Bring, too, a clump of fragrant peat,
Dug 'neath the fern,
The knotted oak,

A fagot too, perhap,

Whose bright flame, dancing, winking,
Shall light us at our drinking;
While the oozing sap

Shall make sweet music to our thinking.

Old books to read!

Ay, bring those nodes of wit,
The brazen-clasped, the vellum writ,
Time-honored tomes!

The same my sire scanned before,
The same my grandsire thumbéd o'er,
The same his sire from college bore,
The well-earned meed

Of Oxford's domes ;

Old Homer blind,

Old Horace, rake Anacreon, by
Old Tully, Plautus, Terence lie;
Mort Arthur's olden minstrelsie,
Quaint Burton, quainter Spenser, ay,
And Gervase Markham's venerie;

Nor leave behind

The Holye Book by which we live and die.

Old friends to talk!

Ay, bring those chosen few,

The wise, the courtly, and the true,
So rarely found;

Him for my wine, him for my stud,
Him for my easel, distich, bud
In mountain walk;

Bring Walter good,

With soulful Fred, and learned Will,
And thee, my alter ego (dearer still
For every mood).

Robert Hinckley Messinger.

THE OLD FAMILIAR FACES.

I HAVE had playmates, I have had companions, In my days of childhood, in my joyful schooldays;

All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.

I have been laughing, I have been carousing, Drinking late, sitting late, with my bosom cronies; All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.

I loved a love once, fairest among women;
Closed are her doors on me - I must not see her;
All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.

I have a friend, a kinder friend has no man;
Like an ingrate, I left my friend abruptly,
Left him, to muse on the old familiar faces.

Ghost-like, I paced round the haunts of my childhood;

Earth seemed a desert I was bound to traverse,
Seeking to find the old familiar faces.

Friend of my bosom, thou more than a brother, Why wert not thou born in my father's dwelling? So might we talk of the old familiar faces —

How some they have died, and some they have left me,

And some are taken from me; all are departed,

All, all are gone, the old familiar faces !

Charles Lamb.

FACES IN THE FIRE.

I WATCH the drowsy night expire,
And Fancy paints, at my desire,
Her magic pictures in the fire.

An island farm 'mid seas of corn,
Swayed by the wandering breath of morn,
The happy spot where I was born.

The picture fadeth in its place;
Amid the glow I seem to trace
The shifting semblance of a face.

"Tis now a little childish form,
Red lips for kisses pouted warm,
And elf-locks tangled in the storm.

'Tis now a grave and gentle maid, At her own beauty half afraid, Shrinking, yet willing to be stayed.

"Tis now a matron with her boys,
Dear centre of domestic joys;
I seem to hear the merry noise.

O, time was young, and life was warm,
When first I saw that fairy form,

Her dark hair tossing in the storm.

And fast and free these pulses played
When last I met that gentle maid-
When last her hand in nine was laid.

Those locks of jet are turned to gray,
And she is strange and far away,
That might have been mine own to-day.

That might have been mine own, my dear, Through many and many a happy year, That might have sat beside me here.

Ay, changeless through the changing scene,
The ghostly whisper rings between
The dark refrain of "might have been."

The race is o'er I might have run,
The deeds are past I might have done,
And sear the wreath I might have won.

Sunk is the last faint flickering blaze;
The vision of departed days

Is vanished even as I gaze.

The pictures with their ruddy light
Are changed to dust and ashes white,
And I am left alone with night.