A CONFESSION.

JONG time a child, and still a child, when years
Had painted manhood on my cheek, was I;

For yet I lived like one not born to die :

A thriftless prodigal of smiles and tears,

No hope I needed, and I knew no fears,

But sleep, though sweet, is only sleep; and waking
I waked to sleep no more; at once o'ertaking
The vanguard of my age, with all arrears
Of duty on my back. Nor child, nor man,
Nor youth, nor sage, I find my head is grey,
For I have lost the race I never ran-

A rathe December blights my lagging May;
And still I am a child, though I be old :
Time is my debtor for my years untold.

HOMER.

AR from the sight of earth, yet bright and plain
As the clear noon-day sun, an orb of song'

Lovely and bright is seen amid the throng

Of lesser stars, that rise, and wax, and wane,
The transient rulers of the fickle main;

One constant light gleams thro' the dark and long
And narrow aisle of memory. How strong,

How fortified with all the numerous train

Of truths wert thou, great poet of mankind,

Who told'st in verse as mighty as the sea,
And various as the voices of the wind,

The strength of passion rising in the glee
Of battle.

Fear was glorified by thee,

And Death is lovely in thy tale enshrined.

HITHER is gone the wisdom and the power

That ancient sages scattered with the notes Of thought-suggesting lyres? The music floats In the void air; even at this breathing hour, In every cell and every blooming bower

The sweetness of old lays is hovering still; But the strong soul, the self-constraining will, The rugged root that bare the winsome flower Is weak and withered. Were we like the Fays That sweetly nestle in the foxglove bells,

Or lurk and murmur in the rose-lipped shells Which Neptune to the earth for quit-rent pays, Then might our pretty modern Philomels Sustain our spirits with their roundelays.

TO A FRIEND.

E parted on the mountains, as two streams

From one clear spring pursue their several

ways;

And thy fleet course hath been thro' many a maze

In foreign lands, where silvery Padus gleams
To that delicious sky, whose glowing beams
Brightened the tresses that old poets praise;
Where Petrarch's patient love and artful lays,
And Ariosto's song of many themes,
Moved the soft air. But I, a lazy brook,

As close pent up within my native dell,

Have crept along from nook to shady nook,

Where flow'rets blow, and whispering Naiads dwell. Yet now we meet, that parted were so wide, O'er rough and smooth to travel side by side.

THE LONE THORN.

ENEATH the scant shade of an aged thorn,
Silvered with age, and mossy with decay,

I stood, and there bethought me of its morn

Of verdant lustyhood, long passed away;

Of its meridian vigour, now outworn

By cankering years, and by the tempest's sway
Bared to the pitying glebe.—Companionless,
Stands the gray thorn complaining to the wind-
Of all the old wood's leafy loveliness

The sole memorial that lags behind;

Its compeers perished in their youthfulness,

Though round the earth their roots seem'd firmly twined: How sad it is to be so anchored here

As to outlive one's mates, and die without a tear!