“Molly, put the kettle on,
  We’ll all have tea,”—­

and thinking of a well-spread board, a simmering urn, a sweet wife, and rosy-cheeked children, waiting his coming.  Grave father of a family!  Your heart has grown cold and hard, if you have ceased to enjoy such scenes.  Young husband! cannot you remember the first time you hoped with good reason, when, as you took leave after an afternoon call, a pair of witching eyes looked into yours, and a sweet voice sounded sweeter, as it timidly asked, “Won’t you stay—­and take a cup of tea?”

THE OLD BURYING-GROUND.

  Our vales are sweet with fern and rose,
    Our hills are maple-crowned;
  But not from them our fathers chose
    The village burying-ground.

  The dreariest spot in all the land
    To Death they set apart;
  With scanty grace from Nature’s hand,
    And none from that of Art.

  A winding wall of mossy stone,
    Frost-flung and broken, lines
  A lonesome acre thinly grown
    With grass and wandering vines.

  Without the wall a birch-tree shows
    Its drooped and tasselled head;
  Within, a stag-horned sumach grows,
    Fern-leafed with spikes of red.

  There, sheep that graze the neighboring plain
    Like white ghosts come and go,
  The farm-horse drags his fetlock chain,
    The cow-bell tinkles slow.

  Low moans the river from its bed,
    The distant pines reply;
  Like mourners shrinking from the dead,
    They stand apart and sigh.

  Unshaded smites the summer sun,
    Unchecked the winter blast;
  The school-girl learns the place to shun,
    With glances backward cast.

  For thus our fathers testified—­
    That he might read who ran—­
  The emptiness of human pride,
    The nothingness of man.

  They dared not plant the grave with flowers,
    Nor dress the funeral sod,
  Where, with a love as deep as ours,
    They left their dead with God.

  The hard and thorny path they kept,
    From beauty turned aside;
  Nor missed they over those who slept
    The grace to life denied.

  Yet still the wilding flowers would blow,
    The golden leaves would fall,
  The seasons come, the seasons go. 
    And God be good to all.

  Above the graves the blackberry hung
    In bloom and green its wreath,
  And harebells swung as if they rung
    The chimes of peace beneath.

  The beauty Nature loves to share,
    The gifts she hath for all,
  The common light, the common air,
    O’ercrept the graveyard’s wall.

  It knew the glow of eventide,
    The sunrise and the noon,
  And glorified and sanctified
    It slept beneath the moon.

  With flowers or snow-flakes for its sod,
    Around the seasons ran,
  And evermore the love of God
    Rebuked the fear of man.