We have short time to stay, as you, As quick a growth to meet decay, As your hours do, and dry Like to the Summer's rain; Song. How delicious is the winning Yet remember, 'midst your wooing, Love he comes, and Love he tarries, Laughs and flies, when pressed and bidden. HERRICK. JOHN FORD. Bind the sea to slumber stilly, Love's a fire that needs renewal Of fresh beauty for its fuel: Love's wing moults when caged and captured, Can you keep the bee from ranging, THOMAS CAMPBELL. Dirge. GLORIES, pleasures, pomps, delights, and ease, The outward senses, when the mind Sorrows mingled with contents, prepare Love only reigns in death; though art JOHN FORD.-[From "The Broken Heart."] The Past. THIS Common field, this little brook, Oftener than on the heavens blue? "T is thirty-can it be thirty years Since last I stood upon this plank, And watched the pebbles as they sank? It cometh back;-So blithe, so bright, As though but one short winter's night Had darkened o'er the world since then; It is the same clear dazzling scene:- Yet Nature surely never ranges, The primrose for the thistle-down. Then, why should not the grass be green? Be merry, -as they both have been When I was here an urchin strong? Ah, true-too true! I see the sun Through thirty wintry years hath run, For grave eyes, mirrored in the brook, Usurp the urchin's laughing look! So be it! I have lost,-and won! For, once, the past was poor to me; The future dim; and though the sun Shed life and strength, and I was free, I felt not-knew no grateful pleasure: All seemed but as the common measure: But Now-the experienced Spirit old Turns all the leaden past to gold! BARRY CORNWALL. Home-thoughts, from Abroad. I. OH! to be in England Now that April's there, And whoever wakes in England Sees, some morning, unaware, That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough II. And after April, when May follows, And the whitethroat builds, and all the swallows— The first fine careless rapture! And though the fields look rough with hoary dew, ROBERT BROWNING. |