MY GUIDING STAR
Adrift alone on life's bleak ocean waste,
Through starless nights and dreary sunless days;
Wherever currents led o'er pathless maze,
I plied the oars of aimless toil, and faced
Defeat impatiently, nor ever traced
One ray of hope along the murky haze
Of life's horizon, till I caught the blaze
Of one lone star, whose light was virgin-chaste.
But now I sail through seas where fortune smiles,
And not a cloud the brilliant sky doth mar;
For, ever twinkling near that blazing light,
A little orb my every care beguiles:
My radiant wife is that lone guiding star,
My laughing blue-eyed boy its satellite!
AFTER READING
SAMUEL MINTURN PECK'S
RHYMES AND ROSES
The drowsy drone of honey-laden bees,
The poppied breath of gardens blooming fair,
The scent of elder blossoms, sweet and rare,
Come stealing in on balmy southern breeze;
And dying lays, whose long lost melodies
Still haunt old storied ruins everywhere,
Are dimly floating through the fragrant air—
I dream beneath the blooming apple trees:
A merry orchestra of nymphs and fays
Has gathered in the pine-tree's elfin shade,
With naiad shell and fairy reed and string,
While Minturn Peck the magic baton sways.
And when the band his "Rhymes and Roses," played,
The dryads' voices made the woodlands ring!