I need not search too much to find

Whose lot it was to send it,

That feel upon me yet the kind,
Soft hand of her who penned it;

And see, through two score years of smoke,
In by-gone, quaint apparel,
Shine from yon time-black Norway oak
The face of Patience Caryl,—

The pale, smooth forehead, silver-tressed;
The gray gown, primly flowered;
The spotless, stately coif whose crest
Like Hector's horse-plume towered;

And still the sweet half-solemn look,
Where some past thought was clinging,

As when one shuts a serious book
To hear the thrushes singing.

I kneel to you! Of those you were, Whose kind old hearts grow mellow,Whose fair old faces grow more fair

As Point and Flanders yellow;

Whom some old store of garnered grief,

Their placid temples shading,

Crowns like a wreath of autumn leaf
With tender tints of fading.

Peace to your soui i You died unwed-
Despite this loving letter.

And what of John? The less that's said
Of John, I think, the better.

1868.

A GENTLEMAN OF THE OLD

SCHOOL

E lived in that past Georgian day,
When men were less inclined to say

That "Time is Gold," and overlay

With toil their pleasure;

He held some land, and dwelt thereon,-
Where, I forget,-the house is gone;
His Christian name, I think, was John,-
His surname, Leisure.

Reynolds has painted him,-a face
Filled with a fine, old-fashioned grace,
Fresh-coloured, frank, with ne'er a trace
Of trouble shaded;

The eyes are blue, the hair is drest
In plainest way,—one hand is prest
Deep in a flapped canary vest,

With buds brocaded.

He wears a brown old Brunswick coat,
With silver buttons,-round his throat,
A soft cravat ;-in all you note

An elder fashion,—

A strangeness, which, to us who shine
In shapely hats,-whose coats combine
All harmonies of hue and line,-

Inspires compassion.

He lived so long ago, you see!
Men were untravelled then, but we,
Like Ariel, post o'er land and sea

With careless parting;

He found it quite enough for him
To smoke his pipe in "garden trim,"
And watch, about the fish-tank's brim,
The swallows darting.

He liked the well-wheel's creaking tongue,He liked the thrush that stopped and sung,— He liked the drone of flies among

His netted peaches;

He liked to watch the sunlight fall
Athwart his ivied orchard wall;
Or pause to catch the cuckoo's call
Beyond the beeches.

His were the times of Paint and Patch,
And yet no Ranelagh could match
The sober doves that round his thatch
Spread tails and sidled;
He liked their ruffling, puffed content,—
For him their drowsy wheelings meant
More than a Mall of Beaux that bent,
Or Belles that bridled.

Not that, in truth, when life began,
He shunned the flutter of the fan;
He too had maybe "pinked his man
In Beauty's quarrel;

But now his "fervent youth" had flown Where lost things go; and he was grown As staid and slow-paced as his own

Old hunter, Sorrel.

Yet still he loved the chase, and held
That no composer's score excelled
The merry horn, when Sweetlip swelled
Its jovial riot;

But most his measured words of praise
Caressed the angler's easy ways,—
His idly meditative days,—

His rustic diet.