Why blame the pranks that love does ever play?
What though my eyes be wet, my temples gray?
These cares are but the signs of passion's fire,
Of sleepless nights and unfulfilled desire,
Only the flame within me freshly burns,
All else to age and feebleness returns.
Yet though my sides are wrinkled in their prime,
My neck all loose and slack before its time,
If thou, dear heart, to love me now will deign
I shall grow young, my hair turn black again.

CELEBRATION OF THE MERCANITLE LIBRARY ASSOCIATION, FEBRUARY 22, 1856

Welcome to the day returning,
Dearer still as ages flow,
While the torch of Faith is burning,
Long as Freedom's altars glow!
See the hero whom it gave us
Slumbering on a mother's breast;
For the arm he stretched to save us,
Be its morn forever blest!

Hear the tale of youthful glory,
While of Britain's rescued band

There's something in the sun that's new this morn,
or something old: I live elsewhere, and know
that round about the violets are born.

Deep in the monastery woods they grow,
the Capuchins', among the lifeless leaves
under the oak tree, where the soft winds blow.

There is an air of freshness, one which cleaves
the sods, and at the country church makes bright
the threshold, where the year its greenness leaves:

an air of other place, of other light,
of other life: an air of heavenly blue,

Let not, sweet saint! let not these lines offend you;
Nor yet the message that these lines impart:
The message my unfeigned love doth send you,
Love, which yourself hath planted in my heart.
For being charmed by the bewitching art
Of those inveigling graces which attend you,
Love's holy fire makes me breathe out in part
The never-dying flames my breast doth lend you.
Then if my lines offend, let Love be blamed;
And if my love displease, accuse mine eyes:
If mine eyes sin, their sin's cause only lies

Lift up our country's banner high,
And fling abroad its gorgeous sheen,
Unrol its stripes upon the sky,
And let its lovely stars be seen!
Blood — blood is on its spangled fold!
Yet from the battle comes it not;
But all the waters oceans hold
Cannot wash out the guilty spot.

Up, freemen! up; determine, do
What Justice claims, what freemen may;
What frowning heav'n demands of you,
While yet its mutt'ring thunders stay: —
That ye, forever from this soil,
Bid S LAVERY'S with'ring blight depart,

Where shade was once, the dead oak lies in state
and will no longer with the whirlwinds sway.
And now they say: Behold, the tree was great!

Still, here and there, up in the tree-top stay
the little bird's-nests that the springtimes leave.
Behold, the tree was good! the people say.

Each one commends and each one cuts. At eve
each goes away with heavy bundle bound.
In the air a plaint. . . . I hear a black-cap grieve,

that's looking for a nest, she'll ne'er have found.

A PASTORAL .

IN THE MANNER OF CUNNINGHAM .

See! rob'd in new beauties, young May cheers the lawn!
Ye virgins! how charming her air,
Haste! cull her fresh flow'rets dew drooping at dawn,
And chaplets entwine for your hair!
Yes! weave the gay garland! each moment improve!
Youth's pleasures, like Spring, fleet away!
Life has its soft season — that season is Love .

SENT TO MISS D. OF LINSTED, WITH A WHIP MADE OF A RHINOCEROS'S SKIN

Ere modest Virtue lost her way
Among the dissipated gay,
Few modes were used for travel;
Unknown to whip, or spur, or boot,
Each hardy Briton trudged on foot,
Through mud, bog, dust, and gravel.

'Twas then the fair, as story tells,
(Ah! how unlike our modern belles!)
Knew neither coach nor saddle;
No female Phaetonians then
Surpassed the boldest of our men
In gesture, look, and straddle.

But formed by Nature's artless hand,

A galloping in the far distance
(it may be ...?),
that cometh, that o'er the plain rusheth
with pace all a-tremble and swift.

A plain like a desert, unending,
all ample, all arid, monotonous;
stray shadows of birds there bewildered,
that glide arrow-swift on their way;

Naught else. These wee creatures are fleeing
some horrible thing that approaches;
but what it may be or whence coming,
not earth and not heaven doth know.

A galloping in the far distance
now louder,
that cometh, that o'er the plain rusheth;

MEETING OF THE BERKSHIRE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY, AT STOCKBRIDGE, SEPTEMBER 13, 1854

Scarce could the parting ocean close,
Seamed by the Mayflower's cleaving bow,
When o'er the rugged desert rose
The waves that tracked the Pilgrim's plough.

Then sprang from many a rock-strewn field
The rippling grass, the nodding grain,
Such growths as English meadows yield
To scanty sun and frequent rain.

But when the fiery days were done,