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PAST TIMES.

BY BARRY CORNWALL.

OLD acquaintance, shall the nights
You and I once talked together,
Be forgot like common things-
Like some dreary night that brings
Naught, save foul weather?

We were young, when you and I

Talked of golden things together-
Of love and rhyme, of books and men;
Ah! our hearts were buoyant then
As the wild-goose feather!

Twenty years have fled, we know,

Bringing care and changing weather; But hath the heart no backward flights, That we again may see those nights, And laugh together?

Jove's eagle, soaring to the sun,

Renews the past year's mouldering feather:

Ah, why not you and I, then, soar

From age to youth-and dream once more
Long nights together?

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AN EPISTLE TO CHARLES LAMB,

ON HIS EMANCIPATION FROM CLERKSHIP.

(WRITTEN OVEB A FLASK OF SHERRIS.)

DEAR LAMB, I drink to thee-to thee
Married to sweet Liberty!

What! old friend, and art thou freed
From the bondage of the pen?
Free from care and toil, indeed?
Free to wander among men
When and howsoe'er thou wilt?
All thy drops of labor spilt
On those huge and figured pages,
Which will sleep unclasped for ages,
Little knowing who did wield

The quill that traversed their white field?
Come-another mighty health!

Thou hast earn'd thy sum of wealth-
Countless ease-immortal leisure-
Days and nights of boundless pleasure,
Checker'd by no dream of pain,
Such as hangs on clerk-like brain
Like a nightmare, and doth press
The happy soul from happiness.

Oh! happy thou-whose all of time
Day and eve, and morning prime)

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Loiter, with mien 'twixt grave and gay→
Or take, along some pathway sweet,
Thy calm suburbon way?

Happy beyond that man of Ross,

Whom mere content could ne'er engross,

Art thou with hope, health, "learned leisure," Friends, books, thy thoughts-an endless pleasure! -Yet-yet-(for when was pleasure made Sunshine all without a shade?)

Thou, perhaps, as now thou rovest

Through the busy scenes thou lovest,

With an Idler's careless look,

Turning some moth-pierced book,

Feel'st a sharp and sudden wo

For visions vanished long ago!

And then, thou think'st how time has fled

Over thy unsilvered head,

Snatching many a fellow mind

Away, and leaving-what ?-behind!

Naught, alas! save joy and pain
Mingled ever, like a strain
Of music where the discords vie
With the truer harmony.
So, perhaps, with thee the vein
Is sullied ever-so the chain
Of habits and affections old,
Like a weight of solid gold,
Presseth on thy gentle breast,
Till sorrow rob thee of thy rest.

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Aye: so't must be! E'en I (whose lot The fairy Love so long forgot),

Seated beside this Sherris wine,

And near to books, and shapes divine,
Which poets and the painters past
Have wrought in lines that aye shall last-
E'en I, with Shakespeare's self beside me,
And one whose tender talk can guide me
Through fears, and pains, and troublous themes,
Whose smile doth fall upon my dreams

Like sunshine on a stormy sea-
Want something-when I think of thee!

FRIENDSHIP TILL DEATH.

BY JOANNA BAILLIE.

HAND in hand we have enjoyed

The playful term of infancy together;

And in the rougher path of ripened years

We've been each other's stay. Dark lowers our

fate,

And terrible the storm that gathers o'er us;

But nothing, till that latest agony

Which severs thee from nature, shall unloose

This fixed and sacred hold. In thy dark prison

house;

In the terrific face of armed law;

Yea, on the scaffold, if it needs must be,

I never will forsake thee.

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