A BOY'S SONG

And I'll forgive your Highland chief : —

My daughter! O my daughter!"

'Twas vain the loud waves lash'd the shore, Return or aid preventing :

The waters wild went o'er his child,

And he was left lamenting.

Thomas Campbell.

A BOY'S SONG1

WHERE the pools are bright and deep,
Where the gray trout lies asleep,

Up the river and o'er the lea,

That's the way for Billy and me.

Where the blackbird sings the latest,
Where the hawthorn blooms the sweetest,
Where the nestlings chirp and flee,
That's the way for Billy and me.

Where the mowers mow the cleanest,
Where the hay lies thick and greenest;
There to trace the homeward bee,
That's the way for Billy and me.

Where the hazel bank is steepest,
Where the shadow falls the deepest,
Where the clustering nuts fall free,
That's the way for Billy and me.

1 Note 2.

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Why the boys should drive away
Little sweet maidens from the play,
Or love to banter and fight so well,
That's the thing I never could tell.

But this I know, I love to play,
Through the meadow, among the hay;
Up the water and o'er the lea,
That's the way for Billy and me.

James Hogg.

THE CHAMBERED NAUTILUS

THIS is the ship of pearl, which, poets feign,
Sails the unshadowed main,

The venturous bark that flings

On the sweet summer wind its purpled wings
In gulfs enchanted, where the siren sings,

And coral reefs lie bare,

Where the cold sea-maids rise to sun their streaming hair.

Its webs of living gauze no more unfurl;

Wrecked is the ship of pearl!

And every chambered cell,

Where its dim dreaming life was wont to dwell,
As the frail tenant shaped his growing shell,
Before thee lies revealed, —

Its irised ceiling rent, its sunless crypt unsealed!

Year after year beheld the silent toil

That spread his lustrous coil;

Still, as the spiral grew,

MY PLAYMATE

He left the past year's dwelling for the new,
Stole with soft step its shining archway through,
Built up its idle door,

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Stretched in his last-found home, and knew the old

no more.

Thanks for the heavenly message brought by thee, Child of the wandering sea,

Cast from her lap, forlorn!

From thy dead lips a clearer note is born
Than ever Triton blew from wreathed horn!
While on mine ear it rings,

Through the deep caves of thought I hear a voice that sings: :

Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul,
As the swift seasons roll!

Leave thy low-vaulted past!

Let each new temple, nobler than the last,
Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast,
Till thou at length art free,

Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting

sea!

Oliver Wendell Holmes.

MY PLAYMATE

THE pines were dark on Ramoth hill,
Their song was soft and low;
The blossoms in the sweet May wind
Were falling like the snow.

The blossoms drifted at our feet,
The orchard birds sang clear;
The sweetest and the saddest day
It seemed of all the
year.

For, more to me than birds or flowers, My playmate left her home,

And took with her the laughing spring, The music and the bloom.

She kissed the lips of kith and kin,
She laid her hand in mine:
What more could ask the bashful boy
Who fed her father's kine?

She left us in the bloom of May:
The constant years told o'er
The seasons with as sweet May morns,
But she came back no more.

I walk, with noiseless feet, the round
Of uneventful years;

Still o'er and o'er I sow the spring
And reap the autumn ears.

She lives where all the golden year
Her summer roses blow;
The dusky children of the sun

Before her come and go.

There haply with her jewelled hands

She smooths her silken gown,

MY PLAYMATE

No more the homespun lap wherein
I shook the walnuts down.

The wild grapes wait us by the brook,
The brown nuts on the hill,

And still the May-day flowers make sweet
The woods of Follymill.

The lilies blossom in the pond,

The bird builds in the tree,
The dark pines sing on Ramoth hill
The slow song of the sea.

I wonder if she thinks of them,
And how the old time seems,
If ever the pines of Ramoth wood
Are sounding in her dreams!

I see her face, I hear her voice :
Does she remember mine?
And what to her is now the boy
Who fed her father's kine?

What cares she that the orioles build
For other eyes than ours,

That other hands with nuts are filled,
And other laps with flowers?

O playmate in the golden time!
Our mossy seat is green,
Its fringing violets blossom yet,
The old trees o'er it lean.