Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 71, No. 436, February 1852

Announced an unexpected fall.
The Cabinet was rent in twain!
The wood was broken into splinters,
As though for many hundred winters
It had been dashed by wind and rain.
Golden no more, the jars of clay
Were dull and cracked, and dingy grey.
Down fell a beam of rotten oak;
The chair beneath the Archon broke;
And all the furniture around
Appeared at once to be unsound.

Now have I nothing more to say!
Of Cupid's entrance all beware:
But if you chance to have him there,
'Tis always wise to let him stay.
And, ladies, do not sneer at me,
Or count my words without avail;
For in a little time you'll see
There is a moral to my tale.
What has been done in days of yore
May well again be acted o'er,
And other things have been upset
By Cupid, than a Cabinet!

THE OLD SOLDIER. – IN THREE CAMPAIGNS

BY THOMAS AIRD

CAMPAIGN THE FIRST

"Glory of War, my heart beat time to thee,
In my young day; but there – behold the end!"
The Old Soldier said: 'twas by his evening fire —
Winter the time: so saving, out he jerked
His wooden leg before him. With a look
Half comic, half pathetic, his grey head
Turned down askance, the pigtail out behind
Stiff with attention, saying nothing more,
He sat and eyed the horizontal peg.
Back home the stump he drew not, till with force
Disdainful deep into the slumbering fire
He struck the feruled toe, and poking roused
A cheery blaze, to light him at his work.
The unfinished skep is now upon his knee,
For June top-swarmers in his garden trim:
With twists of straw, and willow wattling thongs,
Crooning, he wrought. The ruddy flickering fire
Played on his eye-brow shag, and thin fresh cheek,
Touching his varying eye with many a gleam.
His cot behind, soldierly clean and neat,
Gave back the light from many a burnished point.
His simple supper o'er, he reads The Book;
Then loads and mounts his pipe, puffing it slow,
Musing on days of yore, and battles old,
And many a friend and comrade dead and gone,
And vital ones, boughs of himself, cut off
From his dispeopled side, naked and bare.
Puffs short and hurried, puff on puff, betray
His swelling heart: up starts the Man, to keep
The Woman down: forth from his door he eyes
The frosty heaven – the moon and all the stars.

"Peace be with hearts that watch!" thus, heaven forgot,
And all its hosts, true to the veins of blood,
Thoughtful his spirit runs: – "'Tis now the hour
When the lone matron, from her cottage door,
Looks for her spouse into the moonlit ways;
But hears no foot abroad in all the night.
Then turns she in: the tale of murder done,
In former days, by the blue forest's edge,
Which way he must return – why tarries he? —
Comes o'er her mind; up starting quick, she goes
To be assured that she has barred her door;
Then sits anew. Her little lamp of oil
Is all burnt out; the wasting embers whiten;
And the cat winks before the drowsy fire.
What sound was that? 'Tis but her own heart beating.
Up rises she again; her little ones
Are all asleep, she'll go and waken them,
And hear their voices in the eerie night;
But yet she pauses, loth to break their rest.
God send the husband and the father home!

"No one looks out for me in all this world,
No one have I to look for! Ah poor me!
Well, well!" he murmurs meek. Turning, he locks
His lonely door, and stumps away to bed.

CAMPAIGN THE SECOND

How fresh the morning meadow of the spring,
Pearl-seeded with the dew: adown its path,
Bored by the worms of night, the Old Soldier takes
His wonted walk, and drinks into his heart
The gush and gurgle of the cold green stream.
The huddled splendour of the April noon;
Glancings of rain; the mountain-tops all quick
With shadowy touches and with greening gleams;
Blue bent the Bow of God; the coloured clouds,