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The village maiden came, to read her own dear

name

Carved on my bark, and bless the broad green

tree.

The merry music breathed while the bounding dancers wreathed

In mazy windings round my giant stem; And the joyous words they poured, as they trod the chequered sward,

Told the green tree was a worshipped thing by them.

Oh, what troops of friends I had, to make my strong heart glad;

What kind ones answered to my rustling call!

I was hailed with smiling praise in the glowing summer days,

And the beautiful green tree was loved by

all.

But the bleak wind has swept by, and the grey cloud dimmed the sky,

My latest leaf has left my inmost bough; I creak in grating tones, like the skeleton's bleached bones,

And not a footstep seeks the old tree now.

I stand at morning's dawn, the cheerless and forlorn;

The sunset comes and finds me still alone;

The mates who shared my bloom have left me me in my gloom,

Birds, poet, dancers, children

all, are gone.

The hearts that turned this way when I stood in fine array,

Forsake me now as though I ceased to be:
I win no painter's gaze, I hear no minstrel's

lays,

The very nest falls from the leafless tree.

But the kind and merry train will be sure to come again,

With love and smiles as ready as of yore;

I must only wait to wear my robe so rich and fair,

And they will throng as they have thronged before.

Oh! ye who dwell in pride, with parasites beside,

Only lose your summer green leaves, and ye'll

see

That the courtly friends will change into things all cold and strange

And forget ye as they do the winter tree.

FESTAL DAYS.

Anon.

On! the coming of these festal days acts on me as a spell,

Reminding me of days and hours remembered all too well,

When, with dear ones at my side, and hearts all love and truth,

We sat beside that happy hearth, amid the sports of youth.

On the morning of these festal days, what if the wind was drear?

Who minds the storm on Christmas day? It comes but once a year :

A warm and heartfelt greeting awaits our journey's end,

And each one on the other looks, as meeteth child and friend.

Oh ye pleasant festal days! let me linger and

record

The sweet and bright young faces all around that ample board;

But my eye is filled with tears, and my heart is full of pain,

For these blessed happy Christmas days, they ne'er can come again.

The loving circle round the hearth, 'tis smaller than of old;

There are vacant places round the board, fond hearts are growing cold.

Of happy faces, some are gone; the spoiler has been there;

Oh, these festal days are dimmed with grief, they are not what they were.

But there will be a festal day when time shall be no more,

When we shall meet our loved and lost on Jordan's waveless shore;

No storms shall rage, no tempests low'r, but skies serene and fair.

On that bright day, that glorious morn, oh, may we all meet there.

FRIENDSHIP.
Anon.

FRIENDSHIP is love from all its dross refin'd,
The chaste enjoyment of the immortal mind.
This gift divine, the Power Supreme bestows,
To aid our joys, and dissipate our woes;
To make the cheerful hours of life more gay,
And drive the melancholy shades away.

THE DEATH OF THE FLOWERS.

Bryant.

THE melancholy days are come, the saddest of the year,

Of wailing winds and naked woods and meadows brown and sear.

Heaped in the hollows of the grove, the withered leaves lie dead;

They rustle to the eddying gust and to the rabbit's tread.

The robin and the wren are flown, and from the shrubs the jay,

And from the wood top calls the crow through all the gloomy day.

Where are the flowers, the fair young flowers that lately sprang and stood,

In brighter light and softer airs, a beauteous sisterhood?

Alas! they all are in their graves; the gentle race of flowers

Are lying in their lowly beds, with the fair and good of ours.

The rain is falling where they lie; but the cold November rain,

Calls not from out the gloomy earth the lovely ones again.

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