CONTENTS.

PAGE
Dedication Verses,[5]
Sentiment and Affection,[9]
Miscellaneous,[27]
Esteem and Confidence,[45]
Birthday Verses,[49]
Humorous,[53]
Christmas and New Year,[57]

DEDICATION VERSES
SUITABLE FOR INSCRIPTION ON TITLE PAGES OF ALBUMS.

Go forth, thou little volume,

Like Noah’s faithful dove,

And bring to darling ----

An olive leaf of love.

My Album’s open! Come and see!

What! Won’t you waste a line on me?

Write but a thought, a word or two,

That Memory may revert to you.

To My Friends:—

My Album is a garden spot

Where all my friends may sow,

Where thorns and thistles flourish not,

But flowers alone may grow.

With smiles for sunshine, tears for showers,

I’ll water, watch and guard these flowers.

Go forth, thou little volume,

I leave thee to thy fate;

To love and friendship truly

Thy leaves I dedicate.

Go, Album! range the gay parterre;

From gem to gem, from flower to flower,

Select with taste and cull with care,

And bring your offering, fresh and rare,

To this sweet maiden’s bower!

When years elapse,

It may, perhaps,

Delight us to review these scraps,

And live again ’mid scenes so gay,

That Time’s rough hand has swept away;

For when the eye, bedimmed with age,

Shall rest upon each treasured page,

Those pleasant hours

That once were ours

Shall come again, like Autumn flowers,

To bloom and smile upon us here

When all things else seem sad and drear;

’Twill tune our hearts and make them sing,

And turn our Autumn into Spring!

Go, little book, thy destined course pursue,

Collect memorials of the just and true,

And beg of every friend so near

Some token of remembrance dear.

As life flows on from day to day,

And this, your book, soon fills,

How many may be far away

From treasured vales and hills?

But there is joy in future time

To turn the pages o’er,

And see within a name or rhyme

From one you’ll see no more.

Life is a volume,

From youth to old age,

Each year forms a chapter,

Each day is a page.

May none be more charming,

More womanly (manly) true,

Than that, pure and noble,

Sketched yearly by you.

Many kind wishes will be written here,

And none more sincere than mine.

But----

Words are lighter than the cloud-foam

Of the restless ocean’s spray;

Vainer than the trembling shadow

That the next hour steals away.

By the fall of summer raindrops

Is the air as deeply stirred,

And the roseleaf that we tread on

Will outlive a word.

We may write our names in Albums;

We may trace them in the sand;

We may chisel them in marble,

With a firm and skillful hand;

But the pages soon are sullied,

Soon each name will fade away;

Every monument will crumble,

Like all earthy hopes, decay.

But, dear friend, there is an Album,

Full of leaves of snowy white,

Where no name is ever tarnished,

But forever pure and bright.

In that Book of Life, God’s Album,

May your name be penned with care

And may all who here may write,

Have their names forever there.