EARLY REMINISCENCES,

AWAKENED BY A CHRISTMAS VISIT.

Lo! Christmas now again

Dissolves the fleeting year,

As mirthfully as when

That word fell on my ear,

In consonance with hope and joy,
While yet a little thoughtless boy.

The mistletoe retains

Its customary seat;

Fresh holly decks the panes

Throughout the village street;

And lads, with laughter-loving eyes,

Attempt to kiss the fairest prize.

The shining metal pot

With frumenty is stored;

And apples smoking hot

Come bouncing to the board,

For children of the best report

To plunge into their milk for sport.

The fattened pigs are killed

These parties to regale;

And rustic hands are filled

With cups of foaming ale:

Mince-pies adorn the neatest tray, And welcome us with smiles to-day.

We all, of high and low degree,

Together join in dance and glee.

The rudely sounded horn

Now echoes in the dark;

And heavy mastiffs warn

Aggressors in their bark:

The cricket, lost in pure amaze,

Sits chirping to the evening blaze.

And so the joyous theme,

In which I played my part

Through boyhood's waking dream,

Still finds a gladsome heart,

Where changing seasons in their roll,

Leave uncorrupt the youthful soul.

SONNET.

INSPIRATION.

WHY, in this age of reason, should it seem
That Inspiration, which no art can feign,
Is less vouchsafed us by the Great Supreme
Than in the recognised prophetic reign;
When, even through the visions of a dream,
The mind discovers a perspective train
Of living sequence, that becomes the theme
Of future gratulation or of pain.

While calm abstraction, in the silent hour
Of conscious being, quickens and endues
With secret faculties a bird or flower,

And beautifies it with appropriate hues ; Or peoples with new life a planet, hurled Thence into space before a startled world!

THE FAIRY QUEEN'S INVITATION OF HER ELFIN TRIBE TO

THE FESTIVITIES OF CHRISTMAS EVE.

YE spirits of air!

That encircle the fair,

Come, come to the fanciful bower;

And bring each to the scene

Some invisible green,

Or the soul of a sensitive flower!

Come arrayed in the light

Of the heaven-born night

That illumined our interview last:

And the pleasure shall teem

In a lovelier stream

Than it has on the revelries past.