HENRY R. JACKSON.

[5] Written in the year 1846, in Mexico, the writer being at that time Colonel of the 1st regiment of Georgia Volunteers.

THE RAINY DAY.

The day is cold, and dark, and dreary;
It rains, and the wind is never weary;
The vine still clings to the moldering wall,
But at every gust the dead leaves fall,
  And the day is dark and dreary.

My life is cold, and dark, and dreary;
It rains, and the wind is never weary;
My thoughts still cling to the moldering Past,
But the hopes of youth fall thick in the blast,
  And the days are dark and dreary.

Be still, sad heart! and cease repining;
Behind the clouds is the sun still shining;
Thy fate is the common fate of all,
Into each life some rain must fall,
  Some days must be dark and dreary.

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW.

TIMES GO BY TURNS.

The lopped tree in time may grow again;
Most naked plants renew both fruit and flower;
The sorest wight may find release of pain,
The driest soil suck in some moist’ning shower;
Times go by turns and chances change by course,
From foul to fair, from better hap to worse. 
The sea of Fortune doth not ever flow,
She draws her favors to the lowest ebb;
Her time hath equal times to come and go,
Her loom doth weave the fine and coarsest web;
No joy so great but runneth to an end,
No hap so hard but may in fine amend.

Not always fall of leaf nor ever spring,
No endless night yet not eternal day;
The saddest birds a season find to sing,
The roughest storm a calm may soon allay;
Thus with succeeding turns God tempereth all,
That man may hope to rise yet fear to fall.

A chance may win that by mischance was lost;
The well that holds no great, takes little fish;
In some things all, in all things none are crossed,
Few all they need, but none have all they wish;
Unmeddled joys here to no man befall,
Who least hath some, who most hath never all.

ROBERT SOUTHWELL.

COMPENSATION.

Tears wash away the atoms in the eye
  That smarted for a day;
Rain-clouds that spoiled the splendors of the sky
  The fields with flowers array.

No chamber of pain but has some hidden door
  That promises release;
No solitude so drear but yields its store
  Of thought and inward peace.

No night so wild but brings the constant sun
  With love and power untold;
No time so dark but through its woof there run
  Some blessed threads of gold.

And through the long and storm-tost centuries burn
  In changing calm and strife
The Pharos-lights of truth, where’er we turn,—­
  The unquenched lamps of life.