Thy first bright twenty years have past,
And left an impress that will last
A lifetime on thy brow;
May the moulding of thy gentle face,
Which all the kindly feelings grace,
Be always calm as now!
All nature’s noble gifts are thine,
So carry out her sweet design
In every new career;
Thus radiate delight around,
Make sunny happiness abound,
And bless each future sphere.
Let every grace that now is thine
Be ripened by the hand of time,
Enriched by coming years;
Ennobled and refined by art,
That only culture can impart,
And moral worth endears.
No idle ease nor empty hours
Should dwarf thy mind’s improving powers,
But live with earnest aim;
And strive each happy trait to woo,
Do nobly what thou hast to do,
And grace thy future name.
CHIDING “LOVE’S CHIDINGS.”
The cruel word in anger spoken,
Has oft the loving heart near broken,
And left its sting for hours behind,
Upon some dear one’s troubled mind.
How many a day is clouded o’er,
And many a heart made sad and sore,
By thoughtless words that give us pain,
That ne’er can be recalled again!
Our dearest friends should surely be
The ones the last our faults to see,
And then, all leniency and love,
Should by its blind devotion prove
How far above all other ties
In life, our home-hearts we should prize;
Our wedded love’s responsive thrill
Should be the same through good and ill.
Away with love that’s only lent
Till all the summer hours are spent,
That fades and cools as cares increase,
That comes and goes with each caprice.
Ah! no, the love for which we yearn
Will through all age and error burn,
Will live and light our winter days,
And be the same in blame and praise.
True love is trusting, patient, pure,
Is constant, kind, and will endure;
It never chides, but soothes the breast
That sighs for sympathy and rest.
One broken chord may wreck a life,
One angry word may start a strife,
And chill the love that early won,
That should be life’s domestic sun.
FOUND DROWNED.
There drifted a form on the banks of a stream,
As pretty and fair as poet’s young dream;
With her worn, draggled dress and her small tattered shoes,
Her golden hair floating dishevelled and loose;
Her pale, haggard face, so sad in repose,
Told tales of a life beclouded by woes;
Her small dimpled hands lay listless and cold
Across her fair breast, where sorrows untold
Had made her young heart in misery old.
Her poor glassy eyes, now death dimmed and blue,
Looked vacantly out, as if bidding adieu
To a world that had shunned her, to friends that denied
Love, kindness, and pity in self-righteous pride:
Who can she be, this fair one unknown,
Has she a history, has she a home?
Was life ever bright to her, friends ever kind?
Why did she seek thus oblivion to find—
This blankness and Lethe for body and mind?
Did nobody love her, did nobody wait
In crazy anxiety as to her fate?
Had she no father, no husband, no brother,
Had she no dear, tender sister or mother,
To watch for her coming and wonder and wait,
Impatient and anxious, because she’s so late?
And when she comes not, is there no one to miss her,
No one to seek her, to love her or kiss her?
Will nobody come to claim the fair clay,
Will friends all forsake her in doubt and dismay?
Must this disappointed, mistaken young life,
Gone out in its misery, not end the strife?
Will forgiveness not come, even if error were there,
To the clay of this victim of hopeless despair?
Did life in its springtime to her seem so sad,
That living was sorrow? Ah, mayhap she had
Crushed hopes and affections too heavy to bear,
So she seeks dissolution in crazy despair.
To live would need courage, to die would end all,
So she leaps in the dark, e’er her Maker doth call.
“Found Drowned” is the verdict too sad to believe,
No kindred to sorrow, no loved ones to grieve,
Doomed to desertion, both living and dead,
No mourners to follow to the place she is laid;
By strangers she’s buried, unwept and unknown,
Thus ends a brief life, misery marked for its own.
THE DARK DAYS OF WINTER.
As gloom gathers round, the dark days of winter,
And the season of shadows, beclouds the bright skies,
The heart becomes tinged with pensive emotions
As Nature, in mourning, thus withers and dies.
