Illustrations of the Atlantic souvenir Author:Denham Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: There, through the long, long summer hours, The golden light should lie, And thick young herbs, and groups of flowers Stand in their beauty by; The oriole... more » should build, and tell His love-tale, close beside my cells The idle butterfly Should rest him there, and there be heard The housewife bee and humming bird. And what if cheerful shouts, at noon, Come from the village sent, Or songs of maids beneath the moon, With fairy laughter blent; And what if, in the evening light, Betrothed lovers walk in sight, Of my low monument— I would the lovely scene around, Might know no sadder sight nor sound. I know, I know I should not see The season's glorious show, Nor would its brightness shine for me, Nor its wild music flow; But if around my place of sleep, The friends I loved should come to weep, They might not haste to go;— Soft airs, and song, and light, and bloom, Should keep them lingering by my tomb. These, to their softened hearts, should bear The thought of what has been, And speak of one who cannot share The gladness of the scene; Whose part in all the pomp that fills The circuit of the summer hills, Is that his grave is green; And deeply would their hearts rejoic To hear, again, his living voice. HEAD AND TAIL. Tor years, beside his native lake, There dwelt an old amphibious snake; This word imports, you'll understand, A snake for water and for land. He swam the lake and crept the green, And, once a year, he chang'd his skin. And this, though very strange to you, Is what all serpents yearly do; With not more trouble, I suppose, Than modern ladies change their clothes. The skin, for nature so provides, Grows loose, and out the serpent slides; But underneath there is a new one, Of course he goes, sometime, with tw...« less