Though nature 'wails the dying leaf, And sorrows o'er her silent bowers, She soon forgets her gloom and grief When dew-eyed spring revives her flowers; {312} But when affection weeps for one, Whose daily life new charms imparted, Alas! what power beneath the sun Can cheer the lone--the broken-hearted! Friendship and love must ever mourn The faded wreath of promised pleasure, And though the flow'ers of hope lie torn Fond mem'ry hoards the heart's lost treasure. Oh! cherish then, that vestal flow'r! Simplicity, dear maiden, cherish! 'Twill shed a fragrance o'er the hour When all thy mortal charms shall perish! M. READINGS WITH MY PENCIL. No. III. Legere sine calamo est dormire.--_Quintilian_. 21. "There is a pride, in being left behind, to find resources within, which others seek without."--_Washington Irving_. I have pondered a good deal on this passage, and find a beautiful moral in what, when I first read it, I was fain to fancy but a misanthropic, or, at the least, an unsocial sentiment. I now feel and acknowledge its truth. "There _is_ a pride in being left behind, to find resources within, which others seek without." What concern have I in the greater brightness that another's name is shedding? Let them shine on whose honor is greater. Their orbit cannot interfere with mine. There may be something very grand and sublime in the wide sweep of Herschel and Saturn: but planets, whose path is smaller, are more cheered by the rays of light and warmth from the sun, which is the centre of their revolutions. 22. "Oh the hopeless misery of March in America. Poetry, taste, fancy, feeling,--all are chilled by that ever-snowing sky, that ever snow clad earth. Man were happy could he be a mole for the nonce, and so sleep out this death-in-life, an American six months' winter."--_Subaltern in America_.