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3. But yet I cannot hate-O! there were hours When I could hang forever on his eye,

And time, who stole with silent swiftness by,
Strewed, as he hurried on, his path with flowers.
4. I loved him then - he loved me too. My heart
Still finds its fondness kindle if he smile;

The memory of our loves will ne'er depart ;
And though he often sting me with a dart,
Venomed and barbed, and waste upon the vile
Caresses which his babe and mine should share,
Though he should spurn me, I will calmly bear
His madness; and should sickness come and lay
Its paralyzing hand upon him, then

I would, with kindness, all my wrongs repay,
Until the penitent should weep and say,
How injured and how faithful I had been!

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1. WHO will believe? not I for in deceiving Lies the dear charm of life's delightful dream ;

I cannot spare the luxury of believing

That all things beautiful are what they seem.

2. Who will believe that, with a smile whose blessing Would, like the patriarch's, soothe a dying hour; With voice as low, as gentle, and caressing, As e'er won maiden's lip in moonlight bower; With look like patient Job's, eschewing evil; With motions graceful as a bird's in air; Thou art, in sober truth, the veriest devil That e'er clinched fingers in a captive's hair?

3. That in thy veins there springs a poison fountain, Deadlier than that which bathes the upas-tree; And in thy wrath, a nursing cat o' mountain Is calm as her babe's sleep compared with thee?

4. And underneath that face like summer's ocean's, Its lip as moveless, and its cheek as clear, Slumbers a whirlwind of the heart's emotions, Love, hatred, pride, hope, sorrow- - all, save fear. for thy land, as if she were thy daughter, Her pipes in peace, her tomahawk in wars;

Love

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Hatred

of missionaries and cold water;

Pride in thy rifle-trophies and thy scars;

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Hope that thy wrongs will be by the Great Spirit
Remembered and revenged when thou art gone;
Sorrow that none are left thee to inherit
Thy name, thy fame, thy passions, and thy throne.

LESSON CXV.

The Closing Year. - GEORGE D. PRENTICE.

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1. 'Tis midnight's holy hour- and silence now Is brooding, like a gentle spirit, o'er

The still and pulseless world. Hark! on the winds
The bell's deep tones are swelling; 't is the knell
Of the departed year.

2. No funeral train

Is sweeping past; yet, on the stream and wood,
With melancholy light, the moonbeams rest,
Like a pale, spotless shroud; the air is stirred,
As by a mourner's sigh; and on yon cloud,
That floats so still and placidly through heaven,
The spirits of the seasons seem to stand,

Young Spring, bright Summer, Autumn's solemn form,
And Winter with his aged locks, and breathe

In mournful cadences, that come abroad

Like the far wind-harp's wild and touching wail,
A melancholy dirge o'er the dead year,

Gone from the earth forever.

3. 'T is a time

For memory and for tears. Within the deep,
Still chambers of the heart, a specter dim,
Whose tones are like the wizard voice of Time,
Heard from the tomb of ages, points its cold
And solemn finger to the beautiful

And holy visions that have passed away,
And left no shadow of their loveliness
On the dead waste of life.

4. That specter lifts

The coffin-lid of hope, and joy, and love,
And, bending mournfully above the pale

Sweet forms that slumber there, scatters dead flowers
O'er what has passed to nothingness.

5. The year

Has gone, and, with it, many a glorious throng
Of happy dreams. Its mark is on each brow,
Its shadow in each heart. In its swift course,
It waved its scepter o'er the beautiful
And they are not.

6. It laid its pallid hand

Upon the strong man—and the haughty form
Is fallen, and the flashing eye is dim.

It trod the hall of revelry, where thronged
The bright and joyous and the tearful wail
Of stricken ones is heard, where erst the song
And reckless shout resounded.

7. It passed o'er

The battle-plain, where sword and spear and shield
Flashed in the light of midday—and the strength
Of serried hosts is shivered, and the grass,
Green from the soil of carnage, waves above
The crushed and moldering skeleton.

8. It came

And faded like a wreath of mist at eve;
Yet, ere it melted in the viewless air,

It heralded its millions to their home,
In the dim land of dreams.

