We've a trick, we young fellows, you may have been told,

Of talking (in public) as if we were old : —
That boy we call "Doctor," and this we call "Judge";
It's a neat little fiction, of course it's all fudge.

That fellow's the "Speaker," -the one on the right; "Mr. Mayor," my young one, how are you to-night ? That's our Member of Congress," we say when we chaff;

There's the "Reverend

What's his name?

don't make me laugh.

That boy with the grave mathematical look
Made believe he had written a wonderful book,
And the ROYAL SOCIETY thought it was true!
So they chose him right in, a good joke it was too!

There's a boy, we pretend, with a three-decker brain, That could harness a team with a logical chain; When he spoke for our manhood in syllabled fire, We called him "The Justice," but now he's "The Squire."

And there's a nice youngster of excellent pith,
Fate tried to conceal him by naming him Smith;
But he shouted a song for the brave and the free,
Just read on his medal, "My country,"
"" of thee!"

You hear that boy laughing?-You think he's all fun ;
But the angels laugh, too, at the good he has done;
The children laugh loud as they troop to his call,
And the poor man that knows him laughs loudest
of all!

Yes, we're boys,—always playing with tongue or with pen;

And I sometimes have asked, Shall we ever be men? Shall we always be youthful, and laughing, and gay, Till the last dear companion drops smiling away?

Then here's to our boyhood, its gold and its gray!
The stars of its winter, the dews of its May!
And when we have done with our life-lasting toys,
Dear Father, take care of thy children, THE Boys!

January 6, 1859.

THE OPENING OF THE PIANO.

IN the little southern parlor of the house you may have seen

With the gambrel-roof, and the gable looking westward to the green, At the side toward the sunset, with the window on

its right,

Stood the London-made piano I am dreaming of to-night!

Ah me! how I remember the evening when it came! What a cry of eager voices, what a group of cheeks in flame,

When the wondrous box was opened that had come from over seas,

With its smell of mastic-varnish and its flash of ivory keys!

Then the children all grew fretful in the restlessness of joy ;

For the boy would push his sister, and the sister crowd the boy,"

Till the father asked for quiet in his grave paternal

way,

But the mother hushed the tumult with the words, Now, Mary, play."

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For the dear soul knew that music was a very sovereign balm ;

She had sprinkled it over Sorrow and seen its brow grow calm,

In the days of slender harpsichords with tapping tinkling quills,

Or carolling to her spinet with its thin metallic thrills.

So Mary, the household minstrel, who always loved to please,

Sat down to the new "Clementi," and struck the glittering keys.

Hushed were the children's voices, and every eye grew dim,

As, floating from lip and finger, arose the "Vesper Hymn."

Catharine, child of a neighbor, curly and rosyred,

(Wedded since, and a widow, something like ten years dead,)

Hearing a gush of music such as none before,

Steals from her mother's chamber and peeps at the open door.

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Just as the "Jubilate " in threaded whisper dies, Open it! open it, lady!" the little maiden cries, (For she thought 't was a singing creature caged in a box she heard,)

"Open it! open it, lady! and let me see the bird!"

MIDSUMMER.

ERE! sweep these foolish leaves away,
I will not crush my brains to-day!
Look! are the southern curtains drawn?
Fetch me a fan, and so begone!

Not that,

·the palm-tree's rustling leaf

Brought from a parching coral-reef!

Its breath is heated;

I would swing

The broad gray plumes, the eagle's wing.

I hate these roses' feverish blood!
Pluck me a half-blown lily-bud,
A long-stemmed lily from the lake,
Cold as a coiling water-snake.

Rain me sweet odors on the air,
And wheel me up my Indian chair,
And spread some book not overwise
Flat out before my sleepy eyes.

The pulse that flutters faint and low
When Summer's seething breezes blow?

O Nature! bare thy loving breast,

And give thy child one hour of rest, -
One little hour to lie unseen
Beneath thy scarf of leafy green!

So, curtained by a singing pine,

Its murmuring voice shall blend with mine,
Till, lost in dreams, my faltering lay
In sweeter music dies away.

A PARTING HEALTH.

TO J. L. MOTLEY.

ES, we knew we must lose him,- though friendship may claim

To blend her green leaves with the laurels of fame;

Though fondly, at parting, we call him our own, 'Tis the whisper of love when the bugle has blown.

As the rider that rests with the spur on his heel,
As the guardsman that sleeps in his corselet of

steel,

As the archer that stands with his shaft on the string, He stoops from his toil to the garland we bring.

What pictures yet slumber unborn in his loom, Till their warriors shall breathe and their beauties shall bloom,

While the tapestry lengthens the life-glowing dyes That caught from our sunsets the stain of their skies!