Page images
PDF
EPUB

FRIENDSHIP, LOVE, AND TRUTH. WHEN Friendship, Love, and Truth abound Among a band of brothers,

The cup of joy goes gaily round

Each shares the bliss of others:
Sweet roses grace the thorny way
Along this vale of sorrow;

The flowers that shed their leaves to-day
Shall bloom again to-morrow :

How grand in age, how fair in youth
Are holy Friendship, Love, and Truth!

On halcyon wings our moments pass,
Life's cruel cares beguiling;

Old Time lays down his sithe and glass,
In gay good humour smiling:
With ermine beard and forelock gray
His reverend front adorning,
He looks like Winter turn'd to May,
Night soften'd into morning!

How grand in age, how fair in youth
Are holy Friendship, Love, and Truth!
From those delightful fountains flow
Ambrosial rills of pleasure:
Can man desire, can heaven bestow
A more resplendent treasure?
Adorn'd with gems so richly bright,
We'll form a constellation,

Where every star, with modest light,
Shall gild his proper station.
How grand in age, how fair in youth
Are holy Friendship, Love, and Truth!

MONTGOMERY.

THE SOLDIER.

WHAT dreaming drone was ever bless'd

By thinking of the morrow? To-day be mine, I leave the rest

To all the fools of sorrow:

Give me the mind that mocks at care;
The heart, its own defender;
The spirits that are light as air,
And never beat surrender.

On comes the foe,-to arms—to arms,-
We meet,-'tis death or glory:
"Tis victory in all her charms,

Or fame in Britain's story.

Dear native land! thy fortunes frown,
And ruffians would enslave thee;
Thou land of honour and renown,
Who would not die to save thee?

Tis you, 'tis I that meet the ball;
And me it better pleases

In battle with the brave to fall
Than die of cold diseases;
Than drivel on in elbow chair,
With saws and tales unheeded,
A tottering thing of ache and care,
Nor longer loved nor needed.
But thou, dark is thy flowing hair,
Thine eye with fire is streaming;
And o'er thy cheek, thy looks, thine air,
Health sits in triumph beaming.
Then, brother soldier, fill the wine,
Fill high the wine to beauty;

Love, friendship, honour, all are thine,
Thy country and thy duty.

W. SMYTH.

SONG.

WHEN the black-letter'd list to the gods was presented

(The list of what Fate for each mortal intends), At the long string of ills a kind goddess relented, And slipp'd in three blessings, wife, children, and friends.

In vain surly Pluto maintain'd he was cheated, For justice divine could not compass its ends; The scheme of man's penance he swore was defeated, [and friends. For earth becomes heaven with wife, children,

If the stock of our bliss is in stranger hands vested, The fund ill secured oft in bankruptcy ends; But the heart issues bills which are never protested When drawn on the firm of wife, children, and friends.

Though valour still glows in his life's waning embers,

The death-wounded tar, who his colours defends, Drops a tear of regret as he dying remembers How bless'd was his home with wife, children, and friends.

The soldier, whose deeds live immortal in story, Whom duty to far distant latitudes sends, With transport would barter whole ages of glory For one happy day with wife, children, and friends.

Though spice-breathing gales o'er his caravan

hover, [ascends, Though round him Arabia's whole fragrance The merchant still thinks of the woodbines that [and friends. The bower where he sat with wife, children,

cover

The dayspring of youth, still unclouded by sorrow, Alone on itself for enjoyment depends;

But drear is the twilight of age if it borrow

No warmth from the smiles of wife, children, and friends.

Let the breath of renown ever freshen and nourish The laurel which o'er her dead favourite bends; O'er me wave the willow! and long may it flourish, [friends. Bedew'd with the tears of wife, children, and Let us drink-for my song, growing graver and graver,

To subjects too solemn insensibly tends;

Let us drink-pledge me high-Love and Virtue

shall flavour

[friends. The glass which I fill to wife, children, and

HON. W. R. SPENCER.

THE MELANCHOLY MOTHER'S

CRADLE SONG *.

HUSH, my baby! hush to rest!

Slumber bless thy pillow:

Sleep no more shall calm this breast,
Toss'd like ocean's billow.

* Written for an air composed by my friend, S. C. Brown, Esq.

[merged small][ocr errors]

Hush, my babe! may Peace still spread

O'er thy couch her pinion; Though thy hapless mother's head

Bends to woe's dominion.

Since, despising love and truth,
Stern thy father parted,
Bow'd to earth, in early youth
I perish broken hearted.

R. A. DAVENPORT.

THE PRAISES OF WINE.

Oн moment most bless'd in the short life of man! Brightest spot of enjoyment in time's gloomy span! When, just languid enough for delight, we recline By the fire's cheerful blaze o'er the fast flowing wine,

With sensations too soothing for words to express, Alive to all joy, dead to every distress.

Then, then gushing forth from the rapturous soul,
Good humour and genius unitedly roll; [Youth,
Laughing Friendship recounts all the pastimes of
And at least we display that one excellence-truth.
Cold prudence is banished, hypocrisy dies,

And the warm honest spirit looks out at the eyes.
With sarcastic reflections let Rasselas paint
The sinner convivial, a hermit the saint:
But, annals of convents! full well can ye show
That stagnation engenders corruption below;
And though heavenly retirement may purify man,
Monastic retirement on earth never can.

Nay, vain is the censure that aims at the mind,
And describes the good fellow to dulness confined,

« PreviousContinue »