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PACK clouds away, and welcome day, | Wake from thy nest, robin red

With night we banish sorrow; Sweet air, blow soft; mount, larks,

aloft,

To give my love good-morrow, Wings from the wind to please her mind,

Notes from the lark I'll borrow; Bird, prune thy wing, nightingale,sing, To give my love good-morrow.

breast,

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THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON.

DECORATION.

"Manibus date lilia plenis."

Never foot had firmer tread

On the field where hope lay dead,

'MID the flower-wreathed tombs I Than are hid within this tomb,

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Where the untended grasses bloom; And no stone, with feigned distress, Mocks the sacred loneliness.

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GEORGE STILLMAN HILLARD.

LAKE GEORGE.

How oft in visions of the night,
How oft in noonday dreaming,
I've seen, fair lake, thy forest wave,-
Have seen thy waters gleaming;
Have heard the blowing of the winds
That sweep along thy highlands,
And the light laughter of the waves
That dance around thine islands.

It was a landscape of the mind,
With forms and hues ideal,
But still those hues and forms ap-
peared

More lovely than aught real.

I feared to see the breathing scene,
And brooded o'er the vision,
Lest the hard touch of truth should

mar

A picture so Elysian.

But now I break the cold distrust Whose spells so long had bound me; The shadows of the night are past,The morning shines around me.

And in the sober light of day,
I see, with eyes enchanted,
The glorious vision that so long
My day and night dreams haunted.

I see the green, translucent wave,
The purest of earth's fountains:
I see the many-winding shore,
The double range of mountains:
One, neighbor to the flying clouds,
And crowned with leaf and blossom,
And one, more lovely, borne within
The lake's unruffled bosom.

O timid heart! with thy glad throbs
Some self-reproach is blended.
At the long years that died before
The sight of scene so splendid.
The mind has pictures of its own,
Fair trees and waters flowing -
But not a magic whole like this,
So living, breathing, glowing;

Strength imaged in the wooded hills,
A grand, primeval nature,

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Nor is the stately scene without
Its sweet, secluded treasures,
Where hearts that shun the crowd
may find

Their own exclusive pleasures;
Deep chasms of shade for pensive
thought,

The hours to wear away in;

With clouds, and shadows of the clouds,

And mists the hillsides ranging.
Where morning's gold, and noon's
hot sun,

Their changing glories render;
Pour round the shores a varying
light,

Now glowing and now tender.

But purer than the shifting gleams
By liberal sunshine given,

Is the deep spirit of that hour, —
An effluence breathed from heaven;
When the unclouded, yellow moon

And vaulted aisles, of whispering pine, Hangs o'er the eastern ridges,
For lovers' feet to stray in;

Clear streams that from the uplands

run,

A course of sunless shadow;
Isles all unfurrowed by the plough,
And strips of fertile meadow;
And rounded coves of silver sand,
Where moonlight plays and glances,—
A sheltered hall for elfin horns,
A floor for elfin dances.

No tame monotony is here,
But beauty ever changing;

And the long shaft of trembling

gold,

The trembling crystal bridges.

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And, braving full their murderous Keep green the memory of the brave

blast,

Stormed home the towers of Monterey.

Our banners on those turrets wave, And there our evening bugles play; Where orange boughs above their grave

Who fought and fell at Monterey.

We are not many, - we who pressed Beside the brave who fell that day:

But who of us has not confessed He'd rather share their warrior rest Than not have been at Monterey?

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And he'll never know Where the summers go;He need not laugh, for he'll find it so!

Who can tell what a baby thinks? Who can follow the gossamer links

By which the manikin feels his way Out from the shore of the great unknown,

Blind, and wailing, and all alone,
Into the light of day?—
Out from the shore of the unknown
sea,

Of the unknown sea that reels and
Tossing in pitiful agony,
rolls,

Specked with the barks of little souls,

Barks that were launched on the other side,

And slipped from heaven on an ebbWhat does he think of his mother's ing tide! eyes ?

What does he think of his mother's hair?

What of the cradle-roof that flies Forward and backward through the air?

What does he think of his mother's breast,

Bare and beautiful, smooth and white, Seeking it ever with fresh delight,

Cup of his life and couch of his rest? What does he think when her quick embrace

Presses his hand and buries his face Deep where the heart-throbs sink and swell

With a tenderness she can never tell, Though she murmur the words

Of all the birds,

Words she has learned to murmur well?

Now he thinks he'll go to sleep!

I can see the shadow creep
Over his eyes in soft eclipse,
Over his brow, and over his lips,
Out to his little finger-tips;
Softly sinking, down he goes!
Down he goes! Down he goes!
See! He is hushed in sweet re-
pose!

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