MY BOTTLES.

HEY speak to me of other days
And mutely suffered pain;

They move my heart in many ways,

And move it not in vain.

Upon my shelf, against my wall,

I range them in a row;

66

And murmur Bless ye, one and all,

Dear friends of long ago!"

There's not a label in the lot
But has a tale to tell;
Nor one that I remember not,
And can't remember well.
And gloomily on gloomy days
I love to sit and pore

Upon the ne'er-forgotten phrase,
"The mixture as before."

136

MY BOTTLES.

My own is not a healthy mind,
But broods upon disease;

And nowhere could I hope to find
Companions fit as these.

One bottle brings me back a cough;

One brings me back a cold;
And one a fever warded off

By tonics manifold.

Go, call them empty if ye will ;—

This philosophic brain
Can easily contrive to fill

Those bottles once again—

Those bottles fill with all the fears

And all the hopes of yore;
Till even Life itself appears

A "mixture as before."

AN APHORISM.

PEARS ago, in my days of school,
I fell in a fury twice an hour.

(Years ago I was half a fool,

And foolery made and kept me sour.)

Riper and wiser age has brought

This axiom, simple and yet sublime ; Nothing is worth one angry thought, For loss of temper is loss of time.

All experience tends to teach

The best and the worst of mortal men,

How the limits of life will reach

Only to threescore years and ten.

Life is made of a million parts,

And waste of life is a kind of crime. Why these passionate fits and starts, Since loss of temper is loss of time?

138

AN APHORISM.

I've my enemies, Goodness knows

Who can exist without a few?
Secret slanderers, open foes;

Ready for all that spite can do.

Let them chatter from dawn till eve;

By day or by night, from chime to chime,

I hold my peace for I still believe

That loss of temper is loss of time.

TRICKS OF THE TRADE.

CONFESS that I feel an apology due

To the public who feast on my rhymes;

Many things that I've written are grossly untrue,

Though I've stated them dozens of times.

I regret it; I never will do so again;

My resolves for the future are made.

I will worship the truth, and for ever disdain
To indulge in the tricks of the trade.

I have told ye, my public, of Poverty's pangs;
Of the crust and the pallet of straw ;—
And the Demon of Want with its pitiless fangs
Have I often made efforts to draw.

What a lark !-I am rich; I've a thousand a year,
'Twas a practical joke that I played.

Did I summon a sigh ; did I call up a tear?
It was only a trick of the trade.