What! grieve that time has brought so soon The sober age of manhood on?

As idly might I weep at noon,

To see the blush of morning gone.

Could I give up the hopes that glow
In prospect like Elysian isles;
And let the cheerful future go;

With all her promises and smiles?

The future-cruel were the power

Whose doom would tear thee from my heart.

Thou sweetener of the present hour!

We cannot-no—we will not part.

Oh, leave me, still, the rapid flight

That makes the changing seasons gay, The grateful speed that brings the night, The swift and glad return of day;

The months that touch, with added grace,

This little prattler at my knee,

In whose arch eye and speaking face
New meaning every hour I see;

The years, that o'er each sister land
Shall lift the country of my birth,
And nurse her strength, till she shall stand
The pride and pattern of the earth:

Till younger commonwealths, for aid,
Shall cling about her ample robe,

And from her frown shall shrink afraid
The crowned oppressors of the globe.

True-time will seam and blanch my brow-
Well-I shall sit with aged men,
And my good glass will tell me how
A grizzly beard becomes me then.

And then, should no dishonor lie
Upon my head, when I am gray,
Love yet shall watch my fading eye,
And smooth the path of my decay.

Then haste thee, Time-'tis kindness all
That speeds thy winged feet so fast;
Thy pleasures stay not till they pall,
And all thy pains are quickly past.

Thou fliest and bear'st away our woes,
And as thy shadowy train depart,

The

memory

of sorrow grows

A lighter burden on the heart.

SONG OF THE STARS.

WHEN the radiant morn of creation broke,
And the world in the smile of God awoke,
And the empty realms of darkness and death
Were moved through their depths by his mighty
breath,

And orbs of beauty and spheres of flame
From the void abyss by myriads came,—

In the joy of youth as they darted away,
Through the widening wastes of space to play,
Their silver voices in chorus rang,

And this was the song the bright ones sang:

"Away, away, through the wide, wide sky,
The blue fair fields that before us lie,-

Each sun with the worlds that round him roll,
Each planet, poised on her turning pole ;
With her isles of green, and her clouds of white,
And her waters that lie like fluid light.

"For the source of glory uncovers his face,
And the brightness o'erflows unbounded space;
And we drink as we go the luminous tides
In our ruddy air and our blooming sides;
Lo, yonder the living splendors play;
Away, on our joyous path, away!

66

'Look, look, through our glittering ranks afar, In the infinite azure, star after star,

How they brighten and bloom as they swiftly

pass!

How the verdure runs o'er each rolling mass !