SIN

May be gifts from the devil and earthly kings,

I should suspect that I worshipped the devil

If I thanked my God for worldly things.

The countless gold of a merry heart,

The rubies and pearls of a loving eye, The idle man never can bring to the mart, Nor the cunning hoard up in his treasury.

CUPID.

HY was Cupid a boy?

WHY

And why a boy was he?
He should have been a girl,
For aught that I can see.

For he shoots with his bow,

And the girl shoots with her eye;
And they both are merry and glad,

And laugh when we do cry.

Then to make Cupid a boy
Was surely a woman's plan,
For a boy never learns so much
Till he has become a man.

And then he's so pierced with cares,
And wounded with arrowy smarts,

That the whole business of his life
Is to pick out the heads of the darts.

LOVE'S SECRET.

NEVER seek to tell thy love,

Love that never told can be ;

For the gentle wind doth move
Silently, invisibly.

I told my love, I told my love,
I told her all my heart,

Trembling, cold, in ghastly fears.
Ah! she did depart !

Soon after she was gone from me,

A traveller came by,

Silently, invisibly:

He took her with a sigh.

THE WILD FLOWER'S SONG.

AS I wandered in the forest

The green leaves among,

I heard a wild-flower

Singing a song.

"I slept in the earth
In the silent night;
I murmured my thoughts,
And I felt delight.

"In the morning I went,

As rosy as morn,

To seek for new joy,

But I met with scorn."

OPPORTUNITY.

HE who bends to himself a joy

Does the wingèd life destroy ;

But he who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in eternity's sunrise.

If you trap the moment before it's ripe,
The tears of repentance you'll certainly wipe
But, if once you let the ripe moment go,
You can never wipe off the tears of woe.

SEED-SOWING.

HOU hast a lapful of seed,

"THOU

And this is a fair country.

Why dost thou not cast thy seed,
And live in it merrily?"

"Shall I cast it on the sand,

And turn it into fruitful land?

For on no other ground can I sow my seed

Without tearing up some stinking weed."

I

BARREN BLOSSOM.

FEARED the fury of my wind

Would blight all blossoms fair and true

And my sun it shined and shined,

And my wind it never blew.

But a blossom fair or true

Was not found on any tree;
For all blossoms grew and grew
Fruitless, false, though fair to see.

NIGHT AND DAY.

ILENT, silent Night,

Quench the holy light

Of thy torches bright;

For, possessed of Day,
Thousand spirits stray
That sweet joys betray.
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