I M thinking of the old, bright days,
When we were girls together,
When bloom bedight life's common ways
And Hope made pleasant weather.

Again, within the country school,
I con old Webster's pages;
Anon, Addition's Simple Rule
My earnest thought engages.

Now comes the noon: the school is out —
Two hours for play and pleasure;
With blind-man's buff, ball, ring and rout.
We emphasize our leisure.

The time is up; I hear the call.
To books again returning,
We range around the rough log wall,
And gather scraps of learning.

And so the world goes round, until
The school for night suspended,
I ramble down Mount Pleasant Hill,
Up which at morn I wended.

Just as the sunset's golden sheen
Falls over la belle river,
And crowns the city, like a queen,
In beauty throned forever.

Ah, Martha, in those by-gone days
The world was bright, in seeming,
And gayly down life's morning ways
Our glad young hearts went dreaming.

We scarcely knew the name of care,
Knew less of pain and sorrow;
Love plucked to-day his roses fair,
Hope promised more to-morrow.

But, ah! the Present breaks the charm
With which the Past had bound me,
And finds me living on a farm,
With five grandchildren round me.

They sing and play the same old plays
We sang and played together,
When bloom bedight life's common ways
And Hope made pleasant weather.

Of all our merry schoolmates then,
Some climbed to lofty places,
And some adorned the ways of men
With gentle Christian graces.

But many a one of those gay bands
That laughed and sang in chorus,
With silent lips and folded hands,
Has journeyed on before us.

And she who had us in her care.
Whose word was law and duty
Who sowed, with many a fervent prayer,
The seeds of moral beauty —

Think you her grandly-gifted soul
In endless silence slumbers?
Not so; in life's eternal goal
She sings sublimer numbers.

And, ah! dear school-mate, you and I
Have fewer miles to travel:
Have fewer lions to go by,
And fewer threads to ravel;

Have fewer years, of bright or dark,
Of peace or weary trial,
Until the day that will not mark
Its progress on Life's dial;

Have fewer friends to love and leave,
When Death remits Life's fever,
And fewer hearts to moan and grieve,
When we shall cross the river.