I'd say, we suffer and we strive,
Not less nor more as men than boys;
With grizzled beards at forty-five,

As erst at twelve in corduroys.
And if, in time of sacred youth,

We learned at home to love and pray, Pray Heaven that early Love and Truth May never wholly pass away.

And in the world, as in the school,

I'd say, how fate may change and shift; The prize be sometimes with the fool, The race not always to the swift. The strong may yield, the good may fall, The great man be a vulgar clown,

The knave be lifted over all,

The kind cast pitilessly down.

*

Who knows the inscrutable design?
Blessed be He who took and gave!
Why should your mother, Charles, not mine,
Be weeping at her darling's grave?
We bow to Heaven that will'd it so,
That darkly rules the fate of all,
That sends the respite or the blow,
That's free to give, or to recall.

This crowns his feast with wine and wit: Who brought him to that mirth and state? His betters, see, below him sit,

Or hunger hopeless at the gate.

Who bade the mud from Dives' wheel
To spurn the rags of Lazarus?
Come, brother, in that dust we'll kneel,
Confessing Heaven that ruled it thus.

* C. B. ob. 29th November, 1848, æt. 42.

So each shall mourn, in life's advance,
Dear hopes, dear friends, untimely killed;
Shall grieve for many a forfeit chance,
And longing passion unfulfilled.
Amen! whatever fate be sent,

Pray God the heart may kindly glow,
Although the head with cares be bent,
And whitened with the winter snow.

Come wealth or want, come good or ill,
Let young and old accept their part,
And bow before the Awful Will,

And bear it with an honest heart,
Who misses or who wins the prize.
Go, lose or conquer as you can;
But if you fail, or if you rise,

Be each, pray God, a gentleman.

A gentleman, or old or young!
(Bear kindly with my humble lays);
The sacred chorus first was sung
Upon the first of Christmas days:
The shepherds heard it overhead-
The joyful angels raised it then :
Glory to Heaven on high, it said,
And peace on earth to gentle men.

My song, save this, is little worth ;
I lay the weary pen aside,

And wish you health, and love, and mirth,
As fits the solemn Christmas-tide.

As fits the holy Christmas birth,

Be this, good friends, our carol stillBe peace on earth, be peace on earth, To men of gentle will.

VANITAS VANITATUM.

How spake of old the Royal Seer?
(His text is one I love to treat on.)
This life of ours, he said, is sheer
Mataiotes Mataioteton.

O Student of this gilded Book,
Declare, while musing on its pages,
If truer words were ever spoke

By ancient or by modern sages?

*

The various authors' names but note,*

French, Spanish, English, Russians, Germans;

And in the volume polyglot

Sure you may read a hundred sermons!

What histories of life are here,

More wild than all romancers' stories;
What wondrous transformations queer,
What homilies on human glories!

What theme for sorrow or for scorn!
What chronicle of Fate's surprises-
Of adverse fortune nobly borne,

Of chances, changes, ruins, rises!

Of thrones upset, and sceptres broke,
How strange a record here is written!

Of honors, dealt as if in joke;

Of brave desert unkindly smitten.

*Between a page by Jules Janin, and a poem by the Turkish Ambassador, in Madame de R- -'s album, containing the autographs of kings, princes, poets, marshals, musicians, diplomatists, statesmen, artists, and men of letters of all nations.

How low men were, and how they rise!
How high they were, and how they tumble !
O vanity of vanities!

O laughable, pathetic jumble !

Here between honest Janin's joke
And his Turk Excellency's firman,
I write my name upon the book:

I write my name-and end my sermon.

O vanity of vanities!

How wayward the decrees of Fate are; How very weak the very wise,

How very small the very great are !

What mean these stale moralities,

Sir Preacher, from your desk you mumble? Why rail against the great and wise, And tire us with your ceaseless grumble ?

Pray choose us out another text,

O man morose and narrow-minded! Come turn the page-I read the next, And then the next, and still I find it.

Read here how Wealth aside was thrust,
And Folly set in place exalted;

How Princes footed in the dust,

While lackeys in the saddle vaulted.

Though thrice a thousand years are past
Since David's son, the sad and splendid,
The weary King Ecclesiast,

Upon his awful tablets penned it,—

Methinks the text is never stale,
And life is every day renewing
Fresh comments on the old old tale
Of Folly, Fortune, Glory, Ruin.

Hark to the Preacher, preaching still
He lifts his voice and cries his sermon,
Here at St. Peter's of Cornhill,

As yonder on the Mount of Hermon :

For you and me to heart to take

(O dear beloved brother readers) To-day as when the good King spake Beneath the solemn Syrian cedars.