PAST TIMES. BY BARRY CORNWALL. OLD acquaintance, shall the nights We were young, when you and I Talked of golden things together- 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 AN EPISTLE TO CHARLES LAMB, ON HIS EMANCIPATION FROM CLERKSHIP. (WRITTEN OVEB A FLASK OF SHERRIS.) DEAR LAMB, I drink to thee-to thee What! old friend, and art thou freed The quill that traversed their white field? Thou hast earn'd thy sum of wealth- Oh! happy thou-whose all of time Loiter, with mien 'twixt grave and gay→ 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 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, Like sunshine on a stormy sea- 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. |