Sad as the last which reddens over one
That sinks with all we love below the verge,----

So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more.

Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer dawns
The earliest pipe of half-awakened birds

To dying ears, when unto dying eyes

The casement slowly grows a glimmering square;
So sad, so strange, the days that are no more.

Dear as remembered kisses after death,
And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feigned
On lips that are for others; deep as love,
Deep as first love, and wild with all regret,--
O Death in Life, the days that are no more.

ALFRED TENNYSON.

OLD CHUMS.

Is it you, Jack? Old boy, is it really you?
I shouldn't have known you but that I was told
You might be expected;-pray how do you do?
But what, under heaven, has made you so old?

Your hair! why, you've only a little gray fuzz!

And your beard's white! but that can be beautifully dyed; And your legs aren't but just half as long as they was; And then-stars and garters! your vest is so wide!

Is this your hand? Lord, how I envied you that
In the time of our courting,-so soft, and so small,

And now it is callous inside, and so fat,

Well, you beat the very old deuce, that is ai!.

Turn round! let me look at you! isn't it odd

How strange in a few years a fellow's chum grows!

Your eye is shrunk up like a bean in a pod,

And what are these lines branching out from your nose?

Your back has gone up and your shoulders

gone down,

And all the roses are under the plough;
Why, Jack, if we'd happen to meet about town,
I wouldn't have known you from Adam, I vow!

You've had trouble, have you? I'm sorry; but, John,

All trouble sits lightly at your time of life.

How's Billy my namesake?

To the war, John, and that

You don't say he's gone

you

have buried your wife?

Poor Katherine! so she has left you,-ah me!
I thought she would live to be fifty, or more.
What is it you tell me? She was fifty-three!

O no, Jack! she wasn't so much by a score!

Well, there's little Katy,-was that her name, John?
She'll rule your house one of these days like a queen.
That baby! good Lord! is she married and gone?
With a Jack ten years old! and a Katy fourteen!

Then I give it up!

Why, you're younger than I

By ten or twelve years, and to think you've come back

A sober old greybeard, just ready to die!

I don't understand how it is,-do you, Jack?

I've got all my faculties yet, sound and bright;
Slight failure my eyes are beginning to hint;
But still, with my spectacles on, and a light
'Twixt them and the page, I can read any print.

My hearing is dull, and my leg is more spare
Perhaps, than it was when I beat you at ball;
My breath gives out, too, if I go up a stair,—
But nothing worth mentioning, nothing at all'

My hair is just turning a little, you see,
And lately I've put on a broader-brimmed hat
Than I wore at your wedding, but you will agree,
Old fellow, I look all the better for that.

I'm sometimes a little rheumatic, 'tis true,

And my nose isn't quite on a straight line, they say; For all that, I don't think I've changed much, do you? And I don't feel a day older, Jack, not a day.

ALICE CARY.

SHERIDAN'S RIDE.

Up from the South at break of day,
Bringing to Winchester fresh dismay,
The affrighted air with a shudder bore,
Like a herald in haste, to the chieftain's door,
The terrible grumble and rumble and roar,
Telling the battle was on once more,
And Sheridan twenty miles away.

And wider still those billows of war
Thundered along the horizon's bar.
And louder yet into Winchester rolled
The roar of that red sea uncontrolled,
Making the blood of the listener cold,

As he thought of the stake in that fiery fray,
With Sheridan twenty miles away.

But there is a road from Winchester town,

A good, broad highway leading down;

And there through the flash of the morning light,

A steed as black as the steeds of night,
Was seen to pass as with eagle flight—
As if he knew the terrible need,
He stretched away with the utmost speed;
Hills rose and fell-but his heart was gay,
With Sheridan fifteen miles away.

Still sprung from those swift hoofs thundering south,
The dust, like the smoke from the cannon's mouth,
Or the trail of a comet sweeping faster and faster,
Foreboding to traitors the doom of disaster;

The heart of the steed and the heart of the master
Were beating like prisoners assaulting their walls,
Impatient to be where the battle-field calls;

Every nerve of the charger was strained to full play,
With Sheridan only ten miles away.

Under his spurning feet the road
Like an arrowy Alpine river flowed,

And the landscape sped away behind

Like an occan flying before the wind;

And the steed, like a bark fed with furnace ire,

Swept on with his wild eyes full of fire;

But, lo! he is nearing his heart's desire,

He is snuffing the smoke of the roaring fray,
With Sheridan only five miles away.

The first the General saw were the groups

Of stragglers, and then the retreating troops;

What was done-what to do—a glance told him both,

And striking his spurs with a terrible oath,

He dashed down the line 'mid a storm of huzzahs,

And the wave of retreat checked its course there because

The sight of the master compelled it to pause.

With foam and with dust the black charger was gray,

By the flash of his eye, and his nostrils' play
He seemed to the whole great army to say,
"I have brought you Sheridan all the way
From Winchester down, to save the day!"

Hurrah, hurrah for Sheridan!

Hurrah, hurrah for horse and man!

And when their statues are placed on high,
Under the dome of the Union sky.-
The American soldier's Temple of Fame,-
There with the glorious General's name
Be it said in letters both bold and bright:
"Here is the steed that saved the day
By carrying Sheridan into the fight
From Winchester-twenty miles away!"

THOMAS BUCHANAN READ.

RICH AND POOR.

I see, in those vehicles which carry to the people sentiments from high places, plain declarations that the present controversy is but a strife between one part of the community and another. I hear it boasted as the unfailing security, the solid ground, never to be shaken, on which recent measures rest, that the poor naturally hate the rich.

I know that, under the shade of the roofs of the Capitol, within the last twenty-four hours, among men sent here to devise means for the public safety and the public good, it has been vaunted forth, as a matter of boast and triumph, that one cause existed, powerful enoug i to support everything and defend everything, and that was,-the natural hatred of the poor to the rich

I pronounce the author of such sentiments to be guilty of attempting a detestable fraud on the community; a double fraud; a fraud which is to cheat men out of their understandings.

“The natural hatred of the poor to the rich!" It shall not be till the last moment of my existence; it shall be only when I am drawn to the verge of oblivion, when I shall cease to have respect or affection for anything on earth, that I will believe the people of the United States capable of being effectually deluded, cajoled, and driven about in herds, by such abominable frauds as this.

If they shall sink to that point, if they so far cease to be men, thinking men, intelligent men, as to yield to such pretenses and such clamor, they will be slaves already; slaves to their own passions, slaves to the fraud and knavery of pretended friends. They will deserve to be blotted out of all the records of freedom. They ought not to dishonor the cause of self-government, by attempting any longer to exercise it. They ought to keep their unworthy hands entirely off from the cause of Republican liberty, if they are capable of being the victims of artifices so shallow; of tricks so stale, so threadbare, so often practiced, so much worn out, on serfs and slaves.

"The natural hatred of the poor against the rich!" "The danger of a moneyed aristocracy! A power as great and dangerous as that resisted by the Revolution!" "A call to a new Declaration of Independence!"

I admonish the people against the objects of outcries like these. I admonish every industrious laborer in the country to be on his guard against such delusions. I tell him the attempt is to play off