We recall the sweet hours of retrospect pleasure,
Of green haunts of happiness—lately our own—
Of gay, joyous scenes, and sweet summer fancies,
Engendered by beauty and brightness alone.
Adieu to the charms of summer and autumn,
That each, in their turn, fill life with delight;
We love Nature, budding or blooming or ripened,
We cherish its beauties—regretting their flight.
But the dark days of winter must come to the seasons,
That change, in their rounds, from the bright to the drear;
And, though we deplore their cold dullness and darkness,
We can’t hope for springtime all thro’ the year.
These dull, dreary days, these clouds, gray and heavy,
That hang, like a pall, over Nature’s fair face,
But serve to enhance each gleam of gold sunshine,
When new-waking Nature its beauties retrace.
THE SONG OF THE SLUSH.
The slush, the slush, the terrible slush,
That streams from each pore of the earth with a gush;
Impeding the travel, making walking a woe;
All on account of the “Beautiful Snow.”
From each roof and tree, great drippings we see,
Making gutters and crossings quite up to the knee;
The sidewalks so icy, the pavements a show;
All on account of the “Beautiful Snow.”
From the time that we leave the sill of the door,
“Eaves-droppings,” in torrents, all over us pour—
Such splashing above, such slushing below;
All on account of the “Beautiful Snow.”
Then we slip and we slide, as we try to proceed;
Tottering and trembling, like a wind-waving reed.
This icy mud-mixture makes traveling so slow;
All on account of the “Beautiful Snow.”
The soot and the slush, the mud and the smoke,
Make that pure, pretty poem a dark, dirty joke;
With a nature poetic, we certainly know
No “Queen City” bard wrote “Beautiful Snow.”
BETRAYED.
I knew a rustic beauty once,
A happy-hearted maiden,
Whose life seemed bright as summer days,
And as she watched the autumn rays,
With love of nature’s works and ways,
Her heart seemed always laden.
She loved her quiet, rural home,
In all its sweet sedateness,
She’d stroll along with happy air,
Regardless of a coming care,
Supposing joy was everywhere,
And dream of future greatness.
Her bright, blue eyes would seek the skies,
In wondering admiration,
She’d roam at will, from wood to hill,
Or sit and dream by rock and rill,
As if she yearned her soul to fill
With love of God’s creation.
Could her young life ne’er known of strife,
Nor seen but rural beauties,
That happiness might still be hers,
Where anguish now her bosom stirs,
That always follows each that errs
Against life’s hallowed duties.
A suitor came, in city guise,
A gay and dashing lover,
He woos this simple-hearted girl,
He tells her of the city’s whirl,
Where fascinations all unfurl,
And pleasure’s cup runs over.
She soon would scorn these rustic scenes,
So tame to riper vision,
Her beauty buried out of sight,
Her love spent on some country wight,
Her life without one gay delight,
Would mark her future mission.
She loving heard his dangerous words,
And, with fond trust believing,
She listened by her favorite stream
To tales of love that made life seem
Enchanting as a fairy dream,
Nor thought of his deceiving.
She quit her happy, rural home,
To share his boasted pleasures.
Alas, her love was soon despised,
He left her e’er she had surmised
That he, bereft of all she prized,
Was least among her treasures.
Crushed beneath that heavy blow,
She sank in deep dejection;
Her happiness is changed to tears,
Her purity to guilty fears,
Estranged each friendly face appears,
And dead each fond affection.
His broken vows near drove her mad,
His treacherous desertion
Made desperate every hope she had,
To her the rest of life was sad,
Not even innocence to glad
Or shield her from aspersion.
She, broken-hearted, crush’d and wrong’d,
Who erred through blind devotion,
Could ne’er regain her home and friends,
Nor could a lifetime make amends,
Nor dull the pang her bosom rends;
She’d die and end emotion.
