The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866, page 19 by Various Authors
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ws of Life we strayed together, Watching the waving harvests grow; And under the benison of the Father Our hearts, like the lambs, skipped to and fro. And the cowslips, hearing our low replies, Broidered fairer the emerald banks, And glad tears shone in the daisies' eyes, And the timid violet glistened thanks.
Who was with us, and what was round us, Neither myself nor my darling guessed; Only we knew that something crowned us Out from the heavens with crowns of rest; Only we knew that something bright Lingered lovingly where we stood, Clothed with the incandescent light Of something higher than humanhood.
O the riches Love doth inherit! Ah, the alchemy which doth change Dross of body and dregs of spirit Into sanctities rare and strange! My flesh is feeble and dry and old, My darling's beautiful hair is gray; But our elixir and precious gold Laugh at the footsteps of decay.
Harms of the world have come unto us, Cups of sorrow we yet shall drain; But we have a secret which cloth show us Wonderful rainbows in the rain. And we hear the tread of the years move by, And the sun is setting behind the hills; But my darling does not fear to die, And I am happy in what God wills.
So we sit by our household fires together, Dreaming the dreams of long ago: Then it was balmy summer weather, And now the valleys are laid in snow. Icicles hang from the slippery eaves; The wind blows cold,--'tis growing late; Well, well! we have garnered all our sheaves, I and my darling, and we wait.
A RAMBLE THROUGH THE MARKET.
As a man puts on the stoutness and thicksetness of middle life, he begins to find himself contemplating well-filled meat and fish stalls, and piles of lusty garden vegetables, with unfeigned interest and delight. He walks through Quincy Market, for instance, with far more pleasure than through the dewy and moonlit groves which were the scenes of his youthful wooings. Then he was all sentiment and poetry. Now he finds the gratification of the mouth and stomach a chief s