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Flashes the lovelight, increasing the glory, Beaming from bright eyes with warmth of the soul,

Telling of trust and content the sweet story,
Lifting the shadows that over us roll.

King, king, crown me the king:

Home is the kingdom, and Love is the king!

Richer than miser with perishing treasure,

Served with a service no conquest could bring; Happy with fortune that words cannot measure, Light-hearted I on the hearthstone can sing. King, king, crown me the king:

Home is the kingdom, and Love is the king.

REV. WILLIAM RANKIN DURYEA.

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A SHEPHERD'S LIFE.

FROM "THIRD PART OF HENRY VI."

KING HENRY. O God! methinks, it were a happy life,

To be no better than a homely swain;

To sit upon a hill, as I do now,

To carve out dials quaintly, point by point,
Thereby to see the minutes how they run;
How many make the hour full complete ;
How many hours bring about the day;
How many days will finish up the year;
How many years a mortal man may live.
When this is known, then to divide the times,
So many hours must I tend my flock;
So many hours must I take my rest;
So many hours must I contemplate;
So many hours must I sport myself;

So many days my ewes have been with young;
So many weeks ere the poor fools will yean;
So many years ere I shall shear the fleece:
So minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, and years,
Passed over to the end they were created,
Would bring white hairs unto a quiet grave.
Ah, what a life were this! how sweet! how lovely!
Gives not the hawthorn bush a sweeter shade
To shepherds, looking on their silly sheep,
Than doth a rich embroidered canopy
To kings that fear their subjects' treachery?

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THE FIRESIDE.

DEAR Chloe, while the busy crowd,
The vain, the wealthy, and the proud,
In folly's maze advance ;
Though singularity and pride
Be called our choice, we 'll step aside,
Nor join the giddy dance.

From the gay world we 'll oft retire
To our own family and fire,

Where love our hours employs ;
No noisy neighbor enters here,
No intermeddling stranger near,
To spoil our heartfelt joys.

If solid happiness we prize,
Within our breast this jewel lies,

And they are fools who roam;
The world hath nothing to bestow,
From our own selves our bliss must flow,

And that dear hut, our home.

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A WINTER'S EVENING HYMN TO MY

FIRE.

O THOU of home the guardian Lar,
And when our earth hath wandered far
Into the cold, and deep snow covers
The walks of our New England lovers,
Their sweet secluded evening-star!
"T was with thy rays the English Muse
Ripened her mild domestic hues :
"T was by thy flicker that she conned
The fireside wisdom that enrings
With light from heaven familiar things;
By thee she found the homely faith
In whose mild eyes thy comfort stay'th,
When Death, extinguishing his torch,
Gropes for the latch-string in the porch;
The love that wanders not beyond
His earliest nest, but sits and sings
While children smooth his patient wings:
Therefore with thee I love to read

Our brave old poets: at thy touch how stirs
Life in the withered words! how swift recede
Time's shadows! and how glows again
Through its dead mass the incandescent verse,
As when upon the anvils of the brain
It glittering lay, cyclopically wrought
By the fast-throbbing hammers of the poet's
thought!

Thou murmurest, too, divinely stirred,
The aspirations unattained,

The rhythms so rathe and delicate,
They bent and strained

And broke, beneath the sombre weight
Of any airiest mortal word.

As who would say, "Tis those, I ween,
Whom lifelong armor-chafe makes lean
That win the laurel";

While the gray snow-storm, held aloof,
To softest outline rounds the roof,
Or the rude North with baffled strain
Shoulders the frost-starred window-pane !
Now the kind nymph to Bacchus borne
By Morpheus' daughter, she that seems
Gifted upon her natal morn

By him with fire, by her with dreams,
Nicotia, dearer to the Muse

Than all the grapes' bewildering juice,
We worship, unforbid of thee;
And, as her incense floats and curls
In airy spires and wayward whirls,
Or poises on its tremulous stalk

A flower of frailest revery,
So winds and loiters, idly free,
The current of unguided talk,

Now laughter-rippled, and now caught
In smooth dark pools of deeper thought.

