Hear the bells, joyous bells! Love’s sweet tale their music tells, As they go o’er glistening snow; Wildly, wildly, rushing by, Fainter grow the hoof-beats now, Fainter, fainter, fainter growing; Venus shines on evening’s brow, Moonlight floods o’er earth are flowing; O, the reckless wild delights Of a sparkling, winter night’s Sleighing, ’neath a moonlit sky! Ho, the bells, merry bells! Rapture in their music dwells; Raptures sweet, in bliss repeat, Gliding, gliding, o’er the snow. Every pulse with pleasure thrills; To the heart new joys revealing. As when springtime, bird-note trills Stir the sweetest fount of feeling, Welling with all tender thought, From the dulcet music caught, Blending all in joyous flow! * * * * * Hark, the bells—homeward bells! Something now their music quells, For they go, tinkling—so— Tinkle—tinkle—seem to wait; Why that steed such lagging feet, When returning, homeward going? (’Mong the furs their faces meet)— Ah! that nag is very knowing, Stepping lightly o’er the snow— Have their whispers, soft and low, Changed his mood and changed his gait? First Love. Tender and true as the starlight of heaven, Sweet as the heart of a bud when it opes, Swift as the flash of the cloud-leaping levin, Rich as the springtime in promise and hopes, Pure as the gleam of the dew on the flowers Is love’s first awakening in youth’s dreamy hours. It sings in the heart like a forest-hid rill— Runs over its rim like a rock-basined spring; Strong, it o’erpowers cold reason with will, Impulsively binding two lives with a ring. It goes where it listeth, unreined as the wind, So reckless, ’tis said, that the love god is blind. Joyful, yet trembling like a zephyr-kissed rose, Flushing and paling like skies of the dawn, Silent, lest speech shall the secret disclose, Wayward and shy as a mountain-bred fawn, Flying the bosom where yearning to rest, Hushing the tenderness, thrilling the heart, Palpitant tempests disturbing the breast; Enjoying—enduring the sweet and the smart That comes of the wounding with Cupid’s first dart. Man. O, grand and worshipful that being MAN, As fashioned by a maiden’s dream-lit mind! To her, his soul has nobleness enshrined— ’Tis pure—Love’s altar-place, where God began, ’Neath Eden’s flow’ry groves, the household plan. In rose-mist wreathed, by sweet enchantment blind, How oft she’s worshiped, wedded, but to find The real, no more her dream, than piping Pan. Some “noble deeds” bear cold ambition’s stain, And chaff is found among Love’s golden grain. ’Tis well the rose-mist lifts and clearer beams Show man’s real self, e’en tho’ it give her pain, Else, so idolatrous, she might, it seems, Forget her God, if he were all she dreams. Trust of Childhood.