Tempered with well-boiled water!

These make the long night shorter,—

Forgetting not

Good stout old English porter.

Old wood to burn!

Ay, bring the hill-side beech

From where the owlets meet and screech,
And ravens croak;

The crackling pine, and cedar sweet;
Bring too a clump of fragrant peat,

Dug 'neath the fern;

The knotted oak,

A fagot too, perhap,

Whose bright flame, dancing, winking,

Shall light us at our drinking;

While the oozing sap

13

Shall make sweet music to our thinking. 26

Old books to read!

Ay, bring those nodes of wit,

The brazen-clasped, the vellum writ,

Time-honored tomes!

The same my grandsire scanned before,
The same my grandsire thumbèd o'er,
The same his sire from college bore,

The well-earned meed

Of Oxford's domes:

Old Homer blind,

Old Horace, rake Anacreon, by
Old Tully, Plautus, Terence lie;

Auld Lang Syne

Mort Arthur's olden minstrelsie,

Quaint Burton, quainter Spenser, ay!
And Gervase Markham's venerie-

Nor leave behind

The Holye Book by which we live and die. 43

Old friends to talk!

Ay, bring those chosen few,

The wise, the courtly, and the true,

So rarely found;

Him for my wine, him for my stud,
Him for my easel, distich, bud
In mountain walk!

Bring Walter good,

With soulful Fred, and learned Will,
And thee, my alter ego (dearer still
For every mood).

These add a bouquet to my wine!
These add a sparkle to my pine!

If these I tine,

Can books, or fire, or wine be good?

1838.

Robert Hinckley Messinger.

58

AULD LANG SYNE

SHOULD auld acquaintance be forgot,
And never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And auld lang syne!

CHORUS

For auld lang syne, my dear,

For auld lang syne,

We'll tak a cup o' kindness yet,

For auld lang syne.

And surely ye'll be your pint-stowp,

And surely I'll be mine,

And we'll tak a cup o' kindness yet
For auld lang syne!

We twa hae run about the braes,

And pu'd the gowans fine,

But we've wandered mony a weary fit

Sin' auld lang syne.

We twa hae paidl'd in the burn

Frae morning sun till dine,

8

12

16

But seas between us braid hae roar'd

20

Sin' auld lang syne.

And there's a hand, my trusty fiere,
And gie's a hand o' thine,

And we'll tak a right guid-willie waught
For auld lang syne.

1788.

1796.

Robert Burns.

24

MY LOST YOUTH

OFTEN I think of the beautiful town
That is seated by the sea;
Often in thought go up and down

The pleasant streets of that dear old town,
And my youth comes back to me.
And a verse of a Lapland song
Is haunting my memory still :
"A boy's will is the wind's will,
And the thoughts of youth are long, long
thoughts."

I can see the shadowy lines of its trees,
And catch, in sudden gleams,

The sheen of the far-surrounding seas,
And islands that were the Hesperides
Of all my boyish dreams.

And the burden of that old song,
It murmurs and whispers still:
"A boy's will is the wind's will,

And the thoughts of youth are long, long

thoughts."

I remember the black wharves and the slips,
And the sea-tides tossing free;

And Spanish sailors with bearded lips,
And the beauty and mystery of the ships,

9

18

And the magic of the sea.

66

And the voice of that wayward song
Is singing and saying still:

A boy's will is the wind's will,

And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts."

I remember the bulwarks by the shore,
And the fort upon the hill;

The sunrise gun with its hollow roar,
The drum-beat repeated o'er and o'er,
And the bugle wild and shrill.

And the music of that old song
Throbs in my memory still:
"A boy's will is the wind's will,
And the thoughts of youth are long, long
thoughts."

I remember the sea-fight far away,
How it thunder'd o'er the tide!
And the dead captains, as they lay

In their graves, o'erlooking the tranquil bay
Where they in battle died.

And the sound of that mournful song

Goes through me with a thrill:

A boy's will is the wind's will,

And the thoughts of youth are long, long

thoughts."

I can see the breezy dome of groves,

The shadows of Deering's Woods;

27

36

45

And the friendships old and the early loves Come back with a Sabbath sound, as of doves