I hide with you in the fragrant hay,
And I whoop the smothered call,
And my feet slip up on the seedy floor,
And I care not for the fall.

I am willing to die when my time shall come,
And I shall be glad to go-

For the world, at best, is a weary place,

And my pulse is getting low;

But the grave is dark, and the heart will fail
In treading its gloomy way;

And it wiles my heart from its dreariness
To see the young so gay.

-N. P. Willis.

STILL Sits the school-house by the road,
A ragged beggar sunning;
Around it still the sumachs grow

And blackberry vines are running.

Within, the master's desk is seen,
Deep scarred by raps official;
The warping floor, the battered seats,
The jack-knife's carved initial;

The charcoal frescoes on its wall;
Its door's worn sill, betraying
The feet that, creeping slow to school,
Went storming out to playing!

Long years ago a winter sun
Shone over it at setting;
Lit up its western window-panes,
And low eaves' icy fretting.

It touched the tangled golden curls,
And brown eyes full of grieving,
Of one who still her steps delayed
When all the school were leaving.

For near her stood the little boy
Her childish favor singled;

His cap pulled low upon a face

Where pride and shame were mingled.

Pushing with restless feet the snow

To right and left, he lingered;

As restlessly her tiny hands.

The blue-checked apron fingered.

He saw her lift her eyes; he felt
The soft hand's light caressing,
And heard the tremble of her voice,
As if a fault confessing.

Because," the brown eyes lower fell,

"Because, you see, I love you!”

Still memory to a gray-haired man
That sweet child-face is showing.
Dear girl! the grasses on her grave
Have forty years been growing!

He lives to learn, in life's hard school,
How few who pass above him
Lament their triumph and his loss,

I'VE wandered east, I've wandered west,

Through mony a weary way,

But never, never can forget

The luve o' life's young day!

The fire that's blawn on Beltane e'en
May weel be black gin yule;

But blacker fa' awaits the heart
Where first fond luve grows cule.

O dear, dear Jeanie Morrison,

The thochts o' bygane years
Still fling their shadows ower my path,
And blind my een wi' tears :
They blind my een wi' saut, saut tears,
And sair and sick I pine,

As memory idly summons up

The blithe blinks o' lang syne.

'Twas then we luvit ilk ither weel,

'T was then we twa did part;

Sweet time sad time! twa bairns at scule,

Twa bairns, and but ae heart!

"T was then we sat on ae laigh bink,

To leir ilk ither lear;