12. THE LIGHT OF OTHER DAYS.

I.

Oft in the stilly night,

Ere slumber's chain has bound me,
Fond memory brings the light

Of other days around me;
The smiles, the tears

Of boyhood's years,

The words of love then spoken;

The eyes that shone,

Now dimm'd and gone,

The cheerful hearts now broken!

Thus in the stilly night,

Ere slumber's chain has bound me,

Sad memory brings the light

Of other days around me.

II.

When I remember all

The friends, so linked together, I've seen around me fall,

Like leaves in wintry weather,

I feel like one

Who treads alone

Some banquet hall deserted,

Whose lights are fled,

Whose garlands dead,

And all but him departed!
Thus in the stilly night,

Ere slumber's chain has bound me,

Sad memory brings the light

Of other days around me.

-THOMAS MOORE.

13. TRANSLATION OF THE TWENTY-THIRD

PSALM.

I.

The Lord my pasture shall prepare,
And feed me with a shepherd's care;
His presence shall my wants supply,
And guard me with a watchful eye;
My noonday walks He shall attend,
And all my midnight hours defend.

II.

When in the sultry glebe I faint,
Or on the thirsty mountain pant,
To fertile vales and dewy meads
My weary, wand'ring steps He leads;
Where peaceful rivers, soft and slow,
Amid the verdant landscape flow.

III.

Though in the paths of death I tread,
With gloomy horrors overspread,

My steadfast heart shall feel no ill,
For Thou, O Lord, art with me still!
Thy friendly crook shall give me aid,
And guide me through the dreadful shade.

IV.

Though in a bare and rugged way,
Through devious, lonely wilds, I stray,
Thy bounty shall my wants beguile;
The barren wilderness shall smile,
With sudden greens and herbage crowned,
And streams shall murmur all around.

-JOSEPH ADDISON.

14. TRUE REST.

Sweet is the pleasure
Itself cannot spoil!

Is not true leisure

One with true toil?

Thou that wouldst taste it

Still do thy best;

Use it, not waste it,
Else 'tis no rest.

Wouldst behold beauty

Near thee, all round?

Only hath duty

Such a sight found.

Rest is not quicting
The busy career;
Rest is the fitting

Of self to its sphere.

'Tis the brook's motion

Clear without strife,
Fleeing to ocean

After its life.

Deeper devotion

Nowhere hath knelt;

Fuller emotion

Heart never felt.

'Tis loving and serving
The highest and best;
'Tis onwards, unswerving-

And that is true rest.

-JOHN S. DWIGHT.

15. THE LONG AGO.

Oh! a wonderful stream is the river Time,
As it runs through the realm of tears,
With a faultless rhythm and a musical rhyme
And a broader sweep and a surge sublime,
As it blends in the ocean of years!

How the winters are drifting like flakes of snow, And the summers like birds between,

And the years in the sheaf, how they come and they go

On the river's breast with its ebb and flow,
As it glides in the shadow and sheen!

There's a Magical Isle up the river Time,
Where the softest of airs are playing.
There's a cloudless sky and tropical clime,
And a song as sweet as a vesper chime,

And the Junes with the roses are straying.

And the name of this Isle is "the Long Ago,"
And we bury our treasures there;

There are brows of beauty and bosoms of snow,
There are heaps of dust-oh! we love them so-
And there are trinkets and tresses of hair.

There are fragments of songs that nobody sings,
There are parts of an infant's prayer,
There's a lute unswept and a harp without strings,
There are broken vows and pieces of rings,
And the garments our dead used to wear.

There are hands that are waved when the fairy shore By the mirage is lifted in air,

And we sometimes hear through the turbulent roar Sweet voices we heard in the days gone before,

When the wind down the river was fair.