"When the blood from the pale damp brow retiring, Falls freezing and dull on the heart below; Fears undefined and sorrows conspiring To darken the gloom of this hour of woe. II. ""Tis the hour when hearts that would grow for ever In verdant affection, nor know decay, Are riven in twain, as the rude winds sever Each form the other long retaining, One fond and enduring embrace to share, As if each heart were madly straining III. "There is an hour when the heart beats high, IV. "'Tis the hour when hearts, long wandering, When grief and absence lose the sting Each face reflecting the other's smile, As the mirror is bright when the sun is shining, Though dark when his light was hid the while. V. "The hour of parting from those we love Is like the decline of a glorious day, When the sun sinks down from his throne above, And chillness and gloom succeed his ray : Like morning's burst is the hour of meeting, That beams o'er the darkness and clouds of night; The terrors and grief of absence fleeting, Like vapours away from the sunbeam's light. VI. "Oh! how could the bleeding heart endure To be torn from all that is dear, Did no sweet sustaining hope insure Like the vesper-star, still mildly streaming O'er the waste of night when the sun has set, "Hey-day! young ladies," said Saul, "at your pockethandkerchiefs again! I protest Jack Bishop will not value the compliment if you are thus ready to bestow it on a rival bard." "Nay, check them not, my dear old friend," said the good parson, in a voice tremulous with feeling, "they will not have the less firm hearts for the duties and trials of life for yielding to emotions that are an honour to our nature. Trust me God has given us all those finer sensibilities for good and holy purposes, and I love not to see man or woman without them. Only let us be heedful that by over indulgence they do not degenerate into weak and sickly sentimentality. Is it not meet that our spirits should feel a momentary disturbance at the thought of a separation, when we have all been so innocently happy? When the band that has tied this little bundle of hearts together is cut, and we are scattered loose again on the world, say who shall collect and bind us up again as we were before-no bough that is now green and pleasant, withered, or stript, or broken! It may be that His hand who can bind and can loose may bind us up again more closely even here; but at all events He can re-unite us hereafter in a company never to be severed. And so let us now carry away this thought each to his own chamber." In this solemn frame of mind the chaplain addressed himself to the duties of his calling, and we separated lovingly, sadly, but hopefully. SAINT VALENTINE'S DAY. Carrigbawn, Feast of St. Valentine. WE men in the country watch the vicissitudes of the seasons with an anxiety of which town gentlemen have no notion. With them it is merely a question of umbrellas and dry flags; with us it is one of life and death. The heavy rains during the earlier portion of this month, arrested all out-door labour, and left us sadly in arrear in our ploughing and sowing. This morning we are all as busy as bees, for fine weather has set in most opportunely. I was out early in the fields, to set the day's operations fairly agoing. The mists of the morning were lazily rolling away in heavy vapour from the marshy ground along the river side, and the white hoar-frost of the night was lying on the green sward and the brown furrows. As I passed an old ivy-clad gable, the rustling and twittering of innumerable little birds, flying and chasing each other from branch to branch, reminded me that the spring was coming, and that Nature was beginning to stir in her heart's core. And then, too, I spied the crocus and the snowdrop, and I caught faintly the odour of the violet; and I knew that the Divine agency, which renews all things, was again putting forth its potency. And now I watched the sturdy team drawing the plough through the heavy glebe, and the busy crows following in the furrow; and further on, the sower, with his bag slung before him, scattering the seed over the well-prepared ground, in the hope that it would bring forth abundantly, "some ten-fold, some fifty-fold, some an hundred-fold." I was returning homeward with the buoyant air of the fresh morning breathing around, and the bright lustre of the now up-risen sun upon me, when just as I reached the door of my porch, I beheld the conjoint animal of a man on horseback bearing down upon me. As the mass came near to me its identity was unmistakable. An aged bay horse, with a white star on his forehead, a poke of the nose and a contemplative gait, bestridden by a lanky figure in black habiliments, announced the good parson, mounted on the companion of his parochial rambles during the last ten years. Assisting my worthy friend to dismount, and committing his beast to the lad whom I had summoned for the purpose, I led the chaplain into the house. 66 My dear Jonathan," said he, "I wish you all the happiness that attends this auspicious morning, and am come to breakfast with you." "For the latter favour, my dear friend, I am truly grateful," said I, "but I am at a loss to understand the peculiarity of your greeting." "What!" said he, “do you not remember this is Valentine's Day ?" "Not I, indeed," I answered. "Ah, Jonathan! when I was a young man it should not have come upon me unawares." "Perhaps not," said I, "but I have little sympathy with the mode in which the festival is honoured now-a-days." The parson looked at me for an explanation. "I do not despise, my dear sir," I continued, "the customs of simple times, nor the manner in which this day was anciently celebrated, when young men and maidens drew their Valentines by billets, and the life-long happiness of many a couple commenced with the true-hearted gallantries of the day. But I do abhor, with a hatred as intense as the postman, the present practice, contemptible, heartless, and affected, to say the least of it, which sends a thousand silly and impertinent rhymes flying through the length and breadth of the land; corrupting the taste and depraving the judgment. You have no idea how the sentiment of love is vulgarized and debased by the daubed prints of hearts, and darts, and Cupids, and the frippery missives which, by the abused license of this day, find their way to eyes and ears which would droop with shame, and tingle with indignation, were the stuff these billets doux contain spoken to them by living lips. Look at the windows of the stationers' shops in town, and tell me if I am not justified in what I say. And then, are you aware of the enormous sums which silly coxcombs, who cannot indite for themselves, pay for those borrowed sentiments. I assure you, the price of some of them would supply the food of many a family for a month, or purchase volumes of sterling literature. Shame befall the man, say I, that has recourse to such a sneaking mode of courtship, and cannot express, as a man should do, his own feelings of love in his own words." "My dear Jonathan," said the Parson, "you are unjustly I fear you have never received a Valentine." severe. "Nor sent one," said I, "thank heaven." "We are told," observed my friend, "that they had their origin in a pious device of the early Christians who substituted these for the pagan practices of the Februata Juno." "I do not believe it," I replied. "I think the usage springs from a higher and truer source. Nature is herself our divine instructress. Listen," said I, throwing open the window of the room in which we sat, and letting in the fresh air of the pleasant morning, and the chirping of the birds that thronged the woodbine and rose-tree trelliced around it. "The earth's bosom is already putting on her robes of green; the vernal flowers are bursting into life; the birds carol and mate, and God, who is love, speaks of love to and through all animal existence." How beautifully has Donne expressed this thought : "Hail Bishop Valentine! whose day this is, All the air is thy diocese And all the chirping choristers And other birds are thy parishioners. Thou marryest every year, The lyric lark and the grave whispering dove; "And again, with what truth of nature and grace of poetry does Tasso celebrate these mysterious influences of the nascent spring: "La dolce primavera, E gli uomini e le donne : e non t'accorgi, |