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BUT where to find that happiest spot below, Who can direct, when all pretend to know? The shudd'ring tenant of the frigid zone Boldly proclaims that happiest spot his own; Extols the treasures of his stormy seas, And his long nights of revelry and ease : The naked negro, panting at the line, Boasts of his golden sands and palmy wine, Basks in the glare, or stems the tepid wave, And thanks his gods for all the good they gave. Such is the patriot's boast, where'er we roam, His first, best country, ever is at home. And yet, perhaps, if countries we compare, And estimate the blessings which they share, Though patriots flatter, still shall wisdom find An equal portion dealt to all mankind; As different good, by art or nature given, To different nations makes their blessing even.

OLIVER GOLDSMITH.

THE HOMES OF ENGLAND.

The stately Homes of England,
How beautiful they stand!
Amidst their tall ancestral trees,
O'er all the pleasant land;

The deer across their greensward bound
Through shade and sunny gleam,

And the swan glides past them with the sound
Of some rejoicing stream.

The merry Homes of England!
Around their hearths by night,

What gladsome looks of household love
Meet in the ruddy light.

There woman's voice flows forth in song,
Or childish tale is told;
Or lips move tunefully along
Some glorious page of old.

The blessed Homes of England!
How softly on their bowers
Is laid the holy quietness

That breathes from Sabbath hours!

Solemn, yet sweet, the church-bell's chime
Floats through their woods at morn;

All other sounds, in that still time,
Of breeze and leaf are born.

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FROM CHILDE HAROld."

THERE is a dungeon in whose dim drear light What do I gaze on? Nothing: look again! Two forms are slowly shadowed on my sight, Two insulated phantoms of the brain : It is not so; I see them full and plain, An old man and a female young and fair, Fresh as a nursing mother, in whose vein The blood is nectar: but what doth she there, With her unmantled neck, and bosom white and bare ?

Full swells the deep pure fountain of young life, Where on the heart and from the heart we took Our first and sweetest nurture, when the wife, Blest into mother, in the innocent look, Or even the piping cry of lips that brook No pain and small suspense, a joy perceives Man knows not, when from out its cradled nook She sees her little bud put forth its leaves What may the fruit be yet? I know not- - Cain was Eve's.

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Mountains and seas divide us, but I claim

No tears, but tenderness to answer mine:

Go where I will, to me thou art the same,
A loved regret which I would not resign.
There yet are two things in my destiny,
A world to roam through, and a home with thee.

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I can reduce all feelings but this one;

And that I would not; for at length I see Such scenes as those wherein my life begun.

The earliest, even the only paths for me, Had I but sooner learnt the crowd to shun, I had been better than I now can be ; The passions which have torn me would have slept : I had not suffered, and thou hadst not wept.

With false Ambition what had I to do?

Little with Love, and least of all with Fame! And yet they came unsought, and with me grew, And made me all which they can make,―a name.

Yet this was not the end I did pursue;
Surely I once beheld a nobler aim.
But all is over; I am one the more
To baffled millions which have gone before.
And for the future, this world's future may
From me demand but little of my care;

I have outlived myself by many a day :
Having survived so many things that were;
My years have been no slumber, but the prey
Of ceaseless vigils; for I had the share
Of life which might have filled a century,
Before its fourth in time had passed me by.

And for the remnant which may be to come,
I am content; and for the past I feel
Not thankless, for within the crowded sum
Of struggles, happiness at times would steal,
And for the present, I would not benumb

My feelings farther. - Nor shall I conceal That with all this I still can look around, And worship Nature with a thought profound.

For thee, my own sweet sister, in thy heart

I know myself secure, as thou in mine : We were and are I am, even as thou art Beings who ne'er each other can resign; It is the same, together or apart,

From life's commencement to its slow decline We are intwined, let death come slow or fast, The tie which bound the first endures the last! BYRON.

BERTHA IN THE LANE.

PUT the broidery-frame away,
For my sewing is all done!
The last thread is used to-day,
And I need not join it on.
Though the clock stands at the noon,
I am weary! I have sewn,
Sweet, for thee, a wedding-gown.

Sister, help me to the bed,

And stand near me, dearest-sweet!
Do not shrink nor be afraid,
Blushing with a sudden heat!
No one standeth in the street!
By God's love I go to meet,

Love I thee with love complete.

Lean thy face down! drop it in

These two hands, that I may hold 'Twixt their palms thy cheek and chin, Stroking back the curls of gold. "T is a fair, fair face, in sooth, Larger eyes and redder mouth Than mine were in my first youth!

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