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: THE CHANGES OF HOME. If it be life to wear within myself This barrenness of spirit, and to be My own soul's sepulchre. Byron. For hours she sate; and evermore her eye Was busy in the distance, shaping things That made her heart heat quick. Wordsworth. Pine not away for that which cannot be. The Pinnee Op Wakefield. The Vale was beautiful; and, when a child, I felt its sunny peace come warm and mild To my young heart. Within high hills it slept, Which o'er its rest their silent watches kept, And gave it kindly shelter, as it lay Like a fair, happy infant in its play. The dancing leaves, the grain that gently bent In early light, as soft winds o'er it went; The new-fledged, panting bird, in low, short flight, That filled my little bosom with delight, Yet mixed with fear, lest that some unseen harm Should spoil its just-born joy, — all these a charm Threw round my morn of being. Here I stood, Where from its covert in the thick-boughed wood. The slender rill leaped forth, with its small voice, Into the light, as seeming to rejoice That it was free; and then it coursed away, With grass, and reeds, and pebbles holding play. It seemed the Vale of Youth! — of youth untried, Youth in the innocence and all the pride Of its new life delighted; free from fears, And griefs, and burdens, borne on coming years. Such was the Vale. And then within it played Edward, a child, and Jane, a little maid. I see them now no more, where once they stood Beside the brook, or 'neath the sloping wood. The brook flows lonely on, o'er mimic mound No longer made to leap with fairy bound. Then, as they built the little dam and mill, Their tongues went prattling with the prattling rill, As if the babes and stream were playmates three, With cheerful hearts, and singing merrily. The...