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Your fist, old fellow! off they go!-
How are you, Bill? How are you, Joe?

You've won the judge's ermined robe,
You've taught your name to half the globe;
You've sung mankind a deathless strain;
You've made the dead past live again;
The world may call you what it will,
But you and I are Joe and Bill.

The chaffing young folks stare, and say,
"See those old buffers, bent and gray,—
They talk like fellows in their teens!
Mad, poor old boys! That's what it means,"-
And shake their heads; they little know
The throbbing hearts of Bill and Joe!

How Bill forgets his hour of pride,
While Joe sits smiling at his side;
How Joe, in spite of time's disguise,
Finds the old schoolmate in his eyes,-
Those calm, stern eyes, that melt and fill
As Joe looks fondly up at Bill.

Ah, pensive scholar, what is fame?

A fitful tongue of leaping flame;

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LOVE AND MATRIMONY.

to hear,

First Love.

'TIS sweet night on the blue and moonlit deep,

The song and oar of Adria's gondolier,

By distance mellowed, o'er the waters sweep; 'Tis sweet to see the evening star appear; 'Tis sweet to listen as the night-winds creep From leaf to leaf; 'tis sweet to view on high The rainbow, based on ocean, span the sky.

'Tis sweet to hear the watch-dog's honest bark Bay deep-mouthed welcome as we draw near home; 'Tis sweet to know there is an eye will mark Our coming, and look brighter when we c 'Tis sweet to be awakened by the lark,

Or lulled by falling waters; sweet the hum
Of bees, the voice of girls, the song of birds,
The lisp of children, and their earliest words.

Sweet is the vintage, when the showering grapes
In Bacchanal profusion reel to earth,
Purple and gushing; sweet are our escapes
From civic revelry to rural mirth;
Sweet to the miser are his glittering heaps;

Sweet to the father is his first-born's birth; Sweet is revenge, especially to women, Pillage to soldiers, prize-money to seamen.

'Tis sweet to win, no matter how, one's laurels,
By blood or ink; 'tis sweet to put an end
To strife; 'tis sometimes sweet to have our quarrels,
Particularly with a tiresome friend;

Sweet is old wine in bottles, ale in barrels;

Dear is the helpless creature we defend Against the world; and dear the school-boy spot We ne'er forget, though there we are forgot.

But sweeter still than this; than these, than all,
Is first and passionate love,—it stands alone,
Like Adam's recollection of his fall;

The tree of knowledge has been plucked,-all's known,

And life yields nothing further to recall

Worthy of this ambrosial sin, so shown,

No doubt in fable, as the unforgiven

Fire which Prometheus, filched for us from heaven. -Lord Byron (Don Juan.)

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She tied her raven ringlets in. But not alone in the silken snare Did she catch her lovely floating hair, For, tying her bonnet under her chin, She tied a young man's heart within.

They were strolling together up the hill,
Where the wind came blowing merry and chill;
And it blew the curls a frolicsome race,

All over the happy peach-colored face.

Till scolding and laughing, she tied them in,
Under her beautiful dimpled chin.

And it blew a color, bright as the bloom,
Of the pinkest fuchsia's tossing plume,
All over the cheeks of the prettiest girl
That ever imprisoned a romping curl,
Or, in tying her bonnet under her chin,
Tied a young man's heart within.

Steeper and steeper grew the hill,
Madder, merrier, chillier still,

The western wind blew down, and played
The wildest tricks with the little maid,
As, tying her bonnet under her chin,
She tied a young man's heart within.

O western wind, do you think it was fair
To play such tricks with her floating hair?
To gladly, gleefully, do your best
To blow her against the young man's breast,
Where he has gladly folded her in,
And kissed her mouth and dimpled chin?

O Ellery Vane, you little thought

An hour ago, when you besought
This country lass to walk with you,
After the sun had dried the dew,
What terrible danger you'd be in,
As she tied her bonnet under her chin.
-Nora Perry.

Love.

F in youth, the universe is majestically unveiling, and everywhere heaven revealing itself on earth, nowhere to the young man does this heaven on earth so immediately reveal itself as in the young maiden. Strangely enough, in this strange life of ours, it has been so appointed.

In every well-conditioned stripling, as I conjecture, there already blooms a certain prospective Paradise, cheered by some fairest Eve; nor in the stately vistas, and flowerage and foliage of that garden, is a tree of knowledge, beautiful and awful in the midst thereof, wanting. Perhaps, too, the whole is but the lovelier if cherubim and a flaming sword divide it from all footsteps of men, and grant him, the imaginative stripling, only the view, not the entrance. Happy season of virtuous youth, when shame is still an impassable barrier; and the sacred air-cities of hope have not shrunk into the mean clay hamlets of reality, and man, by his nature, is yet infinite and free!

-Thomas Carlyle.

The Immortality of Love.

HEY sin who tell us love can die!

With life all other passions fly,

All others are but vanity;
In heaven ambition cannot dwell,
Nor avarice in the vaults of hell;
Earthly these passions of the earth,
They perish where they have their birth;
But love is indestructible;

Its holy flame forever burneth.

