Ah! 'tis like a tale of olden time, long, long ago;

When the world was in its golden prime, and Love was lord below!
Every vein of Earth was dancing with the Spring's new wine!
'Twas the pleasant time of flowers when I met you, love of mine ꞌ
Ah! some spirit sure was straying out of heaven that day,
When I met you, Sweet! a-Maying in that merry, merry May
Little heart! it shyly opened its red leaves' love lore,
Like a rose that must be ripened to the dainty, dainty core.
But its beauties daily brighten, and it blooms so dear,—
Though a many winters whiten, I go Maying all the year
And my proud heart will be praying blessings on the day
When I met you, Sweet, a-Maying, in that merry, merry May.

Very charming is the following from the pen of SIR E. BULWER LYTTON :

Hollow is the oak beside the sunny waters drooping;
Thither came, when I was young, happy children trooping;
Dream I now, or hear I now-far, their mellow whooping?
Gay, below the cowslip bank, see the billow dances,
There I lay, beguiling time--when I lived romances;
Dropping pebbles in the wave, fancies into fancies;
Farther, where the river glides by the wooded cover,

Where the merlin singeth low, with the hawk above her,
Came a foot and shone a smile--woe is me, the lover!
Leaflets on the hollow oak still as greenly quiver,
Musical, amid the reeds, murmurs on the river;

But the footstep and the smile!—woe is me forever!

These beautiful lines are also by this eminent novelist and poet :

When stars are in the quiet skies, then most I pine for thee;

Bend on me then thy tender eyes, as stars look on the sea.

For thoughts, like waves that glide by night, are stillest when they

shine;

Mine earthly love lies hushed in light, beneath the heaven of thine.
There is an hour when angels keep familiar watch o'er men,
When coarser souls are wrapped in sleep; sweet Spirit, meet me then!
There is an hour when holy dreams through slumber fairest glide,
And in that mystic hour it seems thou shouldst be by my side.
My thoughts of thee too sacred are for daylight's common beam;
I can but know thee as my star, my angel, and my dream!
When stars are in the quiet skies, then most I pine for thee;
Bend on me then thy tender eyes, as stars look on the sea.

As a genial satirist, OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES is perhaps unsurpassed by any American writer; he is not only a humorist, but a true poet of passion and pathos, although his forte is the grotesque: witness the following extracts:

But now his nose is thin, and it rests upon his chin

Like a staff;

And a crook is in his back, and a melancholy crack

In his laugh.

For I know it is a sin for me to sit and grin

At him here;

But the old three-cornered hat, and the breeches, and all that,

Are so queer!

Quite equal to the above is the following, entitled My Aunt:

My aunt, my dear unmarried aunt! Long years have o'er her flown;
Yet still she strains the aching clasp that binds her virgin zone:
I know it hurts her-though she looks as cheerful as she can;
Her waist is ampler than her life, for life is but a span !
My aunt, my poor deluded aunt! her hair is almost gray;
Why will she train that winter curl in such a spring-like way?
How can she lay her glasses down, and say she reads as well,
When through a double convex lens she just makes out to spell?

*

Holmes's Wine Song has been justly admired :

Flash out a stream of blood-red wine!-
For I would drink to other days;
And brighter shall their memory shine,
Seen flaming through its crimson blaze.
The roses die, the summers fade;
But every ghost of boyhood's dream
By nature's magic power is laid

To sleep beneath this blood-red stream.

It filled the purple grapes that lay

And drank the splendours of the sun,
Where the long Summer's cloudless day
Is mirrored in the broad Garonne ;

It pictures still the bacchant shapes
That saw their hoarded sunlight shed,—
The maidens dancing on the grapes,-

Their milk-white ankles splashed with red.
Beneath these waves of crimson lie,

In rosy fetters prisoned fast,
Those flitting shapes that never die,
The swift-winged visions of the past.

Here, clad in burning robes, are laid

Life's blossomed joys, untimely shed;
And here those cherished forms have strayed
We miss awhile, and call them dead.
What wizard fills the maddening glass?
What soil the enchanted clusters grew,
That buried passions wake, and pass
In beaded drops of fiery dew?

*

*

*

Here is his graphic sketch of the Ploughman :

Clear the brown path, to meet his coulter's gleam !
Lo! on he comes, behind his smoking team,
With toil's bright dew-drops on his sunburnt brow,
The lord of earth, the hero of the plough!
First in the field, before the reddening sun,
Last in the shadows when the day is done.
Line after line, along the bursting sod,

Marks the broad acres where his feet have trod;
Still, where he treads the stubborn clods divide,
The smooth, fresh furrow opens deep and wide;
Matted and dense, the tangled turf upheaves,
Mellow and dark, the ridgy corn-field cleaves;
Up the steep hill-side, where the labouring train
Slants the long track that scores the level plain;
Through the moist valley, clogged with oozing clay,
The patient convoy breaks its destined way;

At every turn the loosening chains resound,

The

Mossy Marbles rest

On the lips that he has prest

In their bloom,

Auce the names he loved to hear

Have been carved for many a year
On the Tomb.

Oliver Wendes: Hormes.
Borten July 20th 1875