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THE SCULPTURED CHILDREN.

How many hearts have felt

Your silent beauty melt

Their strength to gushing tenderness away!
How many sudden tears,

From depths of buried years

All freshly bursting, have confessed your sway!

How many eyes will shed

Still, o'er your marble bed

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Such drops, from Memory's troubled fountains wrung! While Hope hath blights to bear,

While love breathes mortal air,

While roses perish ere to glory sprung.

Yet, from a voiceless home,
If some sad mother come

To bend and linger o'er your lovely rest;
As o'er the cheek's warm glow,

And the soft breathings low

Of babes that grew and faded on her breast;

If then the dovelike tone

Of those faint murmurs gone,
O'er her sick sense too piercingly return;
If for the soft bright hair,

And brow and bosom fair,

And life, now dust, her soul too deeply yearn;

O gentle forms entwined

Like tendrils which the wind
May wave, so clasped, but never can unlink;
Send from your calm profound

A still small voice, a sound

Of hope, forbidding that lone heart to sink.

By all the pure meek mind
In your pale beauty shrined,

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THE SCULPTURED CHILDREN.

By childhood's love-too bright a bloom to die! O'er her worn spirit shed,

O fairest, holiest dead!

The Faith, Trust, Light, of Immortality!

MY OWN FIRESIDE.

BY ALARIC A. WATTS.

LET others seek for empty joys,
At ball, or concert, rout, or play;
Whilst, far from fashion's idle noise,
Her gilded domes, and trappings gay,
I wile the wintry eve away,

'Twixt book and lute the hours divide;
And marvel how I e'er could stray
From thee-my own Fireside!

My own Fireside! Those simple words
Can bid the sweetest dreams arise;
Awaken feeling's tenderest chords,
And fill with tears of joy my eyes!
What is there my wild heart can prize,
That doth not in thy sphere abide,
Haunt of my home-bred sympathies,
My own-my own Fireside!

A gentle form is near me now;

A small white hand is clasped in mine;

I gaze upon her placid brow,

And ask what joys can equal thine!

A babe, whose beauty's half divine,

In sleep its mother's eyes doth hide ;Where may love seek a fitter shrine, Than thou-my own Fireside?

MY OWN FIRESIDE.

What care I for the sullen roar

Of winds without, that ravage earth; It doth but bid me prize the more,

The shelter of thy hallowed hearth; To thoughts of quiet bliss give birth: Then let the churlish tempest chide, It cannot check the blameless mirth That glads my own Fireside.

My refuge ever from the storm

Of this world's passion, strife and care;
Though thunder clouds the sky deform,
Their fury cannot reach me there.
There all is cheerful, calm, and fair,
Wrath, Malice, Envy, Strife, or Pride,
Hath never made its hated lair,
By thee my own Fireside!

Thy precincts are a charmed ring,
Where no harsh feeling dares intrude;
Where life's vexations lose their sting;
Where even grief is half subdued:
And Peace, the halcyon, loves to brood.
Then, let the pampered fool deride,
I'll pay my debt of gratitude

To thee my own Fireside!

Shrine of my household deities!

Fair scene of my home's unsullied joys! To thee my burthened spirit flies,

When fortune frowns, or care annoys :

Thine is the bliss that never cloys;

The smile whose truth hath oft been tried ;

What, then, are this world's tinsel toys

To thee-my own Fireside!

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MY OWN FIRESIDE,

Oh, may the yearnings, fond and sweet,
That bid my thoughts be all of thee,
Thus ever guide my wandering feet
To thy heart-soothing sanctuary!
Whate'er my future years may be ;
Let joy or grief my fate betide;
Be still an Eden bright to me
My own-MY OWN FIRESIDE!

THE FROSTED TREES.

WHAT strange enchantment meets my view,
So wondrous bright and fair?
Has heaven poured out its silver dew
On the rejoicing air?

Or am I born to regions new

To see the glories there?

Last eve when sun-set filled the sky
With wreaths of golden light,
The trees sent up their arms on high,
All leafless to the sight,

And sleepy mists came down to lie
On the dark breast of night.

But now the scene is changed, and all
Is fancifully new ;

The trees, last eve so straight and tall,

Are bending on the view,

And streams of living daylight fall

The silvery arches through.

THE FROSTED TREES.

The boughs are strung with glittering pearls !
As dewdrops bright and bland,

And there they gleam in silvery curls,

Like gems of Samarcand,

Seeming in wild fantastic whirls

The work of fairy land.

Each branch stoops meekly with the weight,
And in the light breeze swerves,

As if some viewless angel sate

Upon its graceful curves,

And made the fibres spring elate,
Thrilling the secret nerves.

Oh! I could dream the robe of heaven,
Pure as the dazzling snow,
Beaming as when to spirits given,

Had come in its stealthy flow,

From the sky at silent even,

For the morning's glorious show.

THE BUGLE.

BY GRENVILLE MELLEN.

But still the dingle's hollow throat
Prolonged the swelling bugle note,
The owlets started from their dream,
The eagles answered with their scream;
Round and around the sounds were cast,
Till echo seemed an answering blast.

LADY OF THE LAKE.

OH! wild enchanting horn!
Whose music up the deep and dewy air
Swells to the clouds, and calls on Echo there,
Till a new melody is born.

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