Attended by cloudlets all roseate and golden;

O, joy to be out on a morning so rare!

Now slowly; whoa, Reindeer! here comes a fair milkmaid:
Pure milk through a straw is refreshing, I ween;
And so are the blushes of pure, happy girlhood;

Then here's to your health and your sweetness, my queen!

Once more in the saddle, we're bounding on homeward,
Our frame all aglow with this excellent sport;
Now coasting, now climbing, then racing and beating
Some young rustic jockey in metre so short,

That in furious rage he whips and he lashes:
But, 'tis useless, you see, my fine fellow. say we,
As we dash along onward still faster and faster,
Hoping next time that he not so foolish will be.

As we mount the last hill, to the smoke-clouded city,
Just beginning to boil with its great human tide,
It calls us to toil, and to enter the conflict;

So endeth this morning our twenty-mile ride.

I'M WITH YOU ONCE AGAIN.

G. P. MORRIS.

I'm with you once again, my friends;
No more my footsteps roam;
Where it began my journey ends,
Amid the scenes of home.

No other clime has skies so blue,
Or streams so broad and clear;

And where are hearts so warm and true
As those that meet me here?

Since last, with spirits wild and free,
I press'd my native strand,
I've wander'd many miles at sea,

And many miles on land:

I've seen fair regions of the Earth
With rude commotion torn,

Which taught me how to prize the worth
Of that where I was born.

In other countries, when I heard
The language of my own,
How fondly each familiar word

Awoke an answering tone!

But, when our woodland songs were sung

Upon a foreign mart,

The vows that falter'd on the tongue

With rapture fill'd my heart.

My native land, I turn to you

With blessing and with prayer,
Where man is brave and woman true,
And free as mountain air.

Long may our flag in triumph wave
Against the world combined,
And friends a welcome, foes a grave,
Within our borders find!

THE LAST LEAF.

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES.

I SAW him once before,
As he pass'd by the door;
And again

The pavement-stones resound
As he totters o'er the ground
With his cane.

I COME from haunts of coot and hern :

I make a sudden sally

And sparkle out among the fern,
To bicker down a valley.

By thirty hills I hurry down,
Or slip between the ridges,
By twenty thorps, a little town,
And half a hundred bridges.

Till last by Philip's farm I flow
To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on forever.

I chatter over stony ways,

In little sharps and trebles, I bubble into eddying bays,

I babble on the pebbles.

With many a curve my banks I fret
By many a field and fallow,
And many a fairy foreland set

With willow-weed and mallow.

I chatter, chatter, as I flow
To join the brimming river;
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on forever.

I wind about, and in and out,
With here a blossom sailing,
And here and there a lusty trout,
And here and there a grayling;

And here and there a foamy flake
Upon me, as I travel

With many a silvery waterbreak
Above the golden gravel;

And draw them all along, and flow
To join the brimming river;
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on forever.

I steal by lawns and grassy plots;
I slide by hazel covers;
I move the sweet forget-me-nots
That grow for happy lovers:

I slip, I slide, I gloom, I glance,
Among my skimming swallows;
I make the netted sunbeams dance

Against my sandy shallows:

I murmur under Moon and stars
In brambly wildernesses;
I linger by my shingly bars;
I loiter round my cresses;

And out again I curve and flow
To join the brimming river;
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on forever.

A PSALM OF LIFE.

H. W. LONGFELLOW.

TELL me not, in mournful numbers, "Life is but an empty dream! For the soul is dead that slumbers,

And things are not what they seem."

Life is real! life is earnest !

And the grave is not its goal; "Dust thou art, to dust returnest," Was not spoken of the soul.

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each to-morrow,
Find us further than to-day.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting,

And our hearts, though stout and brave, Still, like muffled drums, are beating, Funeral marches to the grave.

In the world's broad field of battle,

In the bivouac of Life,

Be not like dumb, driven cattle!

Be a hero in the strife!