In Pitt, and Sir J.E. Smith, it is moderate,
and in the Charibs and New Hollanders, very deficient.
* * * * *
SONGS BY BARRY CORNWALL.
PAST TIMES.
Old Acquaintance, shall the nights
You and I once talked together,
Be forgot like common things,--
Like some dreary night that brings
Naught save foul weather?
We were young, when you and I
Talked of golden things together,--
Of love and rhyme, of books and men:
Ah! our hearts were buoyant _then_
As the wild-goose feather!
Twenty years have fled, we know,
Bringing care and changing weather;
But hath th' heart no _backward_ flights,
That we again may see those nights,
And laugh together?
Jove's eagle, soaring to the sun,
Renews the past year's mouldering feather:
Ah, why not you and I, then, soar
From age to youth,--and dream once more
Long nights together.
THE STRANGER.
A stranger came to a rich man's door.
And smiled on his mighty feast;
And away his brightest child he bore,
And laid her toward the East.
He came next spring, with a smile as gay,
(At the time the East wind blows,)
And another bright creature he led away,
With a cheek like a burning rose.
And he came once more, when the spring was blue,
And whispered the last to rest,
And bore her away,--yet nobody knew
The name of the fearful guest!
Next year, there was none but the rich man left,--
Left alone in his pride and pain,
Who called on the stranger, like one bereft,
And sought through the land,--in vain!
He came not: he never was heard nor seen
Again; (so the story saith;)
But, wherever his terrible smile had been,
Men shuddered, and talked of--Death!
THE QUADROON.
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