Some beam might start, some sudden false alarm

Might snatch a victim from the altar's harm ;-
But, chained a captive at your chariot wheel,
To fail just now were hardly mercantile ;
Promise to pay, you must endure the shock ;-
There is no quarter after two o'clock.

No bright Aurora, with her cheerful smiles, The evening minstrel on his way beguiles ;Child of the Dawn, she bids her coursers fly Through rosier blushes to the morning sky. While thus the fingers of relentless Time Hold hard and heavy at the reins of rhyme, Thy leaden wings, O sleep-compelling power, I hear descending from their shadowy bower; Spare, spare thy influence, cease thy drowsy calls A few brief moments, till the curtain falls.

In boyhood's hour you bade my fluttering sail 2 Spread its light canvas to the morning gale;

THE POST OF HONOR.

First, at your summons, with averted eye,
I felt the breeze that swept my pennant by;

I heard your echoes gathering on the shore,

As then I launched one childish pebble more;
Still the old echoes linger in my brain,

And all those voices seem to live again,

As now I come, with more than boyhood's fears,
To mark the dial of our added years.

O, more than favored, could I meet to-day

The smiles that cheered my dim and faltering way;

O, more than blest, could I recall to-night

Those welcome forms that met my dazzled sight;

All the dear faces, all the buried past,

Too bright and brief, too beautiful to last.

Our vanished years! let Memory's muffled bell

Toll but one requiem, and but one farewell,

For him whose eyelids in a wintry grave 3

Were closed in anguish by the icy wave.

Rest, early friend, bemoaned in life's young bloom,

Gone, like a shadow, to the voiceless tomb.

3

When last we climbed to yon high, leafy crest
To watch the sunlight fading in the west,
Ah, little thought I that this hand would trace
These words of grief above thy burial-place.
Thou hast our tears; but lo! the clouds depart,
Our brother sleeps with sunshine on his heart;
The storm has passed, the seas are silent now,
And Heaven's sweet smile has settled on his brow.

Our added years! What though to these we bow, Farewell the Past! All hail the eventful Now! What though grave fathers, still my friends, I meet, Whose nursery floors are worn with little feet,What though, companion of my former years, Thy face at market every morn appears, While I, still ignorant as the greenest baize What "goods domestic" go the greatest ways, Grope blindly homeward to my noontide meal, Unknowing what my damask may reveal ;Heart leaps to heart, and warmer grasps the hand,

When Autumn's bugle re-unites our band!

THE POST OF HONOR.

That "virtue only makes our bliss below,
And all our knowledge is ourselves to know,"
We read at school, in unforgotten lines,

Where sterling sense in sparkling couplets shines;
My theme to-night thy glittering muse demands,
Who touched life's follies with unsparing hands,
Or thine, Urania, skilled to sweep the lyre 4
With all Pope's freedom, and with Campbell's fire.

Star of the heart! the eagle's sunward plume!
Wild meteor, dancing in the midnight gloom,
Ambition's goal, that oft delusive dream,
The Post of Honor, is my chosen theme.

Its ampler range eludes my hurrying sight,
I can but hover, others may alight;

Though far and wide the gleaming standard flies,
Wings clipt like mine can dare no upper skies.
But, though I come not with presuming hand
To scatter precepts, like a housewife's sand,-

5

Virtue's assassin, slander's bosom friend,

No verse of mine can flatter or commend.

The humblest muse should claim the honest line,
And swing no censer at corruption's shrine;
Unmoved by fear, should act no traitor's part,
Wear on her face the dial of her heart,
And dash aside, no matter who may hold

The poisoned chalice, though 't were made of gold.
Truth, ever sacred, counts that victory shame
Which clarions meanness to a world's acclaim;
Scorns the proud wretch who plays the fatal dart,
But, while he dallies, drives it to the heart;
Shuns the weak fool, whose eager gaze descries
His neighbor's faults with telescopic eyes;
Believes high rogues, though clad in jewels brave,
Should run the gantlet with the shabbiest knave,-
While Honor's Post should be for him secure
Who lets in sunshine at the poor man's door.

Unchanging Power! thy genius still presides O'er vanquished fields, and ocean's purpled tides;