III. Oh yes; if any truth is found In the dull schoolman's theme, If friendship is an empty sound, And love an idle dream, If mirth, youth's playmate, feels fatigue At least he'll run with you a league,--- Laugh on, laugh on, to-day! IV. Perhaps your eyes may grow more bright As childhood's hues depart; You may be lovelier to the sight, And dearer to the heart; You may be sinless still, and see V. O'er me have many winters crept, With less of grief than joy; But I have learned, and toiled, and wept, I am no more a boy! I've never had the gout, 't is true, My hair is hardly grey ; But now I cannot laugh like you; Laugh on, laugh on, to-day! VI. I used to have as glad a face, As shadowless a brow; I once could run as blythe a race And though I look so very grave, A SCENE IN A PARK. LURK we behind these huddled thorns awhile! For Nature's loveliest combinations brook No tampering,—at a touch, they disappear! RUTH TO HER MOTHER. EXTRACTED FROM AN ALBUM IN DEVONSHIRE.. I. I will not, cannot leave thee; every hope to me is dead, But the hope to smooth the pillow for an aged parent's head! Oh! bid me not depart from thee;-to wander by thy side Is now my only joy and wish,-my pleasure and my pride. II. Bid me not seek another lord, another land or home; for me, So I may watch, and hunger, my mother dear, by thee. R III. I would not leave thee for the wealth of Fortune's richest smile; Such lot were pain and grief to me, if thou wert poor the while : I would not leave thee, though the cloud that broods upon thy brow Were of a deeper, deadlier gloom, than I behold it now. IV. Thou say'st that thou art childless now,-thou hast no other son To be a link of love to us, to bind our souls in one ;Oh! who should smile with Chilion's smile, or speak with Chilion's tone, But her whose grief for Chilion was as bitter as thine own! V. By the joy we both remember, by the loss we both lament, Bid me not serve my people's gods, nor seek my father's tent; I am an alien at their hearth, a stranger at their shrine, I have no kindred now but thee, I know no God but thine! VI. And He will still be with us, in our smiles and in our tears; In the weakness of my youth, and in the sadness of thy years; To cheer the darkness of our doom, how dark soe'er it be, And bless the grateful love with which my spirit clings to thee. M. G. T. STANZAS. 'Tis sad when sickness wrings the frame, And worldly cares are pressing still, But oh! it is a deeper pain, To know our best resolves are vain ; Our cold, half-love of Truth and Right, Ye blessed ones! in might come down, |