The sweetest lives are those to duty wed,

      Whose deeds, both great and small,

      Are close knit strands of an unbroken thread,

      Whose love ennobles all.

      The world may sound no trumpet, ring no bells;

      The book of life, the shining record tells.

      Thy love shall chant its own beatitudes,

      After its own life-working. A child's kiss

      Set on thy singing lips shall make thee glad;

      A poor man served by thee shall make thee rich;

      A sick man helped by thee shall make thee strong;

      Thou shalt be served thyself by every sense

      Of service thou renderest.

      I saw him once before,

      As he passed by the door,

      And again

      The pavement stones resound,

      As he totters o'er the ground

      With his cane.

      They say that in his prime,

      Ere the pruning-knife of Time

      Cut him down,

      Not a better man was found

      By the Crier on his round

      Through the town.

      But now he walks the streets,

      And he looks at all he meets

      Sad and wan,

      And he shakes his feeble head,

      That it seems as if he said

      "They are gone."

      The mossy marbles rest

      On the lips that he has prest

      In their bloom,

      And the names he loved to hear

      Have been carved for many a year

      On the tomb.

      My grandmamma has said,—

      Poor old lady, she is dead

      Long ago,—

      That he had a Roman nose,

      And his cheek was like a rose

      In the snow.

      But now his nose is thin,

      And it rests upon his chin.

      Like a staff,

      And a crook is in his back,

      And a melancholy crack

      In his laugh.

      I know it is a sin

      For me to sit and grin

      At him here;

      But the old three-cornered hat,

      And the breeches, and all that,

      Are so queer!

      And if I should live to be

      The last leaf upon the tree

      In the spring,

      Let them smile, as I do now,

      At the old forsaken bough

      Where I cling.

      She's up there—Old Glory—where lightnings are sped;

      She dazzles the nations with ripples of red;

      And she'll wave for us living, or droop o'er us dead,—

      The flag of our country forever!

      She's up there—Old Glory—how bright the stars stream!

      And the stripes like red signals of liberty gleam!

      And we dare for her, living, or dream the last dream,

      'Neath the flag of our country forever!

      She's up there—Old Glory—no tyrant-dealt scars,

      No blur on her brightness, no stain on her stars!

      The brave blood of heroes hath crimsoned her bars.

      She's the flag of our country forever!

      The melancholy days are come, the saddest of the year,

      Of wailing winds, and naked woods, and meadows brown and sear.

      Heaped in the hollows of the grove, the withered leaves lie dead;

      They rustle to the eddying gust, and to the rabbit's tread.

      The robin and the wren are flown, and from the shrub the jay,

      And from the wood-top calls the crow, through all the gloomy day.

      Where are the flowers, the fair young flowers, that lately sprang and stood

      In brighter light and softer airs, a beauteous sisterhood?

      Alas! they all are in their graves; the gentle race of flowers

      Are lying in their lowly beds, with the fair and good of ours.

      The rain is falling where they lie; but the cold November rain

      Calls not from out the gloomy earth the lovely ones again.

      The wind-flower and the violet, they perished long ago,

      And the brier-rose and the orchis died amid the summer glow;

      But on the hill the golden-rod, and the aster in the wood,

      And the yellow sun-flower by the brook, in autumn beauty stood,

      Till