THE RETURN OF BELISARIUS."

He was lost on the Summit, last winter,

And Bob has a hard row to hoe.

You knew that he's got the consumption?
You did n't! Well, come, that's a go;

I certainly wrote you at Baden, —

Dear me! that was six months ago.

I got all your outlandish letters,

All stamped by some foreign P. O.

I handed myself to Miss Mary

That sketch of a famous château.

Tom Saunders is living at 'Frisco, —

They say that he cuts quite a show. You did n't meet Euchre-deck Billy

Anywhere on your road to Cairo ?

So you thought of the rusty old cabin,
The pines, and the valley below;

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And heard the North Fork of the Yuba,

As you stood on the banks of the Po? 'T was just like your romance, old fellow; But now there is standing a row

Of stores on the site of the cabin

That you lived in a twelvemonth, ago.

But it's jolly to see you, old fellow, -
To think it's a twelvemonth ago!
And you have seen Louis Napoleon,
And look like a Johnny Crapaud.

Come in. You will surely see Mary,

You know we are married. What, no?

O, ay. I forgot there was something

Between you a twelvemonth ago.

"TWENTY YEARS."

BEG your pardon, old fellow! I think

I was dreaming just now, when you spoke.

The fact is, the musical clink

Of the ice on your wine-goblet's brink

A chord of my memory woke.

And I stood in the pasture-field where
Twenty summers ago I had stood;

And I heard in that sound, I declare,

The clinkings of bells on the air,

Of the cows coming home from the wood.

Then the apple-blooms shook on the hill;

And the mullein-stalks tilted each lance;

And the sun behind Rapalye's mill

Was my uttermost West, and could thrill

Like some fanciful land of romance.

Then my friend was a hero, and then
My girl was an angel. In fine,

I drank buttermilk; for at ten

Faith asks less to aid her, than when

At thirty we doubt over wine.

Ah well, it does seem that I must

Have been dreaming just now when you spoke,

Or lost, very like, in the dust

Of the years that slow fashioned the crust

On that bottle whose seal you last broke.

Twenty years was its age, did you say?

Twenty years? Ah, my friend, it is true!

All the dreams that have flown since that day, All the hopes in that time passed away,

Old friend, I've been drinking with you!

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