She seeks the brook that once she loved,
By stealth in twilight hour,
And, musing on that peaceful scene,
She sadly thought “what might have been,”
Had traitors love, with gilded mien,
Not charmed with subtle power.
Then came the flood of bitter tears,
Heart-chiding and misgiving,
When stilling all her future fears,
As she a fancied footstep hears,
She takes a leap and disappears,
And ends the pain of living.
Despairing death her early doom,
Young, wretched, and mistaken,
Her innocence and beauty gone,
Her life cut off in early morn,
Her broken heart in anguish torn,
Deserted and forsaken.
And where is he whose treach’rous wiles
Have driven her to madness?
Whose hollow heart and sinful soul
Betrayed, while under love’s control,
The trusting heart we here enroll
Upon life’s book of sadness?
Her icy form drifts down the stream,
While he pursues his pleasures;
The world looks on his murd’rous deeds
With leniency, and scarcely heeds
The ruin wrought, or wrong that pleads
For justice in God’s measures.
SUMMER SIGHINGS.
We want to go to “Iceland,”
Or to the “polar seas;”
We want to hug an “iceberg,”
Or raise a “family breeze;”
We want to see a white frost
All o’er our grassy earth;
We want to have a snow storm
Give winter early birth;
A “cold” would be a godsend,
Indeed, we’d like a “chill;”
A “coolness” with our dearest friend
Would help to “fill the bill.”
A “cool reception” we’d enjoy,
Also, a “freezing” bow,
And “frosted feet” we’d think a treat
If we could have them now.
We’d like our home an “ice house,”
Our bed a bank of snow,
We’d have “refrigerator” cars
To take us to and fro;
We’d love to live in Lapland,
For reasons of our own,
Or spend our summer holidays
Within the “frigid zone.”
Why they call this world a “cold world”
We surely cannot tell,
We think this summer proves it
Almost as hot as “Hades.”
OUR BABY.
Our precious babe, our household pet,
“The well spring of our pleasure,”
Each hour welcomes some new art
Endearing this our treasure;
Its many little winning ways,
Its cunning tricks and baby plays
Bewitches beyond measure.
We watch it bud from day to day,
Developing new beauties;
A wonder in precociousness,
Performing baby duties;
It laughs, and coos, and “patty cakes,”
And plays with rings and rattles,
And reaches out its dimpled hands.
For all the goods and chattels
That tend to brighten babyhood.
And for them begs and battles;
Then laughs and leaps in gay delight;
And kicks and crows its pleasure,
Rejuvenates our quiet home
And fills our hours of leisure,
Till “tired nature” claims the sway
And gives the household holiday.
CREMATION.
Cremation seems to some to be
A matter of economy;
To save a heavy funeral fee,
Thus cheat the undertaker.
It has always been our great desire
To wholly shun post mortem fire;
We’d hate to roast a son or sire,
Or be a body baker.
How those that like this novel plan
To inflamate the corpse of man,
May use the funeral frying pan,
And gather up the ashes.
But we truly trust that our friends,
When our demise their bosom rends,
Will in their sorrow make amends,
Omitting cinder hashes.
No matter if the freight is low,
Or if we were a deadhead through,
Who’d want to be a broil or stew—
Thus to the turkey leveled?
Oh, no! we hope that our fate
Will be postponed till it’s so late
The fashion will be out of date,
And then we can’t be deviled.
RESPONSE, BY CINDER-ELLA.
Not for you cremating pyre,
Because “it’s been your great desire
To wholly shun post mortem fire,”
And thus to save your “bakin’.”
Because you have this hope behind you,
Don’t think your master will not find you,
Tho’ deep in earth they have consigned you,
Beneath a lying stone.
When earthly things do fade from view,
And all the chances you’ve run through,
Then will the devil have his due,
And he will claim his own.
ANSWER BY MRS. TAYLOR.
There is, we find, a class of folks
Opposed to our cremation jokes:
’Twere vain for us to try to coax
Them out of cinder-ation;
For furnace heat they sigh at heart,
They’d ape the goose or gander part,
Or baked like pudding, pie, or tart,
Be dessert of creation.
