Yet as the secret canker-worm
Preys deeply on its drooping heart, love,
Soon from the flow'ret's with'ring form
Will all that vivid glow depart, love.

Then turn to me those beaming eyes--
A blooming cheek although you see, love,
Since hope is fled, then pleasure dies,
And read the rose's fate in me, love.

* * * * *


OLD WINE.

(_For the Mirror._)


The passion for old wines has sometimes been carried to a very
ridiculous excess, for the "_thick crust_," the "_bee's wing_," and the
several other criterions of the epicure, are but so many proofs of the
decomposition and departure of some of the best qualities of the wine.
Had the man that first filled the celebrated Heidleburg tun been placed
as sentinel, to see that no other wine was put into it, he would have
found it much better at twenty-five or thirty years old, than at one
hundred, had he lived so long, and been permitted now and then to taste
it.

At Bremen there is a wine-cellar, called the Store, where five hogsheads