Days of my youth,
I wish not your recall:
Hairs of my youth,
I'm content ye should fall:
Eyes of my youth,
You much evil have seen:
Cheeks of my youth,
Bathed in tears have you been:
Thoughts of my youth,
You have led me astray:
Strength of my youth,
Why lament your decay?
Days of my age,
Ye will shortly be past:
Pains of my age,,
Yet awhile can ye last:
Joys of my age,
In true wisdom delight:
Eyes of my age,
Be religion your light:
Thoughts of my age,
Dread ye not the cold sod:
Hopes of my age,
Be ye fixed on your God.
BY J. O. ROCKWELL.
WIFE, who in thy deep devotion
Puttest up a prayer for one,
Sailing on the stormy ocean,
Hope no more-his course is done.
Dream not, when upon thy pillow,
That he slumbers by thy side;
For his corse beneath the billow
Heaveth with the restless tide.
Children, who as sweet flowers growing,
Laugh amidst the sorrowing rains,
Know ye many clouds are throwing
Shadows on your sire's remains?
Where the hoarse gray surge is rolling
With a mountain's motion on,
Dream ye that its voice is tolling
For your father lost and gone?
When the sun looked on the water,
As a hero on his grave,
Tinging with the hue of slaughter
Every blue and leaping wave,
Under the majestic ocean,
Where the giant currents rolled,
Slept thy sire without emotion
Sweetly by a beam of gold.
And the violet sunbeams slanted,
Wavering through the crystal deep,
Till their wonted splendors haunted
Those shut eyelids in their sleep.
Sands, like crumbled silver gleaming,
Sparkled through his raven hair;
But the sleep that knows no dreaming,
Bound him in its silence there.
So we left him; and to tell thee
Of our sorrow and thine own,
Of the wo that then befell thee
Come we weary and alone.
That thine eye is quickly shaded,
That thy heart blood wildly flows,
That thy cheek's clear hue is faded,
Are the fruits of these new woes.
Children whose meek eyes inquiring
Linger on your mother's face,
Know ye that she is expiring,
That ye are an orphan race?
God be with you on the morrow,
Father, mother--both no more;
One within a grave of sorrow,
One upon the ocean's floor!
WELL, lady, take again the ring,
To deck that lily hand of thine,
And with it take, the gift I bring,
To lay on beauty's golden shrine.
With every joy and pleasure gay,
May all thine hours roll swift along,
And life in beauty glide away,
Like the rich cadence of a song.
May friendship shed its gentle rays,
To make the path before thee bright;
And love serenely gild thy days,
With a more deep and brilliant light.
And in that future bappy time,
Thine earlier friends perchance forgot,
Say wilt thou read this careless rhyme,
And him who wrote remember not?
Remember not! and can it be
That joyous memories ever die?
That all my heart can feel for thee
Is but a lightly whispered sigh?
Ay, it is written on our lot,
That lot so varied, dark and strange,
To meet, to pass and be forgot,
In painful and perpetual change.
But dash this idle gloom away,
And be again the gay and free;
Thou must not to thy dying day,
Forget this stolen ring and me!
THE birds, when winter shades the sky,
Fly o'er the seas away,
Where laughing isles in sunshine lie,
And summer breezes play:
And thus the friends that flutter near
While fortune's sun is
Are startled if a cloud appear,
And fly before the storm.
But when from winter's howling plains
Each other warbler 's past,
The little snow bird still remains,
And cherups midst the blast,
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