To such we would sincerely say,
Their fiery instincts should obey,
We would not have our wishes weigh
Against incendiaries;
But let them burn or bake by rule,
As suits the taste of sage or fool,
Our greatest aim is to keep cool,
Nor cross the Stygian ferries.
Cremators seem to pine for fire,
Nor would we quench their warm desire,
Though our hope is something higher,
We here would mildly mention:
If they their loved ones would ignite,
And think a burning bier is right,
Why let them take a fiery flight
“Where they pave with good intention.”
ALONE.
Hers is a rayless night;
No star or gleam of light
Beams o’er the widow’s blight,
As she sits alone.
Oh! could her tears that flow,
Wash out her woman’s woe,
Brown every sorrow’s throe
And misery’s moan.
She has a sunless sky,
Sadly to sit and sigh,
Her hope is but to die
And end the pain;
She thinks of other days
When life had sunny rays,
Such thoughts as nearly craze
Her busy brain.
Crushed hopes crowding come,
Dead joys, in a darkened home,
Lost love so lately known,
Make life so drear;
What is there left her now?
What peace has earth to show?
What bliss can life bestow
That once was dear?
She sits in twilight dim,
Vainly awaiting him,
Watching the shadows grim
Go faintly past;
Till night, lone and still,
Veils earth, dark and chill,
How kind could sorrow kill
By one cold blast.
But there she sits alone,
Lists for that tender tone,
Lately it was her own,
Fondly to hear;
How all is still and cold,
No ray can hope unfold,
Her young heart has grown old
In one short year.
Life’s early winter ’s come,
Clouded her happy home,
Made grief and woe her own,
Heartsore and sad;
Who could existence crave?
Her love is in the grave;
Would she die and save
Her going mad!
Heart bowed in deep despair,
Oh, God! hear thou her prayer;
Let time her loss repair,
And spring once more
Smile o’er her clouded years;
Give her the hope that cheers,
Wipe out her widow’s tears
And peace restore.
A CRITIQUE ON THE MORRIS LYCEUM.
The first on the list is President Boyce,
“The head of the heap,” and the Lyceum’s choice,
Whose seeming set habits in bachelor ways
Is all that robs him of womanly praise.
The next that comes under my critical pen,
At the president’s table sits fair Mrs. Glenn,
A lady so rich in pleasing pen powers
That we oftentimes wish her minutes were hours.
And then Mr. Cole, so sober and sage,
Whose late recitations have been quite the rage;
He, too, ’s in the market—I beg you won’t tell,
For the girls will pursue him and find it a “sell.”
Now dear Mrs. Goodrich, our matron of mind,
Who can be both Biddy and Lady combined;
With much versatility, logic and fun,
We welcome her always as “A Number one.”
In strides Mr. Hollister, tall and profound,
Who refuses to see when a laugh may be found;
Who relishes Bennett’s rejecting Miss May,
As though the stale tidings were fresh of to-day.
Then chimes the “sweet singer,” Miss Huston—Ah, me!
What would the Lyceum do without thee?
With her silverest tones and dreamiest look,
To recite the sad “Bells” and sing the sweet “Brook.”
In trips Enoch Taylor with humor and fun,
As “Dundreary,” or “Paddy,” or “George Washington;”
He has a strong weakness for “Widow Bedotte,”
Indeed, for all widows a weakness he’s got.
See the bright star, May Donally, rise,
Whose musical voice and luminous eyes
Make her so brilliant in reading and song,
We wish we could teach her refusing was wrong.
Boyd, the “tall barrister,” drawls out his say
In his sensible, lazy, lack-a-daisical way;
He declaims or debates, according to choice;
He’s a bachelor, having no partner but Boyce.
Then Mrs. Thorne, whose husband is Joe,
Smilingly reads, in tones soft and low,
Good articles, essays, poems or prose—
She’s happy at any you choose to propose.
