“If every one’s internal care

Were written on his brow

How many would our pity share

That raise our envy now?

                                   E.—

“Happiness does not consist in enlarging our possessions

but in contracting our wishes”

“Who would abroad in quest of pleasure roam

That taste the pleasures of a happy home?

                                     Elizabeth T.—

                                           Song

“Alas for me! a cloud has hung

O’er all my early days

And if perchance a light has flung

Across my path its rays,

I’ve wished that it had never been—

For like a flame at midnight seen,

I have not found when it hath past,

A deeper darkness round me cast,

Alas for me!  False hearts I’ve found

Where I had deemed them true;

And stricken hopes lie all around

Where  e’er I turn my view.

There have been some that I have lov’d

And whose returning love I’ve prov’d

Far above sounding words;—but they

Are dead and gone and pass’d away.

Alas for me!  I cannot think

Of happy moments fled

Or sigh to look o’er that dread brink

Where sleeps the countless dead

My joys have been by sorrow crush’d

My heart’s best sounds have all been hush’d

Its strings are strain’d and so my grave

Will welcome be-- in earth or wave.

Alas for me! ‘tis pity, too,

As youth is