LANGSYNE.

Langsyne!-how doth the word come back
With magic meaning to the heart,
As memory roams the sunny track,

Mine is the charm whose mystic sway
The Spirits of past Delight obey;
Let but the tuneful talisman sound,
And they come, like Genii, hovering round.
And mine is the gentle song, that bears,
From soul to soul, the wishes of love,

No joy like by-past joy appears;

For what is gone we freak and pine. Were life spun out a thousand years, It could not match Langsyne!

Langsyne!-the days of childhood warm,
When, tottering by a mother's knee,

Each sight and sound had power to charm,
And hope was high, and thought was free.
Langsyne!--the merry school-boy days-
How sweetly then life's sun did shine!
Oh! for the glorious pranks and plays,
The raptures of Langsyne!

Langsyne!-yes, in the sound, I hear
The rustling of the summer grove;
And view those angel features near
Which first awoke the heart to love.
How sweet it is in pensive mood,
At windless midnight to recline,
And fill the mental solitude
With spectres from Langsyne!

Langsyne! ah, where are they who shared
With us its pleasures bright and blythe!
Kindly with some hath fortune fared;
And some have bow'd beneath the scythe
Of Death; while others scatter'd far
O'er foreign lands at fate repine,
Oft wandering forth, 'neath twilight's star,
To muse on dear Langsyne!

Langsyne!-the heart can never be
Again so full of guileless trust;
Langsyne! the eyes no more shall see,
Ah no! the rainbow hopes of youth.
Langsyne! with thee resides a spell
To raise the spirit, and refine.
Farewell! there can be no farewell
To thee, loved, lost Langsyne!

D. M. MOIR.

SONG OF THE SPIRIT OF MUSIC.

Mine is the lay that lightly floats,
And mine are the murmuring, dying notes,
That fall as soft as snow on the sea,
And melt in the heart as instantly!
And the passionate strain that, deeply going,
Refines the bosom it trembles through,
As the musk-wind, over the water blowing,
Ruffles the wind but sweetens it too!

The cinnamon seed from grove to grove.1 "Tis I that mingle in sweet measure The past, the present, and future of pleasure; When memory links the tone that is gone With the blissful tone that's still in the ear; And hope from a heavenly note flies on

To a note more heavenly still that is near!

The warrior's heart, when touched by me,
Can as downy, soft, and as yielding be
As his own white plume, that high amid death
Through the field has shone-yet moves with a
breath.

And, oh, how the eyes of beauty glisten,

When Music has reached her inward soul, Like the silent Stars, that wink and listen While heaven's eternal Melodies roll.

THOMAS MOORE.

A SUMMER DAY.

There was not on that day a speck to stain
The azure heaven: the blessed sun alone,
In unapproachable divinity,

Career'd rejoicing in the fields of light.
How beautiful, beneath the bright blue sky,
The billows heave! one glowing green expanse,
Save where along the line of bending shore,
Such hue is thrown, as when the peacock's neck
Assumes its proudest tint of amethyst,
Embathed in emerald glory: all the flocks
Of ocean are abroad: like floating foam
The sea-gulls rise and fall upon the waves:
With long protruded neck the cormorants
Wing their far flight aloft, and round and round
The plovers wheel, and give their note of joy.
It was a day that sent into the heart
A summer feeling; even the insect swarms.
From the dark nooks and coverts issued forth
To sport through one day of existence more.
The solitary primrose on the bank
Seem'd now as if it had no cause to mourn
Its bleak autumnal birth; the rock and shores,
The forests, and the everlasting hills,
Smiled in the joyful sunshine; they partook
The universal blessing.

ROBERT SOUTHEY.

1"The Pompadour pigeon is the species, which, by carrying the fruit of the cinnamon to different places, is a great disseminator of this valuable tree."-See Brown's Illustr. Tab. 19.

