BLESSINGS on the blessing children, sweetest gifts of Heaven to earth,
Filling all the heart with gladness, filling all the house with mirth;
Bringing with them native sweetness, pictures of the primal bloom
Which the bliss for ever gladdens, of the region whence they come;
Bringing with them joyous impulse of a state withouten care,
And a buoyant faith in being, which makes all in nature fair;
Not a doubt to dim the distance, not a grief to vex the nigh,
And a hope that in existence, finds each hour a luxury;
Going singing, bounding, brightening-never fearing as they go,
That the innocent shall tremble, and the loving find a foe;
In the daylight, in the starlight, still with thought that freely flies,
Prompt and joyous, with no question of the beauty in the skies;
Genial fancies winning raptures, as the bee still sucks her store,
All the present still a garden glean'd a thousand times before;
All the future, but a region, where the happy serving thought,
Still depicts a thousand blessings, by the wingéd hunter caught;
Life a chase where blushing pleasures only seem to strive in flight,
Lingering to be caught, and yielding gladly to the proud delight;
As the maiden, through the alleys, looking backward as she flies,
Woos the fond pursuer onward, with the love-light in her eyes.
Oh! the happy life in children, still restoring joy to ours,
Making for the forest music, planting for the wayside flowers;
Back recalling all the sweetness, in a pleasure pure as rare,
Back the past of hope and rapture bringing to the heart of care.
How, as swell the happy voices, bursting through the shady grove,
Memories take the place of sorrows, time restores the sway to love!
We are in the shouting comrades, shaking off the load of years,
Thought forgetting, strifes and trials, doubts and agonies and tears;
We are in the bounding urchin, as o'er hill and plain he darts,
Share the struggle and the triumph, gladdening in his heart of hearts;
What an image of the vigour and the glorious grace we knew,
When to eager youth from boyhood, at a single bound we grew!
Even such our slender beauty, such upon our cheek the glow,
In our eyes the life and gladness-of our blood the overflow.
Bless the mother of the urchin! in his form we see her truth:
He is now the very picture of the memories in our youth;
Never can we doubt the forehead, nor the sunny flowing hair,
Nor the smiling in the dimple speaking chin and cheek so fair:
Bless the mother of the young one! he hath blended in his grace,
All the hope and joy and beauty, kindling once in either face!
Oh! the happy faith of children! that is glad in all it sees,
And with never need of thinking, pierces still its mysteries;
In simplicity profoundest, in their soul abundance blest,
Wise in value of the sportive, and in restlessness at rest;
Lacking every creed yet having faith so large in all they see,
That to know is still to gladden, and 'tis rapture but to be.
What trim fancies bring them flowers; what rare spirits walk their wood,
What a wondrous world the moonlight harbours of the gay and good!
Unto them the very tempest walks in glories grateful still,
And the lightning gleams, a seraph, to persuade them to the hill:
"Tis a sweet and loving spirit, that throughout the midnight rains,
Broods beside the shutter'd windows, and with gentle love complains;
And how wooing, how exalting, with the richness of her dyes,
Spans the painter of the rainbow, her bright arch along the skies,
With a dream like Jacob's ladder, showing to the fancy's sight,
How 'twere easy for the sad one to escape to worlds of light!
Ah! the wisdom of such fancies, and the truth in every dream,
That to faith confiding offers, cheering every gloom, a gleam!
Happy hearts, still cherish fondly each delusion of your youth,
Joy is born of well believing, and the fiction wraps the truth.
THE shadows lay along Broadway-
'Twas near the twilight-tide-
And slowly there a lady fair
Was walking in her pride.
Alone walked she; but, viewlessly,
Walked spirits at her side.
Peace charmed the street beneath her feet,
And Honour charmed the air;
And all astir looked kind on her,
And called her good as fair-
For all God ever gave to her
She kept with chary care.
She kept with care her beauties rare
From lovers warm and true-
For her heart was cold to all but gold,
And the rich came not to woo-
But honoured well are charms to sell
If priests the selling do.
Now walking there was one more fair
A slight girl, lily-pale;
And she had unseen company
To make the spirit quail—
"Twixt Want and Scorn she walked forlorn, And nothing could avail.
No mercy now can clear her brow
For this world's peace to pray;
For, as love's wild prayer dissolved in air,
Her woman's heart gave way!—
But the sin forgiven by Christ in heaven
By man is curst alway!
I WAS in Greece. It was the hour of noon,
And the Egean wind had dropped asleep
Upon Hymettus, and the thymy isles
Of Salamis and Egina lay hung
Like clouds upon the bright and breathless sea.
I had climbed up th' Acropolis at morn,
And hours had fled as time will in a dream
Amid its deathless ruins-for the air
Is full of spirits in these mighty fanes,
And they walk with you! As it sultrier grew,
I laid me down within a shadow deep
Of a tall column of the Parthenon,
And in an absent idleness of thought
I scrawled upon the smooth and marble base.
Tell me, O memory, what wrote I there?
The name of a sweet child I knew at Rome!
I was in Asia. 'Twas a peerless night Upon the plains of Sardis, and the moon, Touching my eyelids through the wind-stirred tent, Iad witched me from my slumber. I arose,
And silently stole forth, and by the brink
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