9. Remorseless Time,

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Fierce spirit of the glass and scythe,-what power

Can stay him in his silent course, or melt

His iron heart to pity? On, still on

He presses, and forever.

10. The proud bird,

The condor of the Andes, that can soar

Through heaven's unfathomable depths, or brave

The fury of the northern hurricane,

And bathe his plumage in the thunder's home,

Furls his broad wings at nightfall, and sinks down To rest upon his mountain-crag,

but Time

Knows not the weight of sleep or weariness,

And night's deep darkness has no claim to bind
His rushing pinion.

11. Revolutions sweep

O'er earth, like troubled visions o'er the breast
Of dreaming sorrow; cities rise and sink,

Like bubbles on the water; fiery isles

Spring, blazing, from the ocean, and go back

To their mysterious caverns; mountains rear
To heaven their bald and blackened cliffs, and bow
Their tall heads to the plain; new empires rise,
Gathering the strength of hoary centuries,
And rush down like the Alpine avalanche,
Startling the nations; and the very stars
Yon bright and burning blazonry of God -
Glitter a while in their eternal depths,

And, like the Pleiad, loveliest of their train,
Shoot from their glorious spheres, and pass away,
To darkle in the trackless void.

12. Yet Time

Time, the tomb-builder

holds its fierce career,

Dark, stern, all-pitiless, and pauses not

Amid the mighty wrecks that strew his path,
To sit and muse, like other conquerors,
Upon the fearful ruin he has wrought.

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1. As o'er the verdant waste I guide my steed, Among the high, rank grass that sweeps his sides, The hollow beating of his footstep seems

A sacrilegious sound. I think of those

Upon whose rest he tramples. Are they here -
The dead of other days? — and did the dust
Of these fair solitudes once stir with life

And burn with passion?

2. Let the mighty mounds

That overlook the rivers, or that rise

In the dim forest, crowded with old oaks,

Answer. A race that long has passed away

Built them; -a disciplined and populous race

Heaped, with long toil, the earth, while yet the Greek
Was hewing the Pentelicus to forms

Of symmetry, and rearing on its rock

The glittering Parthenon. These ample fields

* Pentelicus was a mountain of Attica, famous for its quarries of beautiful marble.

The Temple of Minerva.

Nourished their harvests; here their herds were fed,
When haply by their stalls the bison* lowed,
And bowed his maned shoulder to the yoke.

3. All day this desert murmured with their toils,
Till twilight blushed, and lovers walked, and wooed
In a forgotten language, and old tunes,

From instruments of unremembered form,
Gave the soft winds a voice.

4. The red man came,

The roaming hunter-tribes, warlike and fierce, -
And the mound-builders vanished from the earth.
The solitude of centuries untold

Has settled where they dwelt. The prairie-wolf
Hunts in their meadows, and his fresh-dug den
Yawns by my path. The gopher † mines the ground
Where stood their swarming cities. All is gone,
All save the piles of earth that hold their bones,
The platforms where they worshiped unknown gods,
The barriers which they builded from the soil
To keep the foe at bay, till o'er the walls
The wild beleaguerers broke, and one by one
The strongholds of the plain were forced, and heaped
With corpses.

5. The brown vultures of the wood

Flocked to those vast, uncovered sepulchers,
And sat, unscared and silent, at their feast.
Haply some solitary fugitive,

Lurking in marsh and forest, till the sense
Of desolation and of fear became

Bitterer than death, yielded himself to die.

--

6. Man's better nature triumphed. Kindly words
Welcomed and soothed him; the rude conquerors
Seated the captive with their chiefs; he chose
A bride among their maidens, and at length
Seemed to forget, yet ne'er forgot, the wife
Of his first love, and her sweet little ones,
Butchered, amid their shrieks, with all his race.

7. Thus change the forms of being. Thus arise Races of living things, glorious in strength,

*Bison is the proper name of the animal in the prairies commonly called the Buffalo. The real buffalo is found in India.

It burrows

+ The gopher is an animal about the size of a squirrel. in the earth, throwing up hillocks twelve or eighteen inches high. It is very mischievous in corn-fields and gardens.

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