AN OLD MAN'S ASPIRATION.

O GLORIOUS Sun! whose car sublime
Unerring since the birth of time,

In glad magnificence hath run its race;-
O day's delight-God-painted sky,

O moon and stars, whose galaxy

Illuminates the night thro' all the realms of space.

O poetry of forms and hues,

Resplendent Earth! whose varied views

In such harmonious beauty are combined;

And thou, O palpitating Sea,

Who holdest this fair mystery

In the wide circle of thy thrilling arms enshrined,

Hear me, Oh hear while I impart

The deep conviction of my heart, That such a theatre august and grand,

Whose author, actors, awful play,

Are God, mankind, a judgment day, Was for some higher aim, some holier purpose plann'd.

I will not, nay I cannot, deem

This fair Creation's moral scheme,

That seems so crude, mysterious, misapplied,

Meant to conclude as it began,

Unworthy the material plan

With whose perfections rare its failures are allied.

As in our individual fate,

Our manhood and maturer date,

Correct the faults and follies of our youth,

So will the world, I fondly hope,

With added years give fuller scope

To the display and love of wisdom, justice, truth.

'Tis this that makes my feelings glow,

My bosom thrill, my tears o'erflow,

At any deed magnanimous sublime;

"Tis this that re-assures my soul,

When nations shun the forward goal,

And retrograde awhile in ignorance and crime.

Mine is no hopeless dream of some

Impeccable Millennium,

When saints and angels shall inhabit earth;

But a conviction deep, intense,

That man was meant by Providence Progressively to reach a higher moral worth.

On this dear faith's sustaining truth

Hath my soul brooded from its youth,

As heaven's best gift, and earth's most cheering dower.

Oh! may I still, in life's decline,

Hold unimpair'd this creed benign,

And mine old age attest its meliorating power!

GIPSIES.

WHETHER from India's burning plains,

Or wild Bohemia's domains,

Your steps were first directed;

Or whether ye be Egypt's sons,

Whose stream, like Nile's, for ever runs

With sources undetected:

Arabs of Europe! Gipsy race!

Your Eastern manners, garb, and face

Appear a strange chimera;

None, none but you can now be styled

Romantic, picturesque, and wild,

In this prosaic era.

Ye sole freebooters of the wood,

Since Adam Bell and Robin Hood:

Kept everywhere asunder

From other tribes,-King, Church, and State Spurning, and only dedicate

To freedom, sloth, and plunder;

Your forest-camp,-the forms one sees

Banditti-like amid the trees,

The ragged donkeys grazing,

The Sybil's eye prophetic, bright

With flashes of the fitful light

Beneath the caldron blazing,—

O'er my young mind strange terrors threw :

Thy History gave me, Moore Carew!

A more exalted notion

Of Gipsy life; nor can I yet

Gaze on your tents, and quite forget

My former deep emotion.