W The Old Home. E love the well beloved place Where first we gazed upon the sky; The roofs that heard our earliest cry Will shelter one of stranger race. We go, but ere we go from home, One whispers, "Here thy boyhood sung In native hazels, tassel hung." The other answers, "Yea, but here Thy feet have strayed in after hours, With thy best friend among the bowers, And this had made them trebly dear." These two have striven half the day, I turn to go: my feet are set To leave the pleasant fields and farms; They mix in one another's arms To one pure image of regret. From "The Princess." EARS, idle tears, I know not what they mean; Tears from the depths of some divine despair Rise in the heart and gather to the eyes, In looking on the happy autumn fields, And thinking of the days that are no more. Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail, 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 casement slowly grows a glimmering square Dear as remembered kisses after death, And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feigned. Break, Break, Break. REAK, break, break, On thy cold, gray stones, O sea! And I would that my tongue could utter The thoughts that arise in me. Oh, well for the fisherman's boy That he shouts with his sister at play! Oh, well for the sailor lad That he sings in his boat on the bay! And the stately ships go on To the haven under the hill; But oh, for the touch of a vanished hand, Break, break, break, At the foot of thy crags, O sea! But the tender grace of a day that is dead Will never come back to me! Ring Out, Wild Bells. ING out, wild bells, to the wild sky, Ring out the old, ring in the new- Ring out the grief that saps the mind, Ring out a slowly dying cause, And ancient forms of party strife; Ring in the nobler modes of life, With sweeter manners, purer laws. Ring out the want, the care, the sin, The faithless coldness of the times, Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes, But ring the fuller minstrel in. Ring out false pride in place and blood, The civic slander and the spite; Ring in the love of truth and right, Ring in the common love of good. Ring out old shapes of foul disease, Ring out the narrowing lust of gold; Ring out the thousand wars of old, Ring in the thousand years of peace. Ring in the valiant man and free, The larger heart, the kindlier hand, Ring out the darkness of the land Ring in the Christ that is to be. The Water-Mill. ISTEN to the water-mill, Through the live long day, How the clicking of the wheel Wears the weary hours away— Stirs the withered leaves; |