Evenings we knew,
Happy as this;
Faces we miss,
Pleasant to see.

Kind hearts and true,
Gentle and just,
Peace to your dust!
We sing round the tree.

Care, like a dun,
Lurks at the gate:
Let the dog wait;
Happy we'll be !
Drink, every one;
Pile up the coals;
Fill the red bowls,
Round the old tree!

Drain we the cup. -
Friend, art afraid?
Spirits are laid
In the Red Sea.

Mantle it up;

Empty it yet;
Let us forget,
Round the old tree!

Sorrows, begone!
Life and its ills,
Duns and their bills,
Bid we to flee.
Come with the dawn,`
Blue-devil sprite;
Leave us to-night,
Round the old tree!

WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY.

Old wood to burn!

Ay, bring the hillside beech

From where the owlets meet and screech,
And ravens croak;

The crackling pine, and cedar sweet;
Bring too a clump of fragrant peat,
Dug 'neath the fern;
The knotted oak,

A fagot too, perhap,

Whose bright flame, dancing, winking, Shall light us at our drinking;

While the oozing sap

Shall make sweet music to our thinking.

Old books to read!

Ay, bring those nodes of wit,
The brazen-clasped, the vellum writ,
Time-honored tomes !

The same my sire scanned before,
The same my grandsire thumbed o'er,
The same his sire from college bore,
The well-earned meed

Of Oxford's domes;
Old Homer blind,

Old Horace, rake Anacreon, by
Old Tully, Plautus, Terence lie;
Mort Arthur's olden minstrelsie,
Quaint Burton, quainter Spenser, ay!
And Gervase Markham's venerie, -

Nor leave behind

The Holye Book by which we live and die.

Old friends to talk!

Ay, bring those chosen few,

The wise, the courtly, and the true,

So rarely found ;

Him for my wine, him for my stud,
Him for my easel, distich, bud

In mountain walk!

Bring WALTER good :

With soulful FRED; and learned WILL, And thee, my alter ego (dearer still

For every mood).

ROBERT HINCHLEY MEssenger.

GIVE ME THE OLD.

OLD WINE TO DRINK, OLD WOOD TO BURN, OLD BOOKS TO READ, AND OLD FRIENDS TO CONVERSE WITH.

OLD wine to drink!

Ay, give the slippery juice

That drippeth from the grape thrown loose

Within the tun;

Plucked from beneath the cliff

Of sunny-sided Teneriffe,

And ripened 'neath the blink

Of India's sun!

Peat whiskey hot,

Tempered with well-boiled water! These make the long night shorter, Forgetting not

Good stout old English porter.

AULD LANG SYNE.

SHOULD auld acquaintance be forgot, And never brought to min'? Should auld acquaintance be forgot, And days o' lang syne?

CHORUS.

For auld lang syne, my dear,

For auld lang syne, We'll tak a cup o' kindness yet, For auld lang syne.

childish arts despise ;

We dreamed together of the days, the dreambright days to come,

We were strictly confidential, and we called each other "chum."

And many a day we wandered together o'er the hills,

I seeking bugs and butterflies, and she, the ruined mills

And rustic bridges, and the like, that picturemakers prize

To run in with their waterfalls, and groves, and summer skies.

And many a quiet evening, in hours of silent

ease,

We floated down the river, or strolled beneath the trees,

And talked, in long gradation from the poets to the weather,

While the western skies and my cigar burned slowly out together.

Yet through it all no whispered word, no telltale glance or sigh,

Told aught of warmer sentiment than friendly sympathy.

We talked of love as coolly as we talked of nebulæ,

And thought no more of being one than we did of being three.

"Well, good by, chum !' I took her hand, for the time had come to go.

My going meant our parting, when to meet, we did not know.

I had lingered long, and said farewell with a very heavy heart;

For

although we were but friends, 't is hard for honest friends to part.

"Good-by, old fellow! don't forget your friends beyond the sea,

And some day, when you 've lots of time, drop a line or two to me."

The words came lightly, gayly, but a great sob, just behind,

Welled upward with a story of quite a different kind.

was to say,

liquid eyes of blue,

sort of way.

We shared our secrets and our joys, together hoped and feared,

With common purpose sought the goal that young Ambition reared ;

A TEMPLE TO FRIENDSHIP.

Heaven gives us friends to bless the present

scene;

CHOICE FRIENDS.
True happiness

shrining

An image whose looks are so joyless and dim;

But yon little god upon roses reclining,

But in the worth and choice.

Cynthia's Revels.

COWPER.

BEN JONSON.

him."

In action faithful, and in honor clear;
Who broke no promise, served no private end,
Who gained no title, and who lost no friend.
Epistle to Mr. Addison.

POPE.

Love!"

TIME.

SONNET CVI.

WHEN in the chronicle of wasted time
I see descriptions of the fairest wights,
And beauty making beautiful old rhyme,
In praise of ladies dead, and lovely knights;
Then, in the blazon of sweet beauty's best
Of hand, of foot, of lip, of eye, of brow,
I see their antique pen would have expressed
Even such a beauty as you master now.
So all their praises are but prophecies
Of this our time, all you prefiguring;
And, for they looked but with divining eyes,
They had not skill enough your worth to sing;
For we, which now behold these present days,
Have eyes to wonder, but lack tongues to
praise.

SHAKESPEARE.

O MISTRESS MINE.

FROM "TWELFTH NIGHT," ACT II. SC. 3.

O MISTRESS mine, where are you roaming?
O, stay and hear! your true-love 's coming
That can sing both high and low;

Trip no further, pretty sweeting,
Journeys end in lovers' meeting, -

Every wise man's son doth know.

What is love? 't is not hereafter;
Present mirth hath present laughter;
What's to come is still unsure:

In delay there lies no plenty,
Then come kiss me, Sweet-and-twenty,
Youth's a stuff will not endure.

SHAKESPEARE.

PORTIA'S PICTURE.

FROM "THE MERCHANT OF VENICE," ACT 111. SC. 2.

FAIR Portia's counterfeit? What demi-god
Hath come so near creation? Move these eyes?
Or whether, riding on the balls of mine,
Seem they in motion? Here are severed lips,
Parted with sugar breath; so sweet a bar

Should sunder such sweet friends: Here in her hairs

The painter plays the spider; and hath woven A golden mesh to entrap the hearts of men, Faster than guats in cobwebs : But her eyes,

MERRY Margaret,

As midsummer flower,
Gentle as falcon,

Or hawk of the tower;
With solace and gladness,
Much mirth and no madness,
All good and no badness;
So joyously,
So maidenly,
So womanly
Her demeaning,
In everything
Far, far passing
That I can indite,
Or suffice to write,
Of merry Margaret,
As midsummer flower,
Gentle as falcon

Or hawk of the tower;
As patient and as still,
And as full of good-will,
As fair Isiphil,
Coliander,
Sweet Pomander,
Good Cassander;
Stedfast of thought,
Well made, well wrought;
Far may be sought
Ere you can find
So courteous, so kind,
As merry Margaret,
This midsummer flower,
Gentle as falcon,

Or hawk of the tower.

JOHN SKELTON.