Such joys are all about us spread,

We know the whisper was not truth.

The birds that break from grass and grove
Sing every carol that they sung

When first our veins were rich with love
And May her mantle round us flung.

O fresh-lit dawn! immortal life!

O Earth's betrothal, sweet and true,
With whose delights our souls are rife,
And aye their vernal vows renew!

Then, darling, walk with me this morn;
Let your brown tresses drink its sheen;
These violets, within them worn,

Of floral fays shall make you queen.

What though there comes a time of pain

When autumn winds forebode decay?

The days of love are born again;
That fabled time is far away!

And never seemed the land so fair
As now, nor birds such notes to sing,
Since first within your shining hair

I wove the blossoms of the spring.

The flowing gayety of the following song must serve as excuse for its praise of the wine-cup, happily no longer one of the essentials of joyous occasions.

Sparkling and bright in liquid light

Does the wine our goblets gleam in,

With hue as red as the rosy bed

Which a bee would choose to dream in.
Then fill to-night, with hearts as light,
To loves as gay and fleeting

As bubbles that swim on the beaker's brim
And break on the lips while meeting.

Oh, if Mirth might arrest the flight
Of Time through Life's dominions,
We here awhile would now beguile
The graybeard of his pinions,

To drink to-night, with hearts as light,
To loves as gay and fleeting

As bubbles that swim on the beaker's brim
And break on the lips while meeting.

But since Delight can't tempt the wight,
Nor fond Regret delay him,

Nor Love himself can hold the elf,

Nor sober Friendship stay him,

We'll drink to-night, with hearts as light,
To loves as gay and fleeting

As bubbles that swim on the beaker's brim
And break on the lips while meeting.

CHARLES FENNO HOFFMAN.

We may offer as antidote to the subtle poison of the preceding strain "The Toast" of Mary Kyle Dallas.

Pop! went the gay cork flying,

Sparkled the gay champagne;

By the light of a day that was dying
He filled up their goblets again.
"Let the last, best toast be Woman,-
Woman, dear woman!" said he:

"Empty your glass, my darling,

When you drink to your sex with me."

But she caught his strong brown fingers,
And held them tight as in fear,
And through the gathering twilight
Her voice fell on his ear:

"Nay, ere you drink, I implore you,
By all that you hold divine,
Pledge a woman in tear-drops
Rather by far than in wine!

"By the woes of the drunkard's mother,
By his children who beg for bread,
By the fate of her whose beloved one
Looks on the wine when 'tis red,

By the kisses changed to curses,

By the tears more bitter than brine,
By many a fond heart broken,-

Pledge no woman in wine."

From the joy of sunshine, hope, love, and wine, we come to that of blissful laziness, under skies without a cloud, and with a heart empty of care, other than that the sun may always shine. The utter idleness of the Italian dolce far niente is thus neatly paraphrased by Charles G. Halpine, the "Miles O'Reilly" of war times.

My friend, my chum, my trusty crony,

We were designed, it seems to me,

To be two happy lazzaroni,

On sunshine fed and macaroni,

Far off by some Sicilian sea.

From dawn to eve in the happy land
No duty on us but to lie

Straw-hatted on the shining sand,

With bronzing chest and arm and hand,
Beneath the blue Italian sky.

There, with the mountains idly glassing
Their purple splendors in the sea,
To watch the white-winged vessels passing
(Fortunes for busier fools amassing),—
This were a heaven to you and me;

Our meerschaums coloring cloudy brown,
Two young girls coloring with a blush,
The blue waves with a silver crown,
The mountain-shadows dropping down,
And all the air in perfect hush:

Thus should we lie in the happy land,

Nor fame, nor power, nor fortune miss,
Straw-hatted on the shining sand,

With bronzing chest and arm and hand,-
Two loafers couched in perfect bliss.

Halpine's picture of the dolce far niente of the body may be fitly followed by a peculiarly original poetic rendering of the "sweet donothing" of the soul, by an unknown writer.

My soul lies out like a basking hound,
A hound that dreams and dozes;

Along my life my length I lay,

I fill to-morrow and yesterday,

I am warm with the suns that have long since set,

I am warm with the summers that are not yet,

And like one that dreams and dozes,

Softly afloat on a sunny sea.

Two worlds are whispering over me,

And there blows a wind of roses

From the backward shore to the shore before,
From the shore before to the backward shore,
And, like two clouds that meet and pour
Each through each, till core in core
A single self reposes,

The nevermore and evermore
Above me mingles and closes;

As my soul lies out like a basking hound,
And wherever it lies seems happy ground,
And when, awakened by some sweet sound,
A dreamy eye uncloses,

I see a blooming world around,

And lie amid primroses,—

Years of sweet primroses,

Springs to be, and springs for me,

Of distant dim primroses.

With the following verses from another anonymous author, to whom the sunshine of life is a more vital and persistent element than its shadow, we close this poetic symposium.

SUNSHINE.

Our griefs are soon forgot;

They were, and they are not,

And the happy-hearted world little cares for vanished

pains;

But we fill the cup of pleasure

To so deep and brimming measure

That the subtle overflowing spirit all our being stains.

E'en perils dark and frightful

Yield memories delightful,

From the granite cliffs of trouble golden grains of pleas

ure won;