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Exposed to every blast, starved, wretched, old,
Toothless, and clothed with rags and squalidness,
He eyes his fancied treasure with delight,
And thinks to cheat the devil at the last.

"Look at his drivelling lips, his bloodshot eyes,
His trembling hands, his loose and yellow skin,
His flimsy rottenness, and own with me
That this man's madness, though a piteous thing,
Deserves no pity, for the avarice

So mean and filthy that was cause of it."

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I gazed once more upon his wrinkled face,
Vacant with idiotcy, and went my way
Fill'd with disgust and sorrow, for I deem'd
That his great lunacy was but a type
Of many a smaller madness as abject
That daily takes possession of men's hearts
And blinds them to the uses of their life.

*

Poor fool! he gathers stones-they gather gold, With toil and moil, thick sweat and grovelling thought. He has his flints, and they acquire their coin, And who's the wiser? Neither he nor they.

(By permission of the Publishers.)

MEMORY.

WALTER P. BEARPARK.

"Lord! keep my memory green."-DICKENS.
Thou art not less a friend, oh! Memory,
That care is writ with gladness on thy brow;
Not less a friend if smiling hope on pain,
Or looking colder on the pulse of joy!
Nay, truly, thou art more, for thou art wise,
And in thy friendship dost essay to join
The breath of Reason with the breath of Love!
Friend and preceptor both, thy measured voice
Comes softly thro' the avenues of Time,
With counsel fashioned to the changeful mood,
And moves the doubtful heart, or sad or gay,
With now a song, and now a holy psalm!
A word-a sign! and slumb'ring echoes wake
To thrill the soul with half-forgotten chords;
And countless odours from the flower'd past
Come gently, like the breath of distant fields!
To warn in evil, and to urge in good,

To cheer in grief-in joy to sanctify;
In thee these offices are nobly blent,
Whose hand has writ the record of our days.
Act after act its proper place assumes,
Which every added word makes more remote,
Till Death completes the record with his name,
And lays the volume at the feet of God!

Aye, thou art friend indeed, if others fail-
Ambition, Love, and striving passions all-
May languish with the life that lit the flame-
Thy calm is but the sweeter that they die!
Oh! be thou still my solace and my guide,
Till Time shall leave me in the arms of Death,
For not enough is brightest Hope above,
If thou desert me here, oh Memory!

(By permission of the Author.)

POPE'S WILLOW.

JAMES MONTGOMERY.

[James Montgomery was born at Irvine, in Ayrshire, November 4, 1771 He commenced his literary career at the age of twenty as a newspaper editor His principal poems are, "The Ocean," "The West Indies," "The World before the Flood," "Greenland," and "The Pelican Island." In his later years he wrote a number of very beautiful "Original Hymns." Died at Sheffield, 1854.]

ERE Pope resign'd his tuneful breath,
And made the turf his pillow,
The minstrel hung his harp in death
Upon the drooping willow;

That willow, from Euphrates' strand.
Had sprung beneath his training hand.

Long, as revolving seasons flew,
From youth to age it flourish'd,
By vernal winds and star-light dew,
By showers and sunbeams nourish'd;
And while in dust the poet slept,
The willow o'er his ashes wept.

Old Time beheld its silvery head,
With graceful grandeur towering,
Its pensile boughs profusely spread,
The breezy lawn embowering,

Till arch'd around, there seem'd to shoot,
A grove of scions from one root.

Thither, at summer noon, he view'd

The lovely Nine retreating,

Beneath its twilight solitude
With songs their poet greeting;
Whose spirit in the willow spoke,
Like Jove's from dark Dodona's oak.

By harvest moonlight there he spied
The fairy bands advancing;
Bright Ariel's troop, on Thames's side,
Around the willow dancing;

Gay sylphs among the foliage played,
And glow-worms glitter'd in the shade.

One morn, while Time thus mark'd the tree,
In beauty green and glorious,
"The hand," he cried, "that planted thee,
O'er mine was oft victorious;

Be vengeance now my calm employ,-
One work of Pope's I will destroy."

