Too long I am toss'd like the driven foam;
But now, proud world, I'm going home.

Good-bye to Flattery's fawning face;
To Grandeur with his wise grimace;
To upstart Wealth's averted eye;
To supple office, low and high;
To crowded halls, to court and street,
To frozen hearts, and hasting feet,
To those who go, and those who come,
Good-bye, proud world, I'm going home.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1803-'82.

BETTER MOMENTS.

My Mother's voice! how often creeps
Its cadence on my lonely hours!
Like healing sent on wings of sleep,
Or dew to the unconscious flowers.
I can forget her melting prayer
While leaping pulses madly fly,
But in the still unbroken air

Her gentle tone comes stealing by,
And years, and sin, and manhood flee,
And leave me at my mother's knee.

Nathaniel P. Willis, 1807-'67.

THE SOLDIER'S WIDOW.

WOE! for my vine-clad home!

That it should ever be so dark to me,

With its bright threshold, and its whispering tree !

That I should ever come,

Fearing the lonely echo of a tread,

Beneath the roof-tree of my glorious dead!

Lead on my orphan boy 1 !

Thy home is not so desolate to thee,

And the low shiver in the linden tree

May bring to thee a joy;

But, oh! how dark is the bright home before thee, To her who with a joyous spirit bore thee!

Nathaniel P. Willis.

AN OLD MAN'S HEART.

FOR it stirs the blood in an old man's heart,
And makes his pulses fly,

To catch the thrill of a happy voice,

And the light of a pleasant eye.

Nathaniel P. Willis.

LOST FEELINGS.

OH! weep not that our beauty wears
Beneath the wings of Time;
That age o'erclouds the brow with cares
That once was raised sublime.

But mourn the inward wreck we feel
As hoary years depart,

And Time's effacing fingers steal
Young feelings from the heart!

Robert Montgomery, 1807-'55.

THE STARRY HEAVENS.

How sweet to gaze upon your placid eyes,
In lambent beauty looking from the skies!
And when, oblivious of the world, we stray
At dead of night along some noiseless way,
How the heart mingles with the moonlit hour,
As if the starry heavens suffused a power!
Robert Montgomery.

THE OCEAN.

AND thou vast ocean, on whose awful face
Time's iron feet can print no ruin-trace.

Robert Montgomery.

I THINK ON THEE.

I THINK on thee in the night,
When all beside is still,

And the moon comes out, with her pale, sad light

To sit on the lonely hill;

When the stars are all like dreams,

And the breezes all like sighs,

And there comes a voice from the far-off streams,
Like thy spirit's low replies.

Thomas K. Hervey, 1804-'59.

THE VALE OF CHILDHOOD.

YEARS have gone by I—and life's lowlands are past, And I stand on the hill which I sigh'd for, at last; But I turn from the summit that once was my star, To the vale of my childhood, seen dimly and far. Thomas K. Hervey.

OUR DREAM OF LOVE.

ADIEU, adieu!—our dream of love
Was far too sweet to linger long;
Such hopes may bloom in bowers above,
But here they mock the fond and young.

Thomas K. Hervey.

THE CONVICT SHIP.

WHO, as the beautiful pageant sweeps by-
Music around her, and sunshine on high-
Pauses to think, amid glitter and show,
Oh! there be hearts that are breaking below?
Thomas K. Hervey.

EARLY LOVE.

THE love that took an early root,

And had an early doom.

Thomas K. Hervey

LITTLE STREAMS.

Down in valleys green and lowly,
Murmuring not and gliding slowly;

Up in mountain-hollows wild,
Fretting like a peevish child;
Through the hamlet, where all day
In their waves the children play;
Running west or running east,
Doing good to man and beast-
Always giving, weary never,
Little streams, I love you ever.

Mary Howitt, 1804-

OLD ENGLAND.

OLD England is our home, and Englishmen are we;
Our tongue is known ir every land, our flag in every sea.

Mary Howitt.

THE BURIAL OF THE DEAD.

THAN wander back to life, and lean
On our frail love once more.
'Tis sweet, as year by year we lose
Friends out of sight, in faith to muse
How grows in Paradise our store.

John Keble, 1800-'66.

THE BIBLE.

THERE is a book, who runs may read,
Which heavenly truth imparts,
And all the lore its scholars need-
Pure eyes and loving hearts.

John Keble.

ABIDE WITH ME.

ABIDE with me from morn till eve,
For without Thee I cannot live;
Abide with me when night is nigh,
For without Thee I dare not die.

John Keble.

MIDNIGHT MASS FOR THE DYING YEAR.

YES, the year is growing old,

And his eye is pale and blear'd;
Death, with frosty hand and cold,
Plucks the old man by the beard,
Sorely, sorely!

The leaves are falling, falling,
Solemnly and slow;

Caw! caw the rooks are calling.
It is a sound of woe,
A sound of woe!

Through woods and mountain-passes
The winds, like anthems, roll;
They are chanting solemn masses,
Singing; Pray for this poor soul,
Pray,-pray!

Henry W. Longfellow, 1807-'82.

A PSALM OF LIFE.

TELL me not in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream!
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.

Life is real! Life is earnest !

And the grave is not its goal; Dust thou art, to dust returnest, Was not spoken of the soul,

Henry W. Longfellow.

MAIDENHOOD

MAIDEN! with the meek brown eyes,
In whose orbs a shadow lies,
Like the dusk in evening skies!

Thou, whose locks outshine the sun,
Golden tresses wreathed in one,
As the braided streamlets run!