Amo—amare—amavi—amatum.[A]
Dear girls, never marry for knowledge,
(Though that should of course form a part,)
For often the head, in a college,
Gets wise at the cost of the heart.
Let me tell you a fact that is real—
I once had a beau in my youth,
My brightest and best “beau ideal”
Of manliness, goodness, and truth.
O, he talked of the Greeks and the Romans,
Of Normans, and Saxons, and Celts,
And he quoted from Virgil, and Homer,
And Plato, and —— somebody else.
And he told me his deathless affection,
By means of a thousand strange herbs,
With numberless words in connection,
Derived from the roots of Greek verbs.
One night, as a sly innuendo,
When Nature was mantled in snow,
He wrote in the frost on the window,
A sweet word in Latin—“amo.”
O, it needed no words for expression,
For that I had long understood;
But there was his written confession—
Present tense and indicative mood.
But O, how man’s passion will vary!
For scarcely a year had passed by,
When he changed the “amo” to “amare,”
But instead of an “e” was a “y.”
Yes, a Mary had certainly taken
The heart once so fondly my own,
And I, the rejected, forsaken,
Was left to reflection alone.
Since then I’ve a horror of Latin,
And students uncommonly smart;
True love, one should always put that in,
To balance the head by the heart.
To be a fine scholar and linguist
Is much to one’s credit, I know,
But “I love” should be said in plain English,
And not with a Latin “amo.”
THE FATE OF SIR JOHN FRANKLIN.
“In March, of 1854, says the Cleveland Herald, several months before the arrival of Dr. Rae, with his news of the probable death of the brave Sir John Franklin and his faithful comrades, we copied from the Lily of the Valley for 1854, a beautiful poem by Miss Lizzie Doten, in reference to these adventurers. The verses are touching and solemn as the sound of a passing bell, and appear almost prophetic of the news that afterwards came. ‘The Song of the North’ again becomes deeply interesting as connected with the thrilling account brought home by the Fox—the last vessel sent in search of the lost adventurers to the icy North, and the last that will now ever be sent on such an expedition.”—Buffalo Daily Republic.
SONG OF THE NORTH.
“Away, away!” cried the stout Sir John,
“While the blossoms are on the trees,
For the summer is short, and the times speeds on
As we sail for the northern seas.
Ho! gallant Crozier, and brave Fitz James!
We will startle the world, I trow,
When we find a way through the Northern seas
That never was found till now!
A good stout ship is the ‘Erebus,’
As ever unfurled a sail,
And the ‘Terror’ will match with as brave a one
As ever outrode a gale.”