The months that touch with added grace
This little prattler at my knee,
In whose arch eye and speaking face
New meaning every hour I see.
True-time will seam and blanch my brow;
Well-I shall sit with aged men,
And my good glass will tell me how
A grizzly beard becomes me then.
And should no foul dishonour lie
Upon my head when I am grey,
Love yet shall watch my fading eye,
And smooth the path of my decay.
Then haste thee, Time-'tis kindness all
That speeds thy winged feet so fast;
Thy pleasures stay not till they pall,
And all thy pains are quickly past.
Thou fliest and bear'st away our woes,
And as thy shadowy trains depart,
The memory of sorrow grows
A lighter burden on the heart.
JAMES MIDDLETON.
ANGRY words are lightly spoken
In a rash and thoughtless hour;
Brightest links of life are broken
By their deep insidious power.
Hearts inspiring warmest feeling,
Ne'er before to anger stirr'd,
Oft are rent, past human healing,
By a single angry word.
Poison-drops of care and sorrow,
Bitter poison-drops are they;
Weaving for the coming morrow
Saddest memories of to-day.
Angry words, oh! let them never
From the tongue unbridled slip;
May the heart's best impulse ever
Check them ere they soil the lip!
Love is much too pure and holy,
Friendship is too sacred far,
For a moment's reckless folly
Thus to desolate and mar.
Angry words are lightly spoken;
Bitterest thoughts are rashly stirr'd;
Brightest links of life are broken
By a single angry word.
THE MOONLIGHT OF THE HEART.
On! gaily in life's morning bright
Love speeds the rosy hours;
Illumes each scene with smiling light,
And strews each spot with flowers.
Around his shrine young Hope and Joy
Their fairest gifts impart;
Nor doubts can chill, nor fears destroy,
The sunshine of the heart.
Those flowers will droop, those beams must wane,
But when their glories cease,
A softer spell will still remain
To soothe the soul to peace;
For then shall Friendship's tranquil rays
A hallow'd charm impart;
And cast o'er Life's declining days
The Moonlight of the Heart.
THE melancholy pleasures bring
No healthy, genial bloom;
Corrupt at root, like flowers that spring
And bud upon a tomb.
They raise a joy from grief; but cloy
The mind that with them plays;
And when has vanish'd all the joy,
The grief that caused it stays.
So ruin, when the lightning darts,
With brightness is combined;
And so the brightness soon departs,
But leaves the scathe behind.
The moon is powerless with her beam
To ripen or to warm;
Yet, when she gazes on the stream,
Reflects in it her form.
So melancholy never tints
The mind that owns her care
With health or warmth, but only prints
Her own cold image there.
HAIL! hail to England's merry bells!
How oft, when in a foreign clime,
I've heard the never-varying chime,
Which falls like sadness on the ear,
And speaks of vows and penance drear
How oft my wandering thoughts would roam
To England's free and happy home,
Her cultured fields, and woody dells,
And sigh for England's merry bells!
Hail! hail to England's merry bells!
Long stand those holy fanes! which send
Your peaceful music o'er the land!
May they resound to latest days
With sacred hymns of prayer and praise!
And long may public, private weal,
Be welcomed by an echoing peal!
I love to hear that joyful tone,
Which makes our neighbour's bliss our own;
Of frank and social joy it tells,
Diffused by England's merry bells!
DEAR is my little native vale,
The ring-dove builds and murmurs there;
Close by my cot she tells her tale
To every passing villager:
The squirrel leaps from tree to tree,
And shells his nuts at liberty.
orange-groves and myrtle-bowers,
That breathe a gale of fragrance round,
I charm the fairy-footed hours
With my loved lute's romantic sound;
Or crowns of living laurel weave
For those that win the race at eve.
The shepherd's horn at break of day,
The ballet danced in twilight glade,
And canzonet and roundelay
Sung in the silent greenwood shade-
These simple joys, that never fail,
Shall bind me to my native vale.
WEAK and irresolute is man;
The purpose of to-day, Woven with pains into his plan, To-morrow rends away.
The bow well bent, and smart the spring,
Vice seems already slain :
But passion rudely snaps the string,
And it revives again.
Some foe to his upright intent,
Finds out his weaker part;
Virtue engages his assent,
But pleasure wins his heart.
'Tis here the folly of the wise
Through all his heart we view;
And, while his tongue the charge denies,
His conscience owns it true.
Bound on a voyage of awful length,
And dangers little known,
A stranger to superior strength,
Man vainly trusts his own.
But oars alone can ne'er prevail
To reach the distant coast;
The breath of heaven must swell the sail, Or all the toil is lost.
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