PACK clouds away, and welcome day, | Wake from thy nest, robin red With night we banish sorrow; Sweet air, blow soft; mount, larks, aloft, To give my love good-morrow, Wings from the wind to please her mind, Notes from the lark I'll borrow; Bird, prune thy wing, nightingale,sing, To give my love good-morrow. breast, THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON. DECORATION. "Manibus date lilia plenis." Never foot had firmer tread On the field where hope lay dead, 'MID the flower-wreathed tombs I Than are hid within this tomb, Where the untended grasses bloom; And no stone, with feigned distress, Mocks the sacred loneliness. GEORGE STILLMAN HILLARD. LAKE GEORGE. How oft in visions of the night, It was a landscape of the mind, More lovely than aught real. I feared to see the breathing scene, mar A picture so Elysian. But now I break the cold distrust Whose spells so long had bound me; The shadows of the night are past,The morning shines around me. And in the sober light of day, I see the green, translucent wave, O timid heart! with thy glad throbs Strength imaged in the wooded hills, Nor is the stately scene without Their own exclusive pleasures; The hours to wear away in; With clouds, and shadows of the clouds, And mists the hillsides ranging. Their changing glories render; Now glowing and now tender. But purer than the shifting gleams Is the deep spirit of that hour, — And vaulted aisles, of whispering pine, Hangs o'er the eastern ridges, Clear streams that from the uplands run, A course of sunless shadow; No tame monotony is here, And the long shaft of trembling gold, The trembling crystal bridges. And, braving full their murderous Keep green the memory of the brave blast, Stormed home the towers of Monterey. Our banners on those turrets wave, And there our evening bugles play; Where orange boughs above their grave Who fought and fell at Monterey. We are not many, - we who pressed Beside the brave who fell that day: But who of us has not confessed He'd rather share their warrior rest Than not have been at Monterey? And he'll never know Where the summers go;He need not laugh, for he'll find it so! Who can tell what a baby thinks? Who can follow the gossamer links By which the manikin feels his way Out from the shore of the great unknown, Blind, and wailing, and all alone, Of the unknown sea that reels and Specked with the barks of little souls, Barks that were launched on the other side, And slipped from heaven on an ebbWhat does he think of his mother's ing tide! eyes ? What does he think of his mother's hair? What of the cradle-roof that flies Forward and backward through the air? What does he think of his mother's breast, Bare and beautiful, smooth and white, Seeking it ever with fresh delight, Cup of his life and couch of his rest? What does he think when her quick embrace Presses his hand and buries his face Deep where the heart-throbs sink and swell With a tenderness she can never tell, Though she murmur the words Of all the birds, Words she has learned to murmur well? Now he thinks he'll go to sleep! I can see the shadow creep |