Page:The Lady's Book Vol. V.pdf/57

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THE GATHERER, & c. 55

BUY MY ROSES.

BY LAURA PERCY.

Buy my roses, ladies, buy,

I pluck'd them fresh this morn; Fear not I offer you to day

A rose without a thorn.

Unlike the flowers so bright and gay, That gem the paths of life; But fade like fairy dreams away, Or vanish into strife.

Unlike the flower that tempts the eye, But when ' tis gathered stings; Its pain remains its beauties fly, Far, far away on wings.

Then buy my roses, ladies buy,

I pluck'd them fresh this morn;

Fear not I offer you to day A rose without a thorn.

Like true and pure fidelity,

These flowers are ever found; They'll raise no tear in beauty's eye, Nor tend'rest bosoms wound: And though the leaves may fade away, As all earth's things depart; Their fragrance ne'er can know decay, But still dwell round the heart. Then buy my roses, ladies, buy,

I pluck'd them fresh this morn;

Fear not I offer you to day A rose without a thorn.



LINES.

BY H. C. DEACON, ESQ.

“We're no dead when we are dust, Master of Logan. "

O, BY the living God! who spreads His own great mindedness around, The purple zenith o'er our heads,

The beauty of the flower robed groundBy all the mighty orbs that lead

Their progress through th ' unfathomed sky, Though earthworms on this flesh shall feed Yet my soul's strength shall never die!

Tell me not that I breathe the breeze That every insect breathes with me, That the wild wind that shakes the trees Is portion of my soul and meThe breath of ages I inhale,

But agitates my dust awhile, Then passeth like an ancient tale, Earth's new born children to beguile! Within the flesh I feel a power

That holds not kindred with this sphere; Born like the Aurelia, for an hour To act its part then disappear: Perish the shell! -for that is clay, The worm must feed the grave be fed, But the freed spirit soars away, Triumphant o'er the charnel'd dead!



THE GATHERER.

“A snapper up of unconsidered trifles. "

SHAKSPEARE.

THE philosopher leaves the fashion of his clothes to the tailor; it is as great a weakness to be out of the fashion as to affect to be in it.

The reason of things lies in a narrow compass, if the mind could at any time be so happy as to light upon it. Most of the writings and discourses of the world are but illustration and rhetoric, which signifies as much as nothing to a mind in pursuit after philosophical truth.

There are few families but what are at one end related to the greatest princes, and at the other to the meanest peasants.

Politeness seems to be a care, by the manner of our words and actions, to make others pleased with us and themselves.

Who has no friend and no enemy, is one of the vulgar; without talents, power or energy.

The finest dressed, the most talkative, and the richest, are not always the most intelligent, though they may be the most worshipped.

What is the world which we ransack, but a stupendous charnel house? Every thing that we deem most lovely, ask its origin Decay? When we rifle nature, and collect wisdom, are we not like the hags of old, culling simples from

the rank grave, and extracting sorceries from the rotting bones of the dead? Every thing around us is fathered by corruption, and into corruption returns at last. Corruption is at once the womb and grave of nature, and the very beauty on which we gaze and hang the clouds and tree, and the swarming waters all are one vast panorama of death! "

Rewards are proportioned to success, not to merit. Success itself is a reward.

Those women who wed for money, are in the likeness of hypocrites; they live in a long prostitution, and have not always the plea of necessity.

A man gets a kind of respectability from the mere fact of having a family. I have hushed my passion when about to retort insolently to another when I thought of his children.

The head of Esop is said to have been large to deformity. The head of Attila the Hun of the Mongolian species is mentioned as being of a preternatural size.

The first balloon was made in Paris, on the 27th day of August, 1783, under the direction of Messrs. Chartes and Blanchard. It was com-