Your baby-days flow'd in a much-troubled channel; I see you, as then, in your impotent strife, A tight little bundle of wailing and flannel, Perplex'd with the newly-found fardel of Life. To hint at an infantile frailty's a scandal; Let bygones be bygones, for somebody knows It was bliss such a Baby to dance and to dandle,-- Your cheeks were so dimpled, so rosy your toes. Ay, here is your Cradle; and Hope, a bright spirit, With Love now is watching beside it, I know. They guard the wee nest it was yours to inherit Some nineteen or twenty short summers ago. It is Hope gilds the future, Love welcomes it smiling, Thus wags this old world, therefore stay not to ask, "My future bids fair, is my future beguiling?" If mask'd, still it pleases--then raise not its mask. Is Life a poor coil some would gladly be doffing? He is riding post-haste who their wrongs will adjust; For at most 'tis a footstep from cradle to coffin-- From a spoonful of pap to a mouthful of dust. Then smile as your future is smiling, my Jenny; I see you, except for those infantine woes, Little changed since you were but a small pickaninny-- Your cheeks were so dimpled, so rosy your toes! Ay, here is your Cradle, much, much to my liking, Though nineteen or twenty long winters have sped. Hark! As I'm talking there's six o'clock striking,-- It is time JENNY'S BABY should be in its bed. XC. RUGBY CHAPEL. NOVEMBER, 1857. MATTHEW ARNOLD.--1822- Coldly, sadly descends The autumn-evening. The field Strewn with its dank yellow drifts Of wither'd leaves, and the elms, Fade into dimness apace, Silent;--hardly a shout From a few boys late at their play! The lights come out in the street, In the school-room windows--but cold, Solemn, unlighted, austere, Through the gathering darkness, arise The chapel-walls, in whose bound Thou, my father! art laid. There thou dost lie, in the gloom Of the autumn evening. But ah! That word, _gloom_, to my mind Brings thee back in the light Of thy radiant vigor again: In the gloom of November we pass'd Days not dark at thy side; Seasons impair'd not the ray Of thy buoyant cheerfulness clear. Such thou wast! and I stand In the autumn evening, and think Of bygone autumns with thee. Fifteen years have gone round Since thou arosest to tread, In the summer-morning, the road Of death, at a call unforeseen, Sudden. For fifteen years, We who till then in thy shade Rested as under the boughs Of a mighty oak, have endured Sunshine and rain as we might, Bare, unshaded, alone, Lacking the shelter of thee.