Like holly leaves for a December wreath,
To take this gift of life with trusting hands,
And star with heavenly hopes the night of death,
Is all that poor humanity demands

To lull its meaner fears in easy sleep.

HEDDERWICK.

Surely now, if ever, birthdays ought to be occasions of serious self-examination and preparation.

'Tis greatly wise to talk with our past hours, And ask them what report they bore to heaven, And how they might have borne more welcome

news.

Their answers form what men experience call;
If wisdom's friend, her best, if not, worst foe.

Let us now look well to every

THOUGHT AND DEED.

YOUNG

Full many a thought though man may cherish,
Full many an idle deed may do ;

Yet not a thought or deed shall perish,
Not one but he shall bless or rue.

When by the wind the tree is shaken,
There's not a bough or leaf can fall,

But of its falling heed is taken,

By one that sees and governs all.

The tree may fall and be forgotten,
And buried in the earth remain,
Yet from its juices, rank and rotten,
Springs vegetating life again.

The world is with creation teeming,
And nothing ever wholly dies;
And things that are destroy'd in seeming,
In other shapes and forms arise.

And nature still unfolds the tissue
Of unseen works by spirit wrought;
And not a work but hath its issue,
With blessing or with evil fraught.

Though thou may'st seem to leave behind thee
All memory of the sinful past;

Yet, ah, be sure thy sin shall find thee,

And thou shalt know its fruit at last.

C. R. KENNEDY.

In the midst of toils and troubles, we all, more or less, pass through the last avenues of middle life. And. we strangely feel that we change, though what that change means it may take us some time to realize. From the vantage-ground of each birthday at this period we clearly see, as from a tower, the end of all;" and, as each birthday begins another year, we echo, perhaps, the sombre thoughts of Barry Cornwall:

66

As one who enters on a road,

The end whereof no sight can reach,
Where they who bear sin's heavy load
Are numberless (so sages teach)

As sands upon the wild sea-beach;
Where showers and sunshine, Night and Day,
Like ghosts go glimmering on their way;

Where Friends and Foes, where Right and Wrong,
And all that doth to life belong-

The shadowy Past, the grim To-come-
Around our footsteps sink and soar;
Where Death goes beating on his drum,
And that great Sea without a shore
Gleams in the distance; while a Voice
Cries out, "Let no one here rejoice!"
So I, now blind with hope and fear,
Enter upon thy paths, O year!

Thy paths, which all who breathe must tread,
Which lead the Living to the Dead,

I enter, for it is my doom

To tread thy labyrinthine gloom,

To note who round me watch and wait;
To love a few, perhaps to hate;

And do all duties of my fate.

A beautiful symbol for the period of life's decay, personifying profound truth, is this:

I thought once how Theocritus had sung
Of the sweet years, the dear and wished-for years,
Who each one, in a gracious hand, appears
To bear a gift for mortals, old and young;
And as I mused it, in his antique tongue,
I saw, in gradual vision through my tears,
The sweet sad years, the melancholy years,
Those of my own life, who by turns had flung
A shadow across me. Straightway I was ware,
So weeping, how a mystic shape did move

Behind me, and drew me backward by the hair,
And a voice said in mastery, while I strove :
"Guess now who holds thee?" "Death," I said.
But there,

The silver answer rung, "Not Death, but Love." MRS. BROWNING.

And this is how the poet Campbell anticipated later life:

A DREAM.

*

In a bark, methought, lone steering,
I was cast on ocean's strife;

This, 'twas whispered in my hearing,
Meant the sea of life.

M

Sad regrets from past existence
Came like gales of chilling breath,
Shadowed in the forward distance
Lay the hand of Death.

Now seeming more, now less remote,
On that dim-seen shore, methought
I beheld two hands a space
Slow unshroud a spectre's face;
And my flesh's hair upstood—
'Twas my own similitude.

But my soul revived at seeing
Ocean, like an emerald spark,
Kindle, while an air-dropt being,
Smiling, steered my bark.
Heaven-like,—yet he looked as human
As supernal beauty can,
More compassionate than woman
Lordly more than man.

And, as some sweet clarion's breath
Stirs the soldier's scorn of death,

So his accents bade me brook
The spectre's eyes of icy look,
Till it shut them, turned its head,
Like a beaten foe, and fled.

"Types not this," I said, "fair Spirit! That my death-hour is not come?

Say, what days shall I inherit?

Tell my soul their sum."

"No," he said, "your phantom's aspect, Trust me, would appal thee worse Held in clearly measured prospect: Ask not for a curse!

4

Make not the untold request

*

That's now revolving in thy breast.
""Tis to live again, remeasuring

Youth's years, like a scene rehearsed
In second lifetime treasuring
Knowledge from the first.
Hast thou felt, poor self-deceiver!
Life's career so void of pain,
As to wish its fitful fever
New begun again?

"Could experience, ten times thine,
Pain from being disentwine-
Threads by fate together spun?

Could thy flight heaven's lightning shun?

*

*

*

"Wouldst thou bear again love's trouble-
Friendship's death-dissevered ties;
Toil to grasp or miss the bubble
Of ambition's prize?

Say thy life's new-guided action

Flowed from virtue's fairest springs

Still would envy and detraction

Double not their stings?

Worth itself is but a charter

To be mankind's distinguished martyr."

I caught the moral, and cried, "Hail
Spirit! let us onward sail,

Envying, fearing, hating none-
Guardian Spirit, steer me on!"

I conclude these anniversaries of Middle Age with special notice of some of those which are kept by the chief widowed Lady of the Land in strict seclusion