From heaven it came, to heaven returneth.
Too oft on earth a troubled guest,

At times deceived, at times oppress'd,
It here is tried and purified,
Then hath in heaven its perfect rest:
It soweth here with toil and care,
But the harvest-time of love is there.
Oh, when a mother meets on high
The babe she lost in infancy,
Hath she not then, for pains and fears,
The day of woe, the watchful night,
For all her sorrow, all her tears,

An over-payment of delight?

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Ode To Love.

To sing thee, oh Immortal Love, who knows

By what majestic voices long ago

Thy eulogy was said.

I do not dare

To bring a voice which thou didst never train,

To the high soaring difficult air

Of thy celestial strain.

Yet how of Life to sing, and yet not tell of Love;

And since thou art the source of song,

And all our hearts dost move,

I will essay thy praise, nor fear to do thee wrong. For see, the lovers go

With lingering steps and slow,

By dim arcades where sunbeams scarcely reach ;

On sea-struck northern beach,

Or breathless tropic strand,

By evening breezes fanned;
Or through the thick life-laden air

Of some great city; or through the hush

Of summer twilights 'midst the corn;
When all the dying heavens glow and blush

Or the young moonlight curves its crescent horn.
Oh, wondrous bond that binds
In one sweet concord separate minds,

And from their union gives
To the rapt gazer's eye

A finer essence and more high,
A young and winged God, who lives

In purer air, and seeks a loftier sky!

If growing cares and lower aims should banish
All thought of heavenly hopes and higher things,
While we can mount upon thy soaring wings

They shall not wholly vanish.

Thou art the immortal part of man, the soul,
Which, scorning earth's control,

Lifts us from selfish thought and groveling gains.

Thou always, whilst thy power remains,

Canst pierce the dull dead weight of cloud,

By which our thought is bowed,

And raise our clear and cleansed eyes

To the eternal skies.

No sting of sense it is

That gives thee wing and lifts thee to the heaven. Too high art thou for this;

Ethereal, pure, free from earth's grosser leaven

If aught of sense be thine, it is the air,
Whose weight can lift thee up to soar,
Which can thy heavenward pinions bear

From brute earth more and more

Up to the fount of Power and Love
Whence all things move.

And see, the lovers go

With lingering steps and slow,

Over all the world together, all in all,
Over all the world! The empires fall;
The onward march of Man seems spent ;
The nations rot in dull content;

The blight of war, a bitter flood,

From continent to continent,

Rolls on with waves of blood;

The light of knowledge sinks, the fire of thought burns low;

There seems scant thought of God; but yet
One power there is men ne'er forget.

And still through every land beneath the skies,

Rapt, careless, looking in each other's eyes,
With lingering steps and slow,

The lovers go.

A pillar of light

Goes evermore before their dazzled eyes.

Purple and golden bright,

Youth's vast horizons spread and the unbounded skies.

Oh, blessed dream which for awhile dost hide

The sorrows of the world and leave life glorified!
Oh, blessed light that rises still,
Young eyes and eager souls to fill!

Linked arms and hearts aglow;
Wherever man is more than brute,
To this self-sacrifice our nature grow.
Rapt each in each they go, and mute,
Listening to the sweet song

Which Love, with unheard accents, all day long

Sings to them, like a hidden bird,
Sweeter than e'er was seen or heard,
Which from life's thick-leaved tree
Sings sadly, merrily,

A strange, mixed song, a mystic strain,
Which rises now to joy and jollity,
Now seemeth to complain;

But with a sweeter music far than this
Of earth-born melodies.

He sees within her eyes

That which his nature needs to be complete

The grace, the pureness, the diviner sweet, Which to rude souls and strong our Life denies; The vision of his nightly dream.

More pure than e'er did seem

The nymphs of old, by wood, or hill, or stream.

I

Platonic.

HAD sworn to be a bachelor, she had sworn to be a maid,

For we quite agreed in doubting whether matrimony paid;

Besides, we had our higher loves, fair science ruled my heart, [in art. And she said her young affections were all wound up

So we laughed at those wise men, who say that friendship cannot live

'Twixt man and woman, unless each has something more to give;

We would be friends, and friends as true as e'er were man and man

I'd be a second David, and she Miss Jonathan.

We scorned all sentimental trash-vows, kisses, tears and sighs;

High friendship, such as ours, might well such childish arts despise;

We liked each other, that was all, quite all there was

to say,

So we just shook hands upon it, in a business sort of

way.

We shared our secrets and our joys, together hoped and feared,

With common purpose sought the goal that young ambition reared;

We dreamed together of the days, the dream-bright lays to come;

We are strictly confidential, and we call each other "chum."

And many a day we wandered together o'er the hills,
I seeking bugs and butterflies, and she the ruined mills
And rustic bridges and the like, that picture makers
prize

To run in with their waterfalls, and groves, and sum. mer skies.

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