CLASS OF '29.

FOR THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 1856.

YOU'LL believe me, dear boys, 't is a pleasure to rise
With a welcome like this in your darling old eyes,
To meet the same smiles and to hear the same tone

Which have greeted me oft in the years that have flown.

Were I gray as the grayest old rat in the wall,

My locks would turn brown at the sight of you all;

If

my heart were as dry as the shell on the sand, It would fill like the goblet I hold in my hand.

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: Their plumes are still bright and their voices in tune; One moment of sunshine from faces like these,

And they sing as they sung in the green-growing trees.

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,
But the print was so fair on its twentieth page!

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.

We love, we remember, we hope to the last;

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
A thousand leagues asunder;
Yet here, amid the banquet's glow,
I hear their voice of thunder;
Each giant's ice-bound goblet clinks;
A flowing stream is summoned;
Wachusett to Ben Nevis drinks;
Monadnock to Ben Lomond !

Though years have clipped the eagle's plume
That crowned the chieftain's bonnet,
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

Beneath the plaided shoulder?

The echoes sleep on Cheviot's hills,
That heard the bugles blowing

When down their sides the crimson rills
With mingled blood were flowing;

The hunts where gallant hearts were game,
The slashing on the border,

The raid that swooped with sword and flame, Give place to "law and order."

Not while the rocking steeples reel
With midnight tocsins ringing,
Not while the crashing war-notes peal,

God sets his poets singing;
The bird is silent in the night,

Or shrieks a cry of warning

While fluttering round the beacon-light,But hear him greet the morning!

The lark of Scotia's morning sky!

Whose voice may sing his praises?
With Heaven's own sunlight in his eye,
He walked among the daisies,

Till through the cloud of fortune's wrong
He soared to fields of glory;

But left his land her sweetest song

And earth her saddest story.

FOR THE MEETING OF THE BURNS CLUB. 135

'Tis not the forts the builder piles That chain the earth together;

The wedded crowns, the sister isles,

Would laugh at such a tether;

The kindling thought, the throbbing words,

That set the pulses beating,

Are stronger than the myriad swords

Of mighty armies meeting.

Thus while within the banquet glows,

Without, the wild winds whistle,

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 !