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OLD WINTER IS COMING,

Old Winter is coming, old Winter se drear,

Hie heralds, uaweleome, proclaim, he is near;

‘There's &@ wailon the blast, there are voices that say,

The epirit of Summer is passing away.”

Fwart svening. the balm of thy breezes is o’er,

ind bleak is the blast on mountain and shore;

‘There's shadow and gloom in tke depths of the dell,

and the trees of the forest are moaning fare- well.

Oid Winter is coming, ence more to rejoiee

da his robings ef anow, and his trappings of ice—

‘The rudest of despots, who bends to his sway

Sweet sister of Summer, the beautiful day.

Dear evening, with thee no more o# the green,

ig jovanoe of sport, are the villagers seen ;

Aad the wusic of childheod, in gambole ne mors,

ds borne on the breeze from the cottager’s door.

All eilent and chill, nota bird on the bough

Ye heard forth to warble his veeper hyinn now ;

Bot aerzw fromthe rook, ashe wingeth his flight

O’er meads where are creeping the shadows © night.

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Old Wiater i coming, old Winter so drear, His heralds, uawelcome, proclaim he is near ; There's a wail ou the blast, there are voices

that say The spirit of Summer is paseing away.”

OES OR Oe NOTE

The Lady’s Choice.

RY MARS. EMMA C. EMEURY.

“In terms of choice I am not solely lad By nice direction ef a maiden’s eyes.”’

Merchant of Venice.

“T want to ask you a question, Mildred, but] am afraid you will deem it an im- pertinent one.”

“ Ask me what you please, dear Emily, und be assured that you shall receive a frank reply; we have known and loved each other too long to doubt that affection aad not mere idle curiosity prompts our mutual! inguiries respecting each other's welfare during our separation.”

“When I bade farewell to my native fend, Mildred, I left you surrounded by @ wide circle of admirere; you were beautiful and rich,—thesze gifta alone would heave won you many a suitor,—but you were possessed of the noblest qua- lities of the heart and mind, and were as worthy to be loved es to be admired. How has it happened then that from among the many who sought your hand, you selected one so—so—”

*} underetand vou, Emily, so misshap- enand ugly, you would say; it is pre- cisely because | possessed a little more heart and sou] than usually belongs to fashionable belle.”

“ What do you mean Mildred? when [ parted from you I thought you were rnore than ha!f in love with the handsome Frank Harcourt.”

“ And vou return to find me married to his crooked cousin.”

“I did not know Mr, Heyward was related to your quandam admirer,”

“ Ah, {eee I must tell the whole story: ‘ wooed an’ married an’ a’’ is not enough for you; i must relate all the particulars which led to sueh an apparently whimsi- cal choice.”

“ You remember me doubtless as the enfant gatee of socicty; the spoiled child

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AND SEMI-WEEKLY

of doating parents, and the flattered vo- tary of fashion. My web of life unbro- ken by a single sombre thread, seemed woven only of rose-colour and gold. My mirror taught me that the world spoke trath, when it assigned to me the brightest of ai] womanly gift ; experience showed me my superiority in mind over the well dressed dolis of society : and the earnest- ness of my affection for the friends of my youth convinced me that many stronger and deeper emotions atill lay latent within my heart. Yet with all these gifts, Emi- ly, I narrowly escaped the fate of 2 fash- ionable flirt. I could not complain, like Voltaire, that ‘the world was stifling me with roses,’ but I might have truly said, that the incense offered at the shrine of my vanity was fast defacing, with its fragrant smoke, the fine gold that adorn- ed the idol. Selfishness is a weed which flourishes far more Juxuriantly beneath the sunshine of prosperity than under the weeping skies of adversity; for, while sorrow imparts a fellow-feeling with all who suffer, happiness too often engenders habits of indulgence, utterly incompatible with sympathy and _ disinterestedness, Wherever I turned I was met by pleasant looks and honied words, everybody seem- ed to consider me with favour, and I was in great danger of believing that the world was all sincerity and Miss Mildred all perfection. ‘The idea that I shone in the reflected glitter of my father’s gold never occurred tome. Too much ae- customed to the applianees of wealth to bestew a thought upon them ; entirely ignorant of the want and consequently of the value of money, I could not sup- pose that other people prized what to me was a matter of such perfect indifference, or that the weight of my purse gave me any undue preponderance in the scale of society. Proud, haughty, and self- willed aa | have been, yet my conscience acquits me of ever having valued myself upon the adventitious advantages of wealth Had [ been born in a hovel I still should have been proud :—proud of the capabilities of my own character,— proud because I understood and appreci- ated the dignity of human nature,—but I should have despised myself if, from the slippery eminence of fortune, } could have looked with eontempt upon my fel- low beings.

