I see leaf-shade and sun-fleck lend

Their tremulous, sweet vicissitude

To smooth, dark pool, to crinkling bend, (0, stew him, Ann, as 't were your friend, With amorous solicitude !)

I see him step with caution due,

Soft as if shod with moccasins, Grave as in church, for who plies you, Sweet craft, is safe as in a pew

From all our common stock o' sins.

The unerring fly I see him cast,

That as a rose-leaf falls as soft,

A flash a whirl! he has him fast!
We tyros, how that struggle last
Confuses and appalls us oft.

Unfluttered he: calm as the sky

Looks on our tragi-comedies, This way and that he lets him fly,

A sunbeam-shuttle, then to die

Lands him, with cool aplomb, at ease.

The friend who gave our board such gust,

Life's care, may he o'erstep it half, And, when Death hooks him, as he must, He'll do it handsomely, I trust,

And John H-write his epitaph!

O, born beneath the Fishes' sign,

Of constellations happiest,

May he somewhere with Walton dine,
May Horace send him Massic wine,

And Burns Scotch drink, the nappiest!

And when they come his deeds to weigh, And how he used the talents his,

One trout-scale in the scales he 'll lay (If trout had scales), and 't will outsway The wrong side of the balances.

ODE TO HAPPINESS.

PIRIT, that rarely comest now

SPIRIT, that

And only to contrast my gloom,

Like rainbow-feathered birds that bloom A moment on some autumn bough

That, with the spurn of their farewell,

Sheds its last leaves, thou once didst dwell
With me year-long, and make intense
To boyhood's wisely vacant days.

Their fleet but all-sufficing grace

Of trustful inexperience,

While soul could still transfigure sense,
And thrill, as with love's first caress,
At life's mere unexpectedness.

Days when my blood would leap and run
As full of sunshine as a breeze,
Or spray tossed up by Summer seas
That doubts if it be sea or sun!.

Days that flew swiftly like the band

That played in Grecian games at strife, And passed from eager hand to hand

The onward-dancing torch of life!

Wing-footed thou abid'st with him

Who asks it not; but he who hath Watched o'er the waves thy waning path, Shall nevermore behold returning

Thy high-heaped canvas shoreward yearning!
Thou first reveal'st to us thy face
Turned o'er the shoulder's parting grace,

A moment glimpsed, then seen no more, Thou whose swift footsteps we can trace Away from every mortal door!

Nymph of the unreturning feet,

How may I win thee back? But no,
I do thee wrong to call thee so;
'Tis I am changed, not thou art fleet:
The man thy presence feels again,

Not in the blood, but in the brain,

Spirit, that lov'st the upper air
Serene and passionless and rare,

Such as on mountain heights we find
And wide-viewed uplands of the mind;
Or such as scorns to coil and sing
Round any but the eagle's wing

Of souls that with long upward beat Have won an undisturbed retreat Where, poised like winged victories, They mirror in relentless eyes

The life broad-basking 'neath their feet,

Man ever with his Now at strife,

Pained with first gasps of earthly air, Then praying Death the last to spare, Still fearful of the ampler life.

Not unto them dost thou consent
Who, passionless, can lead at ease
A life of unalloyed content,

A life like that of land-locked seas,

That feel no elemental gush

Of tidal forces, no fierce rush

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