He spake, and struck a silent blow
With that dread arm whose motion
Lays cedars, thrones, and temples low,
And wields o'er land and ocean
The unremitting axe of doom,
That fells the forest of the tomb.

Deep to the willow's root it went,
And cleft the core asunder,
Like sudden secret lightning, sent
Without recording thunder:
From that sad moment, slow away
Began the willow to decay.

In vain did Spring those bowers restore,
Where loves and graces revell'd,
Autumn's wild gales the branches tore,
The thin gray leaves dishevell'd,
And every wasting winter found
The willow nearer to the ground.

Hoary, and weak, and bent with age,
At length the axe assail'd it:
It bow'd before the woodman's rage;
The swans of Thames bewail'd it,
With softer tones, with sweeter breath,
Than ever charm'd the ear of death.

Oh! Pope, hadst thou, whose lyre so long
The wondering world enchanted,
Amidst thy paradise of song

This weeping willow planted;
Among thy loftiest laurels seen,
In deathless verse for ever green,―

Thy chosen tree had stood sublime,
The storms of ages braving,
Triumphant o'er the wrecks of time
Its verdant banner waving,
While regal pyramids decay'd,
And empires perish'd in its shade.

An humbler lot, oh, tree! was thine ;--
Gone down in all thy glory:

The sweet, the mournful task be mine,
To sing thy simple story;

Though verse like mine in vain would raise
The fame of thy departed days.

Yet, fallen willow! if to me

Such power of song were given,

My lips should breathe a soul through thee,
And call down fire from heaven,

To kindle in this hallow'd urn,

A flame that would for ever burn.

THE PHANTOM.

BAYARD TAYLOR.

[An American writer and traveller. Born, 1825; died, 1878.]

AGAIN I sit within the mansion,

In the old familiar seat;

And shade and sunshine chase each other,
O'er the carpet at my feet.

But the sweet briar's arms have wrestled upwards
In the summers that are past,

And the willow trails its branches lower

Than when I saw them last.

They strive to shut the sunshine wholly
From out the haunted room--

To fill the house that once was joyful,
With silence and with gloom.

And many kind, remembered faces
Within the doorway come-
Voices that make the sweetest music
Of one that now is dumb.

They sing in tones as glad as ever,
The songs she loved to hear;
They braid the rose in summer garlands,
Whose flowers to her were dear.

And still, her footstep in the passage,
Her blushes at the door,

Her timid words of maiden welcome,
Come back to me once more.

And all forgetful of my sorrow,
Unmindful of my pain,

I think she has but newly left me,
And soon will come again.

She stays without, perchance a moment,
To dress her dark brown hair;

I hear the rustle of her garments-
Her light step on the stair!

O fluttering heart! control thy tumult,
Lest eyes profane should see

My cheeks betray the rush of rapture
Her coming brings to me.

She tarries long, but lo! a whisper,
Beyond the open door-

And, gliding through the quiet sunshine,
A shadow on the floor!

Ah! 'tis the whispering pine that calls me,
The vine whose shadow strays:

And my patient heart must still await her,
Nor chide her long delays.

But my heart grows sick with weary waiting,
As many a time before:

Her foot is ever at the threshold,

Yet never passes o'er.

THE FIRST GREY HAIR.

THOMAS HAYNES BAYLY.

[Thomas Haynes Bayly was born at Bath, 1797. The failure of a coal-mine, in which his fortune was invested, together with the mismanagement, by his agent, of some property in Ireland, obliged Mr. Bayly to rely for a living upon that which had previously been a source of intellectual recreation-his pen. He produced a number of burlettas; among which, "Perfection" and "Tom Noddy's Secret," still keep possession of the stage. Many of his fugitive poems appeared in "Blackwood" and the "New Monthly" magazines. He died 1839.] THE matron at her mirror, with her hand upon her brow, Sits gazing on her lovely face-ay, lovely even now: Why doth she lean upon her hand with such a look of care? Why steals that tear across her cheek?-She sees her first grey hair.

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