New Hampshire Journal Of Agriculture

MISCELLANEOUS SELECTIONS.

THE OFFERING.

FOR THE JOURNAL.

The following lines were addressed to a young Scotch-man (accompanied by a bouquet of trailing arbutus, or May-flowers, the first he had ever seen) the widowed father of a beautiful boy, the young wife and mother having died on the passage to this country.

AUNT CARRIE.

Accept these buds, sad-hearted stranger,
Lone wanderer from Caledonia's glens;
Read in their sweets the voice of kindness,
The sympathy of stranger friends.

The flowers that sprang around thy footsteps
Beyond old Ocean's angry roar,
Are faded, withered, lost and gone—
But here are others sweet and fair.

The hopes and joys of life's bright morning
Lie crushed and bleeding in thy path;
But other joys and loves may blossom
To cheer the riper days of life.

The buds of Spring blush for a morning,
But Summer flowers spring in their stead,
And even Autumn has its blossoms
To shine above the early dead.

May Scotia's son here find a bower
Amid New England's valleys green,
To rear his living human flower,
Torn rudely from its parent stem.

Though like a young, deep-rooted tree
Stripped of the beauteous trusting vine
That clung around each shadowy bough,
Whose heart's deep fibers knit with thine,

Here may thy wounded heart find rest,
And Scotland's God protect thee still,
Till called to yonder land of bliss,
Far, far beyond earth's stormy vale.

The Christian loves the land of Knox,
The martyred Covenanter's home;
The patriot loves the land of Bruce,
Of Wallace, and of Bannockburn.

The poet pants to breathe the air—
Where Burns and Scott enraptured sang—
Or holds his breath, entranced with strains
That flowed from Pollock's youthful tongue.

Where'er proud Scotia's son may roam
O'er young Columbia's fertile land,
May he e'er meet a greeting warm,
To board and hearth, from heart and hand.