One word, ere yet the evening ends:
Let's close it with a parting rhyme,
And pledge a hand to all young friends,
As fits the merry Christmas time;
On life's wide scene you, too, have parts,
That fate ere long shall bid you play;
Good-night! with honest gentle hearts 15
A kindly greeting go alway!
Good-night! I'd say the griefs, the joys,
Just hinted in this mimic page,
The triumphs and defeats of boys,
Are but repeated in our age;
I'd say your woes were not less keen,
Your hopes more vain, than those of men,
Your pangs or pleasures of fifteen
At forty-five played o'er again.
With grizzled beards at forty-five,
As erst at twelve in corduroys,
And if, in time of sacred youth,
We learned at home to love and pray, 35 Pray heaven that early love and truth May never wholly pass away.
And in the world, as in the school,
Or hunger hopeless at the gate.
Who bade the mud from Dives' wheel
To spurn the rags of Lazarus?
Come, brother, in that dust we'll kneel, 55
Confessing heaven that ruled it thus.
So each shall mourn, in life's advance,
Dear hopes, dear friends, untimely killed,
Shall grieve for many a forfeit chance,
And longing passion unfulfilled.
Amen! whatever fate be sent,
Pray God the heart may kindly glow,
Although the head with cares be bent,
And whitened with the winter snow.
Come wealth or want, come good or ill,
Let young and old accept their part,
And bow before the awful will,
And bear it with an honest heart.
Who misses or who wins the prize
Go, lose or conquer as you can;
But if you fail, or if you rise,
Be each, pray God, a gentleman.
A gentleman, or old or young!
And peace on earth to gentle men!
Rome is fallen, I hear, the gallant Medici taken,
Noble Manara slain, and Garibaldi has lost
To say we truly feel the pain,
And quite are sinking with the strain;
Entirely, simply, undeceived,
Believe, and say we ne'er believed
The object, e'en were it achieved,
A thing we e'er had cared to keep;
With heart and soul to hold it cheap,
And then to go and try it again;
O false, unwise, absurd, and vain!
O, 't is not joy, and 't is not bliss,
Only it is precisely this
That keeps us still alive.
Her rounded form was lean,
And her silk was bombazine;
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