There is a novel and beautiful idea contained in a song by Thomas Hood, in which he invites some fair friend to leave the in-door working of artificial flowers, and present herself in the blooming presence of the summer morning-"the birthday of the world." SONG. O lady, leave thy silken thread There's living roses on the bush, And blossoms on the tree. Stoop where thou wilt, thy careless hand Thou canst not tread but thou wilt find 'Tis like the birthday of the world, When earth was born in bloom; The light is made of many dyes, There's crimson buds, and white and blue— The very rainbow showers Have turn'd to blossoms where they fell, There's fairy tulips in the east, And blossom as they run; Still wet with pearly showers: And so another popular song writer celebrates the glad summer of nature and of life: Some love the time of early prime, Bedeck once more the dwelling: Where, in the sunshine glowing, A great and good man has said, "The soul celebrates, at every good deed, a birthday." This may have been said emphatically of the good deed recorded with intense gratitude by Pinney, a poor neglected Dorsetshire poet, highly informed and largely gifted, author of " Tragedies on Saxon History," "Regnald, a Saxon Poem," &c., who was so tortured in early manhood by poverty that he was only rescued from the fate of Chatterton or Otway by "Allport, that reverend minister of religion, who stept in like a guardian angel, and saved me.” O gentle Allport, friend of mercy, Who to me hast been The good Samaritan ! For thou didst bind, With pitying hand, up those fast bleeding wounds Misfortune had inflicted. And the balm Of kindness pour'd into my broken heart. Should I be silent, sure the very stones The serpent-crowned phantom of despair, A wretched wife And shrieking innocent knelt imploringly, Yes; thou minister Of charity and true religion joined, Of darkness leddest me To Hope's sweet sunshine and the gates of joy. That was a birthday indeed for the soul to celebrate! and those are the kind of deeds the remembrance of which make birthdays blessed! For our sweetest joys and direst pangs, as life advances, are those of memory:— "Tis not in act The shining impulse, the impassion'd hour, The moments when we only live in thought; When passion sleeps, and the bright veil is drawn, Which casts a halo round our evening deeds; And what we shall be, when the boundless range Of unintelligent creation dies; When all the memories of our early thoughts, Our deeds, loves, hopes, fears, passions, stir within, And steal from their asylum in the soul W. H. DIXON. Three periods of middle life have been specially fatal to rising genius:-The commencement, from the ages of twenty-one to twenty-four; the middle, thirty-six to thirty-eight; and near the close, about forty-six : So live, that when thy summons comes to join By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave A life unblest by religion is most truly what Dryden sternly describes : When I consider life, 'tis all a cheat, Yet all hope pleasure in what still remain, Which fools us young and beggars us when old. Of many of those who have passed away from earthly vision, on the first steps of the ascentWhite, Keats, Robert Nicoll, and others-it may truly be said : So his life hath flow'd From its mysterious urn a sacred stream, May hover round its surface, glides in light, TALFOURD. Spirits like these have lived here long enough for the best purposes, however mysterious to us may appear their untimely removal : We live in deeds, not years; in thoughts, not breaths; In feelings, not in figures on a dial; We should count time by heart-throbs. He most lives Who thinks most, feels the noblest, acts the best. |