Then other lovers came around you, Your beauty grew from year to year. And many a splendid circle, found you The centre of its glittering sphere. I saw you then, first vows forsaking, On rank and wealth your hand bestow; Oh, then I thought my heart was breaking,-- But that was forty years ago. And I lived on, to wed another; No cause she gave me to repine; And when I heard you were a mother, I did not wish the children mine. My own young flock, in fair progression Made up a pleasant Christmas row: My joy in them was past expression,-- But that was thirty years ago. You grew a matron plump and comely, You dwelt in fashion's brightest blaze; My earthly lot was far more homely; But I too had my festal days. No merrier eyes have ever glistened Around the hearthstone's wintry glow, Than when my youngest child was christened,-- But that was twenty years ago. Time passed. My eldest girl was married, And I am now a grandsire gray; One pet of four years old I've carried Among the wild-flowered meads to play. In our old fields of childish pleasure, Where now, as then, the cowslips blow, She fills her basket's ample measure,-- And that is not ten years ago. But though first love's impassioned blindness Has passed away in colder light, I still have thought of you with kindness, And shall do, till our last good-night. The ever-rolling silent hours Will bring a time we shall not know, When our young days of gathering flowers Will be an hundred years ago. _Miss Ilex._ That is a melancholy song. But of how many first loves is it the true tale! And how many are far less happy! _The Rev. Dr. Opimian._ It is simple, and well sung, with a distinctness of articulation not often heard. _Miss Ilex._ That young lady's voice is a perfect contralto. It is singularly beautiful, and I applaud her for keeping within her natural compass, and not destroying her voice by forcing it upwards, as too many do. _The Rev. Dr. Opimian._ Forcing, forcing seems to be the rule of life. A young lady who forces her voice into _altissimo_, and a young gentleman who forces his mind into a receptacle for a chaos of crudities, are pretty much on a par. Both do ill, where, if they were contented with attainments within the limits of natural taste and natural capacity, they might both do well. As to the poor young men, many of them become mere crammed fowls, with the same result as Hermogenes, who, after astonishing the world with his attainments at seventeen, came to a sudden end at the age of twenty-five, and spent the rest of a long life in hopeless imbecility.