JACOB FLINT'S JOURNEY.1

[Bayard Taylor is one of the most prominent of modern American writers. In the Poets and Poetry of America, Dr. Griswold says of him: "Eminent as he

is as a writer of travels, his highest and most enduring distinction will be from his poetry. His travels will hereafter be to his poems no more than those of Smollett are to his extraordinary novels." Since that verdict was pronounced, Mr. Taylor has won equal distinction as a novelist. Besides many short tales-from the latest collection of which we quote the following story—he has produced Hannah Thurston; John Godfrey's Fortunes; The Story of Kennet; Joseph and his Friend, See note in Library, vol. i., page 109. Born 1825, died 1878.]

etc.

If there ever was a man crushed out of all courage, all self-reliance, all comfort in life, it was Jacob Flint. Why this should have been, neither he nor any one else could have explained; but so it was. On the day that he first went to school, his shy, frightened face marked him as fair game for the rougher and stronger boys, and they subjected him to all those exquisite refinements of torture which boys seem to get by the direct inspiration of the devil. There was no form of their bullying

meanness or the cowardice of their brutal strength which he did not experience. He was born under a fading or falling star, the inheritor of some anxious or unhappy mood of his parents, which gave its fast colour to the threads out of which his innocent being was

Woven.

Even the good people of the neighbourhood, never accustomed to look below the externals of appearance and manner, saw in his shrinking face and awkward motions only the signs of a cringing, abject soul. "You'll be no more of a man than Jake Flint!" was the reproach which many a farmer addressed to his dilatory boy; and thus the parents, one and all, came to repeat the sins of the children.

If, therefore, at school and "before folks," Jacob's position was always uncomfortable and depressing, it was little more cheering at home. His parents, as all the neighbours believed, had been unhappily married, and, though the mother died in his early childhood, his father remained a moody, unsocial man, who rarely left his farm except on the 1st of April every year, when he went to the county town for the purpose of paying the interest upon a mortgage. The farm lay in a hollow between two hills, separated from the road by a thick wood, and the chimneys of the lonely old house looked in

1 From Beauty and the Beast, and Tales of Home.

Bayard Taylor; New York: Putnam's Sons.

By

vain for a neighbour-smoke when they began to grow warm of a morning.

Beyond the barn and under the northern hill there was a log tenant-house, in which dwelt a negro couple, who, in the course of years had become fixtures on the place and almost partners in it. Harry, the man, was the medium by which Samuel Flint kept up his necessary intercourse with the world beyond the valley; he took the horses to the blacksmith, the grain to the mill, the turkeys to market, and through his hands passed all the incomings and outgoings of the farm, except the annual interest on the mortgage. his wife, took care of the household, which, indeed, was a light and comfortable task, since the table was well supplied for her own sake, and there was no sharp eye to criticize her sweeping, dusting, and bed-making. place had a forlorn, tumble-down aspect, quite in keeping with its lonely situation; but perhaps this very circumstance flattered the mood of its silent, melancholy owner and his unhappy

son.

Sally,

The

[There was only one person with whom Jacob wife of a neighbouring farmer: and, for her felt completely at ease-Mrs. Ann Pardon, the sister, Becky Morton, he felt something which might have developed into love. But Becky flouted him like the rest, mocked at the poverty of his father's farm, saying it was covered with as much as it would bear, and at a merry meeting of lads and lasses said she would dance with Jacob "after he came back from his journey." That was the cruellest sting of all to his sensitive nature.]

annoyed him, but the mention of it always It was a very little thing, after all, which touched a sore nerve of his nature. A dozen years before, when a boy at school, he had made a temporary friendship with another boy of his age, and had one day said to the latter, in the warmth of his first generous confidence: "When I am a little older, I shall make a great journey, and come back rich, and buy Whitney's place!"

Now, Whitney's place, with its stately old brick mansion, its avenue of silver firs, and its two hundred acres of clean, warm-lying land, in all the neighbourhood, and the boy-friend was the finest, the most aristocratic property could not resist the temptation of repeating Jacob's grand design, for the endless amusement of the school. The betrayal hurt Jacob more keenly than the ridicule. It left a wound that never ceased to rankle; yet, with the inconceivable perversity of unthinking natures, precisely this joke (as the people supposed it to be) had