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Too calm to suffer pain, too loving to forget,
And reaching down a succoring hand
To where the sufferers are,

To lift them to the tranquil heights afar.
Whereon Time's conquerors stand.
And when the precious hours are done,
How sweet at set of sun

To gather up the fair laborious day!
To have struck some blow for right
With tongue or pen;

To have smoothed the path to light
For wandering men;

To have chased some fiend of Ill away;

A little backward to have thrust

The instant powers of Drink and Lust;
To have borne down Giant Despair;
To have dealt a blow at Care!

How sweet to light again the glow

Of warmer fires than youth's, tho' all the blood runs slow!

Oh! is there any joy,

Of all that come to girl or boy

Or manhood's calmer weal and ease,

To vie with these?

Here is some fitting profit day by day,

Which none can render less;

Some glorious gain Fate cannot take away,
Nor Time depress.

Oh, brother, fainting on your road!
Poor sister, whom the righteous shun!

There comes for you, ere life and strength be done,
An arm to bear your load.

A feeble body, maybe bent, and old,
But bearing 'midst the chills of age

A deeper glow than youth's; a nobler rage;

A calm heart, yet not cold.

A man or woman, withered perhaps, or bent,

To whom pursuit of gold or fame

Is as a fire grown cold, an empty name,
Whom thoughts of Love no more allure,
Who in a self-made nunnery dwell,

A cloister calm and pure,

A beatific peace greater than tongue can tell.

And sweet it is to take,

With something of the eager haste of youth
Some fainter glimpse of Truth
For its own sake;

To observe the ways of bee, or plant, or bird;
To trace in Nature the ineffable Word,
Which by the gradual wear of secular time,

Has worked its work sublime;

To have touched, with infinite gropings dim,
Nature's extremest outward rim;

To have found some weed or shell unknown before;
To advance Thought's infinite march a foot pace

more;

To make or to declare laws just and sage;

These are the joys of Age.

Or by the evening hearth, in the old chair,
With children's children at our knees,

So like, yet so unlike the little ones of old-
Some little lad with curls of gold,
Some little maid demurely fair,

To sit, girt round with ease,
And feel how sweet it is to live,
Careless what fate may give;

To think, with gentle yearning mind,

Of dear souls who have crossed the Infinite Sea;

To muse with cheerful hope of what shall be
For those we leave behind

When the night comes which knows no earthly morn;
Yet mingled with the young in hopes and fears,
And bringing from the treasure-house of years,
Some fair-set counsel long-time worn;

To let the riper days of life,
The tumult and the strife,
Go by, and in their stead
Dwell with the living past,
So living, yet so dead.

The mother's kiss upon the sleeper's brow,
The little fish caught from the brook,
The dead child-sister's gentle voice and look,
The school days and the father's parting hand;
The days so far removed, yet oh! so near,

So full of precious memories dear;

The wonder of flying Time, so hard to understand!

Not in clear eye or ear

Dwells our chief profit here.

We are not as the brutes, who fade, and make no sign; We are sustained where'er we go,

In happiness and woe,

By some indwelling faculty divine,
Which lifts us from the deep

Of failing senses, aye, and duller brain,
And wafts us back to youth again;
And as a vision fair dividing sleep,
Pierces the vasts behind, the voids before,
And opens to us an invisible gate,

And sets our winged footsteps, scorning Time and Fate
At the celestial door.

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I

SAW him once before,

As he passed by the door;
And again

The pavement stones resound
As he totters o'er the ground
With his cane.

They say that in his prime,
Ere the pruning-knife of time
Cut him down,

Not a better man was found
By the crier on his round

Through the town.

But now he walks the streets,
And he looks at all he meets
So forlorn,

As he shakes his feeble head,
That it seems as if he said,
"They are gone."

The mossy marbles rest

On the lips that he has pressed In their bloom;

The Last Leaf.

And the names he loved to hear Have been carved for many a year

On the tomb.

My grandmamma has said— Poor old lady! she is dead Long ago

That he had a Roman nose, And his cheek was like a rose In the snow.

But now his nose is thin,
And it rests upon his chin
Like a staff;

And a crook is in his back,
And a melancholy crack
In his laugh.

I know it is a sin

For me to sit and grin

At him here;

But the old three cornered hat, And the breeches-and all that,

Are so queer!

And if I should live to be
The last leaf upon the tree
In the spring,

Let them smile as I do now,
At the old forsaken bough
Where I cling.

