With a fondness to roam, and a wish to be free, He bounded in triumph, or whistled in glee, Now crushing a blossom, or plucking a bough, Or climbing a tree by the cliff’s rugged brow. With his dog at his side, o’er the heather he flew, Where the clover-bed bloom’d, or the strawberry grew, And trampled the grass that encumber’d the plain, While flutter’d the flock from the clustering grain. He knew the lone spots of the forest and glen, The rook of the crow, and the nest of the wren, And hied as a forager there for his prey, But left the wood-tenants unharm’d in their play. By hedge-row, and brushwood, and briar, and brake, To the pebble-shor’d brook, and the wild-wooded lake, He rov’d, while the pathway was leafy and green, Where bow’d the old oaks o’er the silvery scene. And there by the brookside, when tir’d of play, He gazed on the charms of the slow-dying day, And thought, as it gave to some lovelier land, The blaze of that light which the zenith had spann’d, That a ray there must be to illumine the heart— A guide and a goal for man’s innermost part— A Glory unknown, to be follow’d and bless’d, That again would recall what it gave to its breast. When Love can a lustre so beautiful shed, It were sad if the soul could be lost or misled, Or its flight to its source be less cheerful and bright, Than the blaze of that sun ’neath the curtains of night. With the lovely illusions of day’s mellow’d scene, All around him was radiant, and vocal, and green, But now as he gaz’d on the sky and the air, No melody rose, and no splendour was there. “Oh! keep me,” he said, “in the path where I stray, Illum’d by the warmth of some soul-cheering ray— That my glance may be clear thro’ the cloud and the storm, When the night of the grave has o’ershadow’d my form.” He look’d as a child, but he felt as a man, And in Wisdom concluded what Folly began; Then in silence his steps he was fain to resume, Ere the shadowy fall of the thick-coming gloom. Soon up from the shore, and away from the stream, He wended as one that was wak’d from a dream, For the voice of a thought had been heard in his heart, And the lingering whisper was slow to depart. His vine-cover’d home in the twilight was nigh, And the whipporwill sending its plaint to the sky, And the bark of his dog, and the voice at the door, He welcom’d with joy when his ramble was o’er. Though dear to his vision that forest-bound scene, With its dwelling of peace on a carpet of green, The wild spot his memory loves to restore, Is the path to that stream, and the oak by its shore. * * * * * THE LOST EVENING. BY JESSE E. DOW.