The tickled ears no heart-felt raptures raise;

Nae unison hae they with our Creator's praise.

The priest-like father reads the sacred page,

How Abram was the friend of
God on high;

Or Moses bade eternal warfare wage With Amalek's ungracious progeny;

Or how the royal Bard did groaning lie

Beneath the stroke of Heaven's avenging ire:

Or Job's pathetic plaint, and wailing cry;

Or rapt Isaiah's wild, seraphic fire; Or other holy seers that tune the sacred lyre.

Perhaps the Christian volume is the theme,

How guiltless blood for guilty man was shed;

How He, who bore in Heaven the second name,

Had not on earth whereon to lay his head:

How his first followers and ser

provide;

But chiefly in their hearts with grace divine preside.

From scenes like these old Scotia's grandeur springs,

That makes her lov'd at home, rever'd abroad:

Princes and lords are but the breath of kings;

"An honest man's the noblest work of God:"

And certes, in fair virtue's heavenly road,

The cottage leaves the palace far behind;

What is a lordling's pomp? a cumbrous load,

Disguising oft the wretch of human kind,

Studied in arts of hell, in wickedness refin'd!

O Scotia! my dear, my native soil! For whom my warmest wish to Heaven is sent!

And fitful checkering is the picture made!

When I am glad or gay,

Let me walk forth into the brilliant sun,

And with congenial rays be shone upon:

When I am sad, or thought-bewitched would be,

Let me glide forth in moonlight's mystery,

But never, while I live this changeful life,

This past and future with all wonders rife,

Never, bright flame, may be denied to me

Thy dear, life-imaging, close sympathy.

What but my hopes shot upwards e'er so bright?

What but my fortunes sank so low in night?

Why art thou banished from our hearth and hall,

Thou who art welcomed and beloved by all?

Was thy existence then too fanciful For our life's common light, who are so dull?

Did thy bright gleam mysterious converse hold

With our congenial souls? secrets too bold?

Well, we are safe and strong; for now we sit

Beside a hearth where no dim shadows flit;

Where nothing cheers nor saddens, but a fire

Warms feet and hands, nor does to

more aspire;

By whose compact, utilitarian heap, The present may sit down and go to sleep,

Nor fear the ghosts who from the dim past walked,

And with us by the unequal light of the old wood-fire talked.

E. S. H.

Old books to read!

Ay, bring those nodes of wit, The brazen-clasped, the vellum-writ, Time-honored tomes!

The same my sire scanned before,
The same my grandsire thumbèd o'er,
The same his sire from college bore,
The well-earned meed

Of Oxford's domes:
Old Homer blind,

Old Horace, rake Anacreon, by
Old Tully, Plautus, Terence lie;
Mort Arthur's olden minstrelsie,
Quaint Burton, quainter Spenser, ay!
And Gervase Markham's venerie-
Nor leave behind

The Holy Book by which we live and die.

IV.

Old friends to talk!

Ay, bring those chosen few,
The wise, the courtly, and the true,
So rarely found;

Him for my wine, him for my stud,
Him for my easel, distich, bud
In mountain walk!
Bring Walter good:

With soulful Fred; and learned Will,
And thee, my alter ego, (dearer still
For every mood).

R. H. MESSINGER.

TO A CHILD.

I WOULD that thou might always be As innocent as now,

That time might ever leave as free
Thy yet unwritten brow.

I would life were all poetry
To gentle measure set,

That nought but chastened melody
Might stain thine eye of jet,
Nor one discordant note be spoken,
Till God the cunning harp had broken.
I fear thy gentle loveliness,
Thy witching tone and air,
Thine eye's beseeching earnestness
May be to thee a snare.

The silver stars may purely shine,
The waters taintless flow;

But they who kneel at woman's

shrine

Breathe on it as they bow.

N. P. WILLIS.

THE CHILDREN'S HOUR.