-Oliver Wendell Holmes.

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The Old Man Dreams.

FOR one hour of joyful youth! Give back my twentieth spring! I'd rather laugh a bright-haired boy, Than reign a gray-beard king!

Off with the wrinkled spoils of age!
Away with learning's crown!
Tear out life's wisdom-written page,
And dash its trophies down!

One moment let my life-blood stream
From boyhood's fount of fame!
Give me one giddy, reeling dream
Of life, all love and flame!

My listening angel heard the prayer,
And, calmly smiling, said,
"If I but touch thy silvered hair,
Thy hasty wish hath sped.

"But is there nothing in thy track
To bid thee fondly stay,

While the swift seasons hurry back
To find the wished-for day?"

Ah, truest soul of womanhood! Without thee what were life?

One bliss I cannot leave behind:
I'll take-my-precious-wife!
The angel took a sapphire pen

And wrote in rainbow dew,
"The man would be a boy again,
And be a husband too!

"And is there nothing yet unsaid,
Before the change appears?
Remember, all their gifts have fled
With those dissolving years!"
Why, yes; for memory would recall
My fond paternal joys;

I could not bear to leave them 11:
I'll take-my-girl-and-boys!
The smiling angel dropped his pen-
"Why, this will never do;

The man would be a boy again,
And be a father too!"

And so I laughed—my laughter woke
The household with its noise-
And wrote my dream when morning broke
To please the gray-haired boys.

-Oliver Wendell Holmes.

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LL the world's a stage,

AL

Human Life.

And all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances, And one man, in his time, plays many parts; His acts being seven ages. At first the infant. Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms; And then the whining schoolboy with his satchel And shining morning face, creeping like a snail Unwillingly to school. And then the lover, Sighing like furnace, with a woful ballad Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier, Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard; Jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel; Seeking the bubble reputation

Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice,

In fair, round belly, with good capon lined,
With eyes severe, and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances,
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slippered pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose, and pouch on side;
His youthful hose well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness, and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.
-Shakespeare.

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Granny's Eyes.

Granny sits dreaming half the day; Life's eventide for her grows gray; Even the sunset's lingering glow

Fades fast away.

Dear Granny! sun, and moon, and stars
For her have lost their wonted light;
The eyes that once were sparkling bright
Can see no more the golden bars,
And all is night.

Yet God is good, and with the cross
He sends such love her years to bless-
Such wealth of patient tenderness-
That day by day dear Granny's loss

Grows less and less.

And children's children haunt the place Where Granny sits; and, full of glee, They clamber wildly on her knee,

And love to kiss the dear old face
That seems to see.

And one wee figure, quaintly wise,
Will linger there when others play,
And never care to run away:
"We always call her 'Granny's Eyes,""
The children say.

For, hour by hour, by Granny's side
The little maid will sit and read;
Or, perhaps, the tottering footsteps lead,
So that the blind, with such fond guide,
Can see indeed.

So Granny dear is glad and bright,
Fully content on earth to stay,
Till, in the Father's own good way,
The sun shall shine, and all the night
Be turned to day.
-G. Weatherly.

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I'm Growing Old.

My nights are blessed with sweetest sleep;

I feel no symptoms of decay;

I have no cause to mourn nor weep,

My foes are impotent and shy;

My friends are neither false nor cold, And yet, of late, I often sigh,

I'm growing old!

My growing talk of olden times,

My growing thirst for early news,

My growing apathy to rhymes,

My growing love of easy shoes,

My growing hate of crowds and noise,
My growing fear of taking cold,
All whisper in the plainest voice,
I'm growing old.

I'm growing fonder of my staff;
I'm growing dimmer in the eyes;
I'm growing fainter in my laugh;
I'm growing deeper in my sighs;

I'm growing careless of my dress;
I'm growing frugal of my gold;
I'm growing wise; I'm growing,- yes,-
I'm growing old!

I see it in my changing taste;
I see it in my changing hair;

I see it in my growing waist;
I see it in my growing heir;
A thousand signs proclaim the truth,
As plain as truth was ever told,
That, even in my vaunted youth,
I'm growing old!

Ah me! my very laurels breathe
The tale in my reluctant ears,
And every boon the hours bequeath
But makes me debtor to the years!
E'en Flattery's honeyed words declare
The secret she would fain withhold,
And tells in "How young you are!"
I'm growing old!

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