And when the snow is on the ground, and biting winds blow cold, To sit beside the glad fireside, where social tales are told; To feel the blesséd influence of Love's and Friendship's reign, When those that long have parted been are reconciled again. Oh! yes, I do love Christmas, for nothing seems too high, And nothing seems too lowly for the love-glance of his eye; A true republican is he, the friend of equal right, Who advocates fraternity, and propagates delight: Come hang then up the mistletoe (true olive branch), that peace May bless our paths with pleasantness, and make our joys increase; And let us too, like Christmas, come, the suffering world to cheer, To help the poor disconsolate, to wipe the mourner's tear; Yes, let us each one make a vow, to do whate'er we can To solace in adversity the sufferings of man. MELANCHOLY. By R. BURTON; extracted from his famous Anatomy of Melancholy. WHEN I goe musing all alone, Pleasing myself with phantasmes sweet; When to myself I act and smile, All other joys to this are folly; Methinkes I hear, methinkes I see, Nought so sweet as Melancholy! Methinkes I heare, methinkes I see, All my griefes to this are folly; HESTER. By CHARLES LAMB. WHEN maidens such as Hester die, With vain endeavour. A month or more hath she been dead, To think upon the wormy bed, And her together. A springy motion in her gait, A rising step did indicate Of pride and joy, no common rate, That flush'd her spirit. I know not by what name beside She did inherit. Her parents held the Quaker rule, Nature had bless'd her. A waking eye, a prying mind, A heart that stirs, is hard to bind; A hawk's keen sight ye cannot blind Ye could not Hester. My sprightly neighbour-gone before Some summer morning. When from thy cheerful eyes a ray A sweet forewarning. ENIGMA. By W. M. PRAED. One of the graceful poems which he composed in this form. On the casement frame the wind beat high, All Kenneth Hold was wrapt in gloom, And Sir Everard slept in the haunted room. I sat and sang beside his bed ; Never a single word I said, Yet did I scare his slumber; And a fitful light in his eyeball glisten'd, And his cheek grew pale as he lay and listen'd, And telling out their number. Was it my second's ceaseless tone? Sir Everard did not fear my first; He had seen it in shapes that men deem worst Yet, in the darkness of his dread, His tongue was parch'd, and his reason fled; Come, dabbled o'er with blood. Sir Everard kneel'd, and strove to pray, And ever I mutter'd clear and well THE GIFT OF ART. From Mrs. BNOWNING'S Aurora Leigh. LONG green days, Worn bare of grass and sunshine,-long calm nights, Irreverent haste and busy idleness I've set myself to art! What then? what's done? What's done, at last? Behold, at last, a book, If life-blood's necessary,-which it is, (By that blue vein athrob on Mahomet's brow, Each prophet-poet's book must show man's blood!) If life blood's fertilising, I wrung mine On every leaf of this, unless the drops Writes books as cold and flat as grave-yard stones From which the lichen's scraped; and if St. Preux While Art He feels the inmost: never felt the less When one life has been found enough for pain! THERE IS BEAUTY. From Hours with the Muses, by JOHN CRITCHLEY PRINCE. THERE is beauty o'er all this delectable world, Which wakes at the first golden touch of the light; There is beauty when morn hath her banner unfurl'd, Or stars twinkle out from the depths of the night; There is beauty on ocean's vast verdureless plains, Though lash'd into fury or lull'd into calm; There is beauty on land and its countless domainsIts corn-fields of plenty-its meadows of balm :— Oh, God of Creation! these sights are of Thee, Thou surely hast made them for none but the free! |