CLASS OF '29. FOR THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 1856. YOU'LL believe me, dear boys, 't is a pleasure to rise Which have greeted me oft in the years that have flown. Were I gray as the grayest old rat in the wall, There are noontides of autumn, when summer returns, Though the leaves are all garnered and sealed in their urns, And the bird on his perch that was silent so long Believes the sweet sunshine and breaks into song. We have caged the young birds of our beautiful June: The voices of morning! How sweet is their thrill When the shadows have turned, and the evening grows still! The text of our lives may get wiser with age, Look off from your goblet and up from your plate, Come, take the last journal and glance at its date,Then think what we fellows should say and should do, If the 6 were a 9, and the 5 were a 2. Ah no! For the shapes that would meet with us here From the far land of shadows are ever too dear! Though youth flung around us its pride and its charms, We should see but the comrades we clasped in our arms. A health to our future, a sigh for our past! And for all the base lies that the almanacs hold, While we've youth in our hearts, we can never grow old. FOR THE MEETING OF THE BURNS CLUB. 1856. THE mountains glitter in the snow Though years have clipped the eagle's plume The sun still sees the heather bloom, The silver mists lie on it; With tartan kilt and philibeg, What stride was ever bolder Than his who showed the naked leg The echoes sleep on Cheviot's hills, When down their sides the crimson rills The hunts where gallant hearts were game, The raid that swooped with sword and flame, Give place to "law and order." Not while the rocking steeples reel God sets his poets singing; The bird is silent in the night, Or shrieks a cry of warning While fluttering round the beacon-light,— The lark of Scotia's morning sky! Till through the cloud of fortune's wrong But left his land her sweetest song And earth her saddest story. 'Tis not the forts the builder piles That chain the earth together; The wedded crowns, the sister isles, The kindling thought, the throbbing words, Of mighty armies meeting. Thus while within the banquet glows, We drink a triple health, the Rose, The Shamrock, and the Thistle ! Their blended hues shall never fade Till War has hushed his cannon, Close-twined as ocean-currents braid The Thames, the Clyde, the Shannon! |