YOUTH AND AGE. BY S. T. COLERIDGE, ESQ. VERSE, a breeze 'mid blossoms straying, When I was young! When I was young! ah, woeful when ! That ask no aid of sail or oar, That fear no spite of wind or tide! Nought cared this body for wind or weather, When YouтH and I lived in't together! Flowers are lovely, Love is flower-like, O the joys, that came down shower-like, Ere I was old? ah, mournful ere, I see these locks in silvery slips, This drooping gait, this altered size; A SKETCH. BY JOHN MALCOLM, ESQ. I saw her in the morn of life-the summer of her years, I saw her once again, and still her form was young and fair, Oh, then her tender bloom might seem the shadow of the rose, Or dying gleam of sunset-skies, scarce tinging stainless snows; And clustering round her brow serene her golden tresses lay, As sunbright clouds on summer lakes are hung at close of day. Yet-yet once more I saw her face, and then she seemed to sleep Literary Magnet. POESY. BY CHARLES SWAIN, ESQ. SPIRIT of elder Time! immortal Song!— The high and the inspired have told thy worth; A ray of softness, gracefulness, and mirth: A charm with man's affections intertwined; A beauty and a glory upon earth; — A power and a creation of the mind, Which is itself divine-mysterious — undefined! With the young minstrel, in his visioned moods, His feelings-thoughts-receive their life from thee : Gives up its ancient secrets to thy hand;- Sound on the thousand tongues and echoes of the land! Thou sing'st the sweetness of the moon's first hour, Where flees the foe, by horse and horseman driven, Spirit of Verse! in deepest reverence I bow before thine ever-glorious shrine; And though I feel thy meeds can ne'er be mine, Yet may I pour one low and gentle line, This cherished wish, a living wreath to twine; Some few may list, perhaps, and not condemn my strain. Literary Magnet. TIME'S CHANGES. I saw her once-so freshly fair, And Nature joyed to view its moulding: Should dim such sweet, delicious splendour! For in her mien, and in her face, And in her young step's fairy lightness, Nought could the 'raptured gazer trace I saw her twice-an altered charm- The very image of its mother; They seemed to live but in each other: Her thoughtless, sinless looks had banished, And from her cheek the roseate glow Of girlhood's balmy morn had vanished; Within her eyes, upon her brow, I saw her thrice-Fate's dark decree As even my reveries portrayed her: The retrospect was scarcely bitter; That every louder mirth is folly— A stillness-as of sunset streaming A fairy glow on flower and leaf, Till earth looks like a landscape, dreaming. A last time-and unmoved she lay, Beyond life's dim, uncertain river, A glorious mould of fading clay, From whence the spark had fled for ever! I gazed-my heart was like to burst And, as I thought of years departed, The years wherein I saw her first, When she, a girl, was lightsome-hearted ;— And, when I mused on later days, As moved she in her matron duty, A happy mother, in the blaze Of ripened hope, and sunny beauty, I felt the chill-I turned aside Bleak Desolation's cloud came o'er me, And Being seemed a troubled tide, Whose wrecks in darkness swam before me! Blackwood's Magazine. |