet No, I am no longer young, Old am I this many a year; Sing my songs, and think of me! WHEN THE DRUM OF SICKNESS WHEN the drum of sickness beats Farewell, youth, and all its sweets, WILLIAM WETMORE STORY. THE VIOLET. The young moon's silver arc, her perfect circle tells, O FAINT, delicious, spring-time vio- The limitless, within Art's bounded let, Thine odor, like a key, outline dwells. Turns noiselessly in memory's wards Of every noble work, the silent part to let is best; Of all expression, that which cannot be expressed. Each act contains the life, each work of art, the world, And all the planet-laws are in each dewdrop pearled. WETMORE COTTAGE, NAHANT. THE hours on the old piazza That overhangs the sea, With a tender and pensive music A spring goes singing through its And again, o'er the balcony lean reedy grass; The lark sings o'er my head, ing, We list to the surf on the beach, Drowned in the sky.-Oh, pass, ye That fills with its solemn warning visions, pass! I would that I were dead! The intervals of speech. Why hast thou opened that forbidden We three sit at night in the moon door light, As we sat in the summer gone, And sing as we sit alone; Where oranges hang o'er the sea, And our hearts are tender with dreaming Of days that no more shall be. How gaily the hours went with us Ah, never! these years so drain The heart of its freshness of feeling, But I long, though the longing be vain. |