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THE FIRE OF DRIFT-WOOD.

By LONGFELLOW.

WE sat within the farmhouse old,
Whose windows, looking o'er the bay,
Gave to the sea-breeze, damp and cold,
An easy entrance, night and day.

Not far away we saw the port,

The strange, old-fashioned, silent town,The lighthouse,-the dismantled fort,The wooden houses, quaint and brown.

We sat and talked until the night,
Descending, filled the little room;
Our faces faded from the sight,

Our voices only broke the gloom.

We spake of many a vanished scene,

Of what we once had thought and said, Of what had been, and might have been, And who was changed, and who was dead;

And all that fills the hearts of friends,
When first they feel, with secret pain,
Their lives thenceforth have separate ends
And never can be one again;

The first slight swerving of the heart,
That words are powerless to express,

And leave it still unsaid in part,

Or say it in too great excess.

The very tones in which we spake

Had something strange, I could but mark;

The leaves of memory seemed to make

A mournful rustling in the dark.

Oft died the words upon our lips,
As suddenly, from out the fire
Built of the wreck of stranded ships,

The flames would leap and then expire.

And, as their splendour flashed and failed, We thought of wrecks upon the main,— Of ships dismasted, that were hailed

And sent no answer back again.

The windows, rattling in their frames,
The ocean, roaring up the beach,-
The gusty blast,-the bickering flames,
All mingled vaguely in our speech;

Until they made themselves a part

Of fancies floating through the brain,—
The long-lost ventures of the heart,
That send no answers back again.

O flames that glowed! O hearts that yearned!

They were indeed to much akin,

The drift-wood fire without that burned,

The thoughts that burned and glowed within.

THE OLD GREEN LANE.

By ELIZA COOK.

'Twas the very merry summer time
That garlands hills and dales,
And the south wind rung a fairy chime
Upon the foxglove bells :

The cuckoo stood on the lady birch

To bid her last good-bye—

The lark sprung over the village church,
And whistled to the sky;

And we had come from the harvest sheaves,
A blithe and tawny train,

And tracked our paths with poppy leaves
Along the old green lane.

'Twas a pleasant way on a sunny day,

And we were a happy set,

And we idly bent where the streamlet went
To get our fingers wet;

With the dog-rose there, and the orchis there,
And the woodbine twining through,
With the broad trees meeting everywhere,
And the grass still dank with dew.
Ah! we all forgot, in that blissful spot,
The names of care and pain,

As we lay on the bank, by the shepherd's cot,
To rest in the old green lane.

Oh, days gone by! I can but sigh

As I think on that rich hour,

When my heart in its glee but seemed to be
Another wood-side flower;

For though the trees be still as fair,
And the wild bloom still as gay-

Though the south wind sends as sweet an air,
And heaven as bright a day!

Yet the merry set are far and wide,

And we ne'er shall meet again,
We shall never ramble side by side
Along that green old lane.

OUR FIRST BORN.

From The Ballad of Babe Christabel, by GERALD MASSEY, one of the true poets of our time.

O HAPPY husband! happy wife!

The rarest blessing Heaven drops down,
The sweetest blossom in Spring's crown,

Starts in the furrows of your life!

God! what a towering height ye win,
Who cry, "Lo my beloved child!"
And, life on life sublimely piled,
Ye touch the heavens and peep within!

Look how a star of glory swims
Down aching silences of space,
Flushing the darkness till its face
With beating heart of light o'erbrims!

So brightening came Babe Christabel,
To touch the earth with fresh romance,
And light a mother's countenance

With looking on her miracle.

With hands so flower-like, soft, and fair,
She caught at life, with words as sweet
As first spring violets, and feet

As faery-light as feet of air.

The father, down in Toil's mirk mine,
Turns to his wealthy world above,
Its radiance, and its home of love;
And lights his life like sun-struck wine.

The mother moves with queenlier tread :
Proud swell the globes of ripe delight
Above her heart, so warm and white

A pillow for the baby-head!

Their natures deepen, well-like, clear,
Till God's eternal stars are seen,
For ever shining and serene,

By eyes anointed Beauty's seer.

A sense of glory all things took,—

The red rose-heart of Dawn would blow, And Sundown's sumptuous pictures show Babe-cherubs wearing their babe's look!

And round their peerless one they clung,
Like bees about a flower's wine-cup,
New thoughts and feelings blossom'd up,

And hearts for very fulness sung

Of what their budding babe shall grow,
When the maid crimson'd into wife,

And crown'd the summit of some life,
Like Phosphor, with morn on its brow!

And they should bless her for a bride,
Who, like a splendid saint alit

In some heart's seventh heaven, should sit, As now in theirs, all glorified!

But O! 'twas all too white a brow

So

To flush with passion that doth fire

With Hymen's torch its own death-pyre,pure her heart was beating now!

And thus they built their castles brave
In faery lands of gorgeous cloud;
They never saw a little white shroud,
Nor guess'd how flowers may mask the grave.

THE SLAVE'S DREAM.

By LONGFELLOW.

BESIDE the ungathered rice he lay,
His sickle in his hand;

His breast was bare, his matted hair
Was buried in the sand.

Again, in the mist and shadow of sleep,
He saw his native land.

Wide through the landscape of his dreams
The lordly Niger flowed;
Beneath the palm trees on the plain
Once more a king he strode;
And heard the tinkling caravans

Descend the mountain-road.

He saw once more his dark-eyed queen
Among her children stand;

They clasped his neck, they kissed his cheeks,

They held him by the hand!

A tear burst from the sleeper's lids

And fell into the sand.

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