THE WEARIED SOLDIER.


"When silent time, wi' lightly foot,
Had trod o'er thirty years,
I sought again, my native land,
Wi' many hopes and fears."
MRS. HAMILTON.

He came to the village, when the sun
In the "golden west" was bright,
When sounds were dying one by one,
And the vesper star was shining down,
With a soft and silvery light.

A war-worn wanderer was he,
And absent many a year
From the cottage-home he fain would see,
From that resting-place where he would be,
The spot to memory dear.

It rose at last upon his view,
(Old times were thronging round him,)
The lattice where the jasmine grew,
The meadow where he brush'd the dew
When youth's bright hopes were round him.

But faces new, and sadly strange,