"THE BOYS."

HAS there any old fellow got mixed with the boys? If there has, take him out, without making a noise. Hang the Almanac's cheat and the Catalogue's spite! Old time is a liar! We're twenty to-night!

We're twenty! We're twenty! Who says we are more?

He's tipsy, young jackanapes!-show him the

66

door!

Gray temples at twenty?" - Yes! white if we

please;

Where the snow-flakes fall thickest there's nothing can

freeze!

Was it snowing I spoke of? Excuse the mistake!

Look close,

you will see not a sign of a flake!

"THE BOYS."

209

We want some new garlands for those we have shed, — And these are white roses in place of the red.

We've a trick, we young fellows, you may have been told,

Of talking (in public) as if we were old:

That boy we call "Doctor," and this we call "Judge"; It's a neat little fiction,

of course it's all fudge.

That fellow's the "Speaker,"

the one on the right;

"Mr. Mayor," my young one, how are you to-night? That's our "Member of Congress," we say when we

chaff;

--

There's the "Reverend" What's his name? — do n't make me laugh.

That boy with the grave mathematical look
Made believe he had written a wonderful book,
And the ROYAL SOCIETY thought it was true!
So they chose him right in, a good joke it was too!

There's a boy, we pretend, with a three-decker brain, That could harness a team with a logical chain;

When he spoke for our manhood in syllabled fire,

We called him "The Justice," but now he's "The

Squire."

And there's a nice youngster of excellent pith,
Fate tried to conceal him by naming him Smith;
But he shouted a song for the brave and the free, –
Just read on his medal, "My country," "of thee!"

You hear that boy laughing?-You think he 's all fun;
But the angels laugh, too, at the good he has done;
The children laugh loud as they troop to his call,
And the poor man that knows him laughs loudest of all !

Yes, we're boys,— always playing with tongue or with pen;

And I sometimes have asked, Shall we ever be men? Shall we always be youthful, and laughing, and gay, Till the last dear companion drops smiling away?

Then here's to our boyhood, its gold and its gray!
The stars of its winter, the dews of its May!
And when we have done with our life-lasting toys,
Dear Father, take care of thy children, THE BOYS!

January 6, 1859.

THE OPENING OF THE PIANO.

In the little southern parlor of the house you may have

seen

With the gambrel-roof, and the gable looking westward

to the green,

At the side toward the sunset, with the window on its

right,

Stood the London-made piano I am dreaming of to-night!

Ah me! how I remember the evening when it came! What a cry of eager voices, what a group of cheeks in flame,

When the wondrous box was opened that had come

from over seas,

With its smell of mastic-varnish and its flash of ivory

keys!

Then the children all grew fretful in the restlessness of

joy,

For the boy would push his sister, and the sister crowd

the boy,

Till the father asked for quiet in his grave paternal

way,

But the mother hushed the tumult with the words, "Now, Mary, play."

For the dear soul knew that music was a very sovereign balm ;

She had sprinkled it over Sorrow and seen its brow grow calm,

In the days of slender harpsichords with tapping tinkling quills,

Or carolling to her spinet with its thin metallic thrills.

So Mary, the household minstrel, who always loved to please,

Sat down to the new "Clementi," and struck the glittering keys.

Hushed were the children's voices, and every eye grew

dim,

As, floating from lip and finger, arose the "Vesper

Hymn."