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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 held?
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 tine
Day and eve, and morning prime;

Is fill'd with talk on pleasant themes-
Or visions quaint, which come in dreams
Such as panther'd Bacchus rules,
When his rod is on "the schools,"
Mixing wisdom with their wine-
Or, perhaps, thy wit so fine
Strayeth in some elder book
Whereon our modern Solons look,
With severe ungifted eyes,
Wondering what thou seest to prize.
Happy thou, whose skill can take
Pleasure at each turn, and slake
Thy thirst by every fountain's brink,
Where less wise men would pause to shrink :

Sometimes 'mid stately avenues

With Cowley thou, or Marvel's muse,
Dost walk; or Gray, by Eton towers;
Or Pope, in Hampton's chestnut bowers;
Or Walton, by his loved Lea stream;
Or dost thou with our Milton dream
Of Eden and the Apocalypse,
And hear the words from his great lips'
Speak-in what grove or hazel shade,
For "musing meditation made,"
Dost wander?-or on Penshurst lawn,
Where Sidney's fame had time to dawn
And die, ere yet the hate of Men
Could envy at his perfect pen?

Or, dost thou, in some London street
(With voices fill'd and thronging feet)

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.

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.

WE HAVE BEEN FRIENDS TOGETHER.

BY HON. MRS. NORTON.

We have been friends together,

In sunshine and in shade;

Since first beneath the chesnut trees
In infancy we play'd.

But coldness dwells within thy heart,
A cloud is on thy brow;

We have been friends together-
Shall a light word part us now?

We have been gay together;

We have laugh'd at little jests;
For the fount of hope was gushing
Warm and joyous in our breasts.
But laughter now hath fled thy lip,
And sullen glooms thy brow
We have been gay together-

Shall a light word part us now?

We have been sad together,

We have wept with bitter tears,

O'er the grass-grown graves, where slumber'd The hopes of early years.

The voices which are silent there

Would bid thee clear thy brow;

We have been sad together-
Oh! what shall part us now?

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