BY MRS. C. H. W. ESLING.
———
How swiftly do old memories float about our riper hours!
They’re like the fragrant breath that fills the vase of perish’d flowers;
They bear an unextinguish’d ray, a light that never dies,
A borrow’d radiance gilding earth with lustre from the skies.
The joys that gather round us now, with all their rainbow beams,
Are bright, but evanescent, as the shadows in our dreams;
They pass before us like the leaves swept by the autumn’s blast,
Alas! too fragile for the earth—too beautiful to last.