MISCELLANEOUS POEMS.

WILLIAM OF WYKEHAM,

The Founder's Day.

I.

"TIS Winton's day of solemn state,
To Wykeham's memory consecrate :
Her scattered sons from far she calls
Once more to tread her ancient halls;
To cast, upon their Founder's day,
The weary load of years away;

And breathe again, for that brief time,
The freshness of their boyhood's prime.

The morning bells have chimed to prayer, In the old order, two and two,

The youthful throng that worships there

Has passed the reverend portal through;
And through the gorgeous Eastern pane,
The Summer Sun looks down again
Upon the well-remembered show,

That decks the crowded aisle below-
On Boyhood's glowing cheek and eye,
Open and clear as morning sky :-
On Youth, in all its flush of prime,
Life's fairest, freshest, goodliest time-
On forms by years and labours bowed,
Strange contrast to that boyish crowd!
Men, it may be, whose steps have gained
The loftiest heights by worth attained;
Whose names, to England justly dear,
Ring like a trump in every ear;
'Mid joyous urchins, in whose eyes
No palm transcends the schoolboy's prize!

Yet the same thoughts and feelings sway Boyhood, and Youth, and Age to-day:

For cares of State and dreams of Pride
Within these walls are cast aside;
And all are Wykeham's sons once more,
As true and guileless as of yore.

The heirship of his mighty name

Makes old and young in heart the same.
And almost could their fancy feign,

That, as they kneel where then they knelt, Relenting Time had given again

The lightsome step, the bounding vein,
Which in those vanished years they felt.
It is a goodly scene, in sooth,

Not less to manhood dear than youth.
The record of an age, whose gloom
Tradition's lamp may scarce illume,
All idly deemed, in modern time,
An age of ignorance and crime—
The scene which oft, in days of yore,
Loyal of heart our fathers saw—
The which unaltered to the last,

Ages unborn shall yet renew,