Now comes Col. Finch, so jolly and jocose,
Who lately, I think, got slightly morose
Because “Brother Watkins” fell flat on our ears,
And failed to bring any spectators to tears.
Mr. Babbitt’s a name suggestive of soap,
Clean records and linen, and giving a scope
For a lawyer of merit, who’s modest and shy,
To make him a mixture to “concentrate lye.”
Then Mrs. Jones and Coffin come in,
Gentle, sweet readers as ever have been;
Selected to serve in meter or prose,
They recite “ready made” or sweetly compose.
Mr. Baker, who next breaks out in debate,
Is a favorite here, and I think I may state
Our friends will find it instructive delight
Attending his lecture here, next Friday night.
Welcome Miss Fish and Miss Boyd, in their turn,
Who know so much now they have little to learn;
They give us at times an essay or two,
Well written and read, and then they are through.
Now pretty dame Stone is a hard name to puff,
And to stick to the truth would be very rough;
For the gents, as she reads, the author defies,
And lose their ideas in the light of her eyes.
Col. Taylor, the “chronic debater,” appears,
Who argues regardless of scruples or fear;
Our “smiling attorney” don’t fret about sin,
But espouses the cause that’s surest to win.
The sensible, cynical Simpson Glenn,
Scares us and scathes us with critical pen;
He’s not over pious, I’ve heard people say,
But would be a Christian, were the Tempter away.
McLaughlin, why will you persistently part
Your hair in the middle, thus touching the heart
Of the girls of our church? I think it is wrong;
For forgiveness you’ll have to sing us a song.
Now sweet Mrs. Worth, our directress and guide,
Her name and her nature so closely allied;
Her gay, happy face and her laughing, bright eyes,
Are a light in the Lyceum the male members prize.
Mr. Goodrich writes quaintly, a style of his own,
But favors us seldom, if we let him alone;
His smiling refusals don’t quite fill the bill,
Though he fancies the sugar will cover the pill.
See, brilliant and bright as an evening star,
Our “brunette contralto,” Lucebia LeBarr;
With Miss Mary Taylor, whose talent is fine,
Executes harmonies almost divine.
In stalks Frederick Peer, the “tragedian knight,”
So happy in “Hamlet,” so good to recite
The “Wreck” or the “Richards” either one, two or three—
A Booth in the future I think I foresee.
Now gentle Miss Conkling, of rustic renown,
Has kindly consented to honor the town
And favor our meetings, in spite of the trains,
And cheer us and charm us with musical strains.
The next new delight we wish to impart
Will be in the person of Johnny B. Hart;
So modest in manner, so earnest in mind,
Has piety, talent, good nature combined.
By the way, he will lecture on the 10th of this May
Concerning Victoria’s blest reign of to-day;
With so fine a speaker and pleasant a theme,
The church will be filled with “la crème de la crème.”
In pops pungent Pape, with his poem from Poe,
Distorted, dissected till you hardly would know
How it could of all grace be so thoroughly shaven,
Could the poet arise I know he’d be “Raven.”
Last though not least, is Mrs. E. Taylor,
Of fair ones of forty, I think I’ve seen frailer!
But she’s blest with one beauty, she never gets blue—
Not even in bidding the Lyceum adieu.
NIGHT’S PHASES.
In sable mantle wrapt at rest,
Behold the glorious, gorgeous night,
Its firmament in splendor dressed
Its canopy the starry height,
Whose sparks illume and light the land,
And make e’en darkness bright and grand.
Then comes the moon with silver glow,
Whose mellow rays both charm and cheer,
Benignly blessing all below,
Before whose brightness disappear
Clouds and shadows, mists and shades,
Till silver sheen all earth pervades.
And then the mild, soft summer night,
With genial zephyrs, gentle dews,
Whose balmy breath wafts rich delight
O’er summer slopes where nightly strews
The ripened roses’ perfumed leaves,
Nor robs the flower that it bereaves.
Then comes the frosty winter night,
With crystal boughs and icy brooks,
With snow-capped hills, afar and white,
A-lending light to earth’s dark nooks,
Diffusing rays and borrowed gleams
O’er darkened woods and shaded streams.
And then behold the dreary night,
Without the spell of moon or stars,
Whose somber silence seems to blight
Earth’s finest phase, and chills and mars
The lonesome landscape, crowds the mind
With weird, wild fancies undefined;
And gives each form a phantom shape,
Creating visions gaunt and grim,
And, as a pall that mourners drape,
The clouds surround the shadows dim,
Filling the heart with nameless fears,
Till night’s dull darkness disappears.
THE FOUNDLING.
As I sat by my window one cool autumn eve,
And watched the dim shades on the opposite lawn,
From my silent surroundings sweet fancies I weave,
Unmindful of time and the approach of the dawn.
There I sat in the quiet and beauty of night,
Till the sentinel stars grew dim with the light.
When recalled to myself from the silence around,
While Nature was sleeping in peaceful repose,
By the meager approach of a weak, wailing sound,
Which on the night air at intervals rose,
Growing faint and fainter as the evening chill
Crept over the landscape so somber and still.
Whence comes that faint cry so plaintive and thrilling,
That dies on the air at each waft of the breeze?
Why creeps o’er my heart this sensation so chilling,
As I listen enchained ’mid the rustle of trees?
At length all is quiet but the night-watch’s tread,
So I hasten beside him, and tell him my dread.
Together we seek in the dimness of dawn,
’Mid grass and dead leaves becovered with dew,
To unravel the mystery heard on the lawn;
And the darkness dispelling, we find it too true,
That a babe, sweet and chubby, but a week or two old,
Is lying neglected alone in the cold.
In a coarse blanket-shawl, soiled, ragged, and old,
Lay the poor little sleeper, the picture of grief,
Aweary with weeping and hunger and cold,
Kind nature had brought it this happy relief,
Its downy cheeks wet with the cold evening dew,
Its chubby fists doubled and dimpled and blue.
A moment we gazed on its rude little bed,
And wondered what misery it must atone,
Why it was left there—what mystery led
To expose it to perish, forsaken, alone,
Was it treachery, wickedness, want, or woe,
That tempted the mother to abandon it so?
I lifted the babe from the damp, chilly ground,
Which awakened the sleeper from its sobbing repose,
And casting a startled and wild look around,
It nestled again in an infantile doze,
While I carried it home to fire and food,
Dressed it more cleanly, less common and rude.
A sweet little girl, fat, rosy, and fair,
By Nature’s endowments all any could crave,
With gentle blue eyes and light downy hair
(On a snowy broad brow), inclining to wave;
In form sweetly perfect, in face near divine;
For such do our wealthy ones daily repine.
This poor little waif, unwelcomed has come,
Been rescued by chance from hunger and cold,
How early life’s trials for it have begun,
How many new fears may its future unfold!
Left helpless and homeless to strangers alone,
With not even a name to claim as its own.
THE NEW YEAR.
The year is an infant, new-born and pure-hearted,
No blur on its beauty, no tear on its cheek;
How long will it last, when the calendar ’s started,
In innocent purity? How soon will it reek
With sorrow and sinfulness, woe and unkindness,
Till the whole year is blotted with error and blindness?
Each happy new year brings good resolutions,
Which wane and wear out ere the change of the moon;
We picture new plans at each revolution,
Which we find, when to late, have failed us too soon,
And our visions of happiness, pleasure, and cheerfulness
Are changed, ere the end, to sorrow and tearfulness.
Oh, would that this year, unlike all preceding,
Could show a clean record of well-kept resolves—
Good plans well perfected, fair promises heeding—
Instead of a picture that daily dissolves;
Then, indeed, would our future be free from all care,
Were our pledges and vows kept all through the year.