CHILDHOOD'S loved group revisits every scene;
The tangled wood-walk and the tufted green!
Indulgent memory wakes, and lo! they live!
Clothed with far softer hues than light can give.
Thou first, best friend that Heaven assigns below,
To soothe and sweeten all the cares we know;
Whose glad suggestions still each vain alarm;
Thee would the muse invoke! to thee belong
The sage's precept and the poet's song.
What softened views thy magic glass reveals,
When o'er the landscape Time's meek twilight
steals!
As when in ocean sinks the orb of day,
Long on the wave reflected lustres play ;
Thy tempered gleams of happiness resigned,
Glance on the darkened mirror of the mind.
The school's lone porch, with reverend mosses grey,
Just tells the pensive pilgrim where it lay.
Mute is the bell that rung at реер of dawn,
Quickening my truant feet across the lawn:
Unheard the shout that rent the noontide air,
When the slow dial gave a pause to care.
Up springs, at every step, to claim a tear,
Some little friendship formed and cherished here;
And not the lightest leaf but trembling teems
With golden visions and romantic dreams!
Down by yon hazel-copse, at evening blazed
The gipsy's faggot: there we stood and gazed;
Gazed on her sunburnt face with silent awe,
Her tattered mantle and her hood of straw;
Her moving lips, her cauldron brimming o'er ;
The drowsy brood that on her back she bore,
Imps in the barn with mousing owlet bred,
From rifled roost at nightly revel fed;
Whose dark eye flashed through locks of blackest shade,
When in the breeze the distant watch-dog bayed :
And heroes fled the Sibyl's muttered call,
Whose elfin prowess scaled the orchard wall.
As o'er my palm the silver piece she drew,
And traced the line of life with searching view,
How throbbed my fluttering pulse with hopes and
To learn the colour of my future years!
Ah, then what honest triumph flushed my breast; This truth once known-to bless is to be blest!
We led the bending beggar on his way,
(Bare were his feet, his tresses silver grey,)
Soothed the keen pangs his aged spirit felt,
And on his tale with mute affection dwelt.
As in his scrip we dropped our little store,
And sighed to think that little was no more,
He breathed his prayer, "Long may such goodness
live!"
'T was all he gave, 't was all he had to give.
Angels, when mercy's mandate winged their flight,
Had stopt to dwell with pleasure on the sight.
But hark! through those old firs, with sullen
swell,
The church-clock strikes! ye tender scenes, farewell!
It calls me hence, beneath their shade to trace
The few fond lines that time may soon efface.
On yon grey stone that fronts the chancel door,
Worn smooth by busy feet now seen no more,
Each eve we shot the marble through the ring,
When the heart danced, and life was in its spring;
Alas! unconscious of the kindred earth
That faintly echoed to the voice of mirth.
The glowworm loves her emerald light to shed,
Where now the sexton rests his hoary head.
Oft as he turned the greensward with his spade,
He lectured every youth that round him played;
And calmly pointing where our fathers lay,
Roused us to rival each the hero of his day.
Hush! ye fond flutterings, hush! while here alone
I search the records of each mouldering stone.
Guides of my life! Instructors of my youth!
Who first unveiled the hallowed form of Truth;
Whose every word enlightened and endeared:
In age beloved, in poverty revered;
In Friendship's silent register ye live,
Nor ask the vain memorial Art can give.
A DREAMLIKE REMEMBRANCE OF A DREAM.
UPSPRANG, so sudden and so sweet,
The cottage Fairy to her feet;
And looking round her with a smile,
Silent the creature paused awhile,
Uncertain what glad thought should burst
In music from her spirit first,
Till, like a breath, breathed clear from heaven,
To her at once a voice was given,
And through the tune the words arose
As through the fragrant dew the leaflets of the rose.
"Sisters! I have seen this night
A hundred cottage fires burn bright,
And a thousand happy faces shining
In the bursting blaze and the gleam declining.
I care not I for the stars above;
The lights on earth are the lights I love :
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