Our home--when will these eyes, now dimm'd with frequent weeping, see The infant's pure and rosy ark, the stripling's sanctuary? When will these throbbing hearts grow calm around its lighted hearth?-- Quench'd is the fire within its walls, and hush'd the voice of mirth!
The haunts--they are forsaken now--where our companions play'd; We see their silken ringlets glow amid the moonlight glade; We hear their voices floating up like pæan songs divine; Their path is o'er the violet-beds beneath the springing vine!
Restore, sweet spirit of our home! our native hearth restore-- Why are our bosoms desolate, our summer rambles o'er? Let thy mild light on us be pour'd--our raptures kindle up, And with a portion of thy bliss illume the household cup.
Yet mourn not, wanderers--onto you a thrilling hope is given, A tabernacle unconfin'd, an endless home in heaven! And though ye are divided now, ye shall be made as one In Eden, beauteous as the skies that o'er your childhood shone!
"Away with your fictions of flimsy romance, Those tissues of falsehood which folly has wove; Give me the mild gleam of the soul breathing glance, And the rapture which dwells in the first _kiss_ of love." BYRON.
There is no national custom so universally and so justly honoured with esteem and respect, "winning golden opinions from all sorts of people," as kissing. Generally speaking, we discover that a usage which finds favour in the eyes of the vulgar, is despised and detested by the educated, the refined, and the proud; but this elegant practice forms a brilliant exception to a rule otherwise tolerably absolute. Kissing possesses infinite claims to our love, claims which no other custom in the wide world can even pretend to advance. Kissing is an endearing, affectionate, ancient, rational, and national mode of displaying the thousand glowing emotions of the soul;--it is traced back by some as far as the termination of the siege of Troy, for say they, "Upon the return of the Grecian warriors, their wives met them, and joined their lips together with joy." There are some, however, who give the honour of having invented kissing to Rouix, or Rowena, the daughter of Hengist, the Saxon; a Dutch historian tells us, she, "pressed the beaker with her lipkens (little lips,) and saluted the amorous Vortigern with a husgin (little kiss,)" and this latter authority we ourselves feel most inclined to rely on; deeply anxious to secure to our fair countrywomen the honour of having invented this delightful art.