“ But I was spoiled, Emily, completely spoiled. There was so much temptation around m@,—se much opportunity for exaction and despotism that my mora] strength was not sufficient to resist the impulses of wrong. With my head full of romantic whims, and my heart thril- ling with vague dreams of devoted love and life-long constancy ; a brain teeming with images of paladin and troubadour, and a bosom throbbing with vain lJong- ings for the untasted joy of reciprocal affection,—I yet condescended to play the part of a consummate coquette. But, no; if by coquetry be meant a deliberate system of inachinations to entrap hearts which become worthless as soon as gain- ed, then J never was a coquette; but | certainly must plead guilty to the charge of thoughtless, aimless, mischievous flirt- tation. Ifthe Court of Love still existed, —that court, which, as you know, was instituted in the latter days of chivalry, and cowposed of an equal number of knights and dames, whose duty it was to try criminals accused of offences against the laws of Love; if sueh a tnbuna! still existed, I think it might render a verdict of wilful murder against a coquelle, while only manslaughter could be jaid to the charge of the flirt. The result of both cases is equally fata], but the latter crime is less in degree because it involves no malice prepense. Do not misunderstand me, Kroily, £ do not mean to exculpate

2) Bren

the lesser criminal; forif the one de- serves capital punishinent, the other cer- tainly merits imprisonment for life, and, next to the slanderer, I look upon the coquette and habitual flirt as the most dangerous characters in society. Yet | believe that many a woman is impercep- tibly led to the very verge of flirtation by a natura] and even praiseworthy desire to please. ‘The fear of giving pain when we suspect we possess the power, often gives softness to a woman’s voice and sweetness to her manner, which, to the heart of a lover, may beara gentler in- terpretation. Among the chief of our minor duties may be ranked that of mak- ing ourselves agreeable; and who does not know the difficulty of walking be- tween two lines without crossing either ? You think 1am saying all this in excu)- pation of my past folly, and perhaps you are right.”

‘“‘] was just nineteen, and in the ful] enjoyment of my triumphs in society, when I officiated as your bridesmaid. 1 must confess, Emily, that the marriage of such a pretty, delicate creature, as you then were, with a man full twice you age, in whose dark whiskers glisten- ed more than one silver thread, and on whom time had already bestowed a most visible crown, seemed to me one of the marvels of affection for which I could not then account.”

“ Now yeu are taking your revenge, Mildred, for my saucy question respect- ing your husband ; but if you can give as good a reason for your choice as I found for mine, I shall be perfectly satisfied.”

“Let me gratify my merry malice, ladye fair; time has shown some liitle conside- ration for you in thie matter, for, while he has left ne deeper impress on your husband’s brow, he has expanded the slender gir) into the blooming, matronly- looking woman. You are now well matched, Emily, and your husband is one of the handsomest men of—his age.”

(To be continued.)

Poetry in the Bye-Ways,

Every book-huater, whose conneetion with paper and print has more of individ- uality than of fashion in it—must in his time have met with scores of smal) volumes of rhyme forced out with a care and pains of which the heart aches to think, prefaced with the bad taste of im- moderate depreeation on the part of the author,—or with the worse appeal of ex- travagant commendation on the part of the patron—none of which shal] merit a place on the shelf by the side of Crabbe, or Wordsworth, or Burns-——none of which can be denied the possession of some sparks and breathings of true poetry.

Sometimes, however, it must be owned, that the difficulties under which the rhymester has Jabored, are the best—ney the sole—evidences of his genius. In the verses of Philis Wheatly, the negro girl, for instance, there is not a line that is not the stalest of the stale—not an image that is not the most second-hand of the second-hand. Yet, that sixty years since, a woman of her rank and colour and oppressed race—in America, too, should find spirits to sing. and power to attract an audience,—in that fact was a poem of no common order.

Yeurs ago, there passed through the writer's hand a small ‘collection of verse —if verse it might be called—in quality the most dreary and antipathetic possible —sectarian hymns, full of phrases, the intimate sense of which can never have pierced tothe mind of their maker. This was a poor Creature in a hospital, who had been found on a harsh January night,

xaminer,

INTELLIGENCER.

‘UK LIBERTY WHEN PREL-BORN MEN—HAVING 'TO ADVISE THE PUBLIC-~MAY SPEAK FREE.” Ru

CHARLOTTETOWN, NOVEMBER 23. 1850.

—Mitton’s Euripipgs.

No. 84 <TD frozen into the kennel where she had fallen, and who paid for that night’a ‘odging with a lingering death of cruelly long duration. Her vital powers gradu- ally retired one by one. For many years she was unable to move a limb ; latterly could scarcely speak audibly, or take barely sufficient food to keep life in the half-dead body. But these dismal hymns were her receipt for oecupation and cheerfulness. ‘When I cannot sleep,’ she would say, in a dialect of her own peculiar pattern, ‘I mew.” There was poetry in the origin of these ‘ mewings,? though none in the dark and narrow stanzas themselves,

From the above illustrations it may be gathered that much of the bye-way poetry with which we shall deal has never been promoted to the honors and heartaches of paper and print, nor even taken the manuscript forms of ‘longs and shorts’ as decidedly as did the imaginative in- stincts ef Black Phillis, or the long-tried patience of tle sufferer in the Ward. We may, and shall, have to do with authorship in humble life, but less, per- chance, than those wj}l expect, who have considered our subject merely from the outside of the bookseller’s window, or from the sum total of a rhymester’s sub- scription list—drawing thence the charm- ing inference that A. B. or C. is a poet, because he has found a publisher and extorted a public! Teo seldom hasa Capel Lofft, or a Southey, or af More, while trying to bring forward a Bloom- field, or a Mary Colling, or an ungrateful Bristo: Milkwoman, whose facility in versifying has arrested them,--sonsi¢ered how wide isthe distance betwixt what may be called the unconscious Poetry of the Peop!e—and that meagre and second hend manufacture, produced with a desire for fare, or under hopes of gain, which challenges corepetition with the efforts of men more favorably circumstance, and which goes forth as virtually as @ solicitation for alms. On the one side (to take the first instance which occurs) we shall find something like the Gondo- lier songs of Venice, patched unp—St. Mark and the Moon know how !—ont of bits of plays and bits of verses and bits of opera-tunes, by old men and girle and boys, while a sprightly people ply their picturesque trade onder an Italian sky, with every image round them to inspire and encourage a sense of tune,—and which, after a while, get so rubbed into shape—so rounded and changed,—so decked with canal-wit, so filled with Jocal names and local words,—that a College of Anatomists should be puzzied to ‘resolve them into their primary ele- ments. Qn the other side, we may cite as anexample any of the myriad verses anxiously strung together by the hectic and over-wrought operative, by the light of his candle, whose very burning would be reprehensible as an extravagance. could not the ware fabricated at midnight find an immediate market. The firat is an utterance—the second a manufecture. The first speaks with the breath of a peculiar life, and wears the colour of a peculiar scenery—the second is an exer- cise produced under circumstances, which however stimulating to enetgy, are bot discouraging to Fancy. Wemay betold, it is true, that many of our dearest ‘household words’ have been wrung from our greatest men, by the preseure of the crueilest exigency. One poet to pay for his mother’s funeral], must needs write a * Rasselas’—another, under con- straint Jess instan}, but perhaps not jese harrassing, shal] gladden England for ever, by calling up Olivia and Sophia in the hayfield, and Farmer !amborough's Christmas party, and the Vicar siyly making an end of ‘the wash for the face

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