"Walk thoughtful on the silent, solemn shore
Of the vast ocean it must sail so soon."
GEORGE COOLIDGE,
13 TREMONT ROW.
1861.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1860, BY GEORGE COOLIDGE,
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts.
Electrotyped at the
BOSTON STEREOTYPE FOUNDRY.
Darell & Moore, Printers, Boston.
THE world to me is growing gray and old;
My friends are dropping one by one away;
Some live in far-off lands- - some in the clay
Rest quietly, their mortal moments told.
My sire departed ere his locks were gray;
My mother wept, and soon beside him lay;
My elder kin have long since gone - and I
Am left-a leaf upon an autumn tree,
Among whose branches chilling breezes steal
The sure precursors of the winter nigh;
And when my offspring at our altar kneel To worship God, and sing our morning psalm, Their rising stature whispers unto me My life is gently waning to its evening calm.
(3)
THE DAYS THAT ARE NO MORE.
TEARS, idle tears, I know not what they mean.
Tears from the depth of some divine despair
Rise in the heart, and gather in the eyes,
In looking on the happy autumn field,
And thinking of the days that are no more.
Fresh as the first beam glittering on the sail
That brings our friends up from the under world;
Sad as the last which saddens over one
That sinks with all we love below the verge ;
So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more.
Ah, sad and strange, as in dark summer dawns
The earliest pipe of half-awakened birds
To dying eyes when unto dying ears
The casement slowly grows a glimmering square,
So sad, so strange, the days that are no more.
Dear as remembered kisses after death,
And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feigned
On lips that were for others; deep as love,
Deep as first love, and wild with all regret ;
O Death in Life, the days that are no more.
Tennyson.
BEAUTIFUL forever
The grief-softened tread,
And the time-touched glances,
And the dear gray head.
The pathetic paleness,
And the lines of care;
Memory's consecration
Makes men always fair.
By the wayside, on a mossy stone,
Sat a hoary pilgrim, sadly musing;
Oft I marked him sitting there alone,
All the landscape like a page perusing;
Poor, unknown,
By the wayside, on a mossy stone.
Buckled knee and shoe, and broad-rimmed hat,
Coat as ancient as the form 'twas folding,
Silver buttons, cue, and crimped cravat,
Oaken staff, his feeble hand upholding-
There he sat!
Buckled knee and shoe, and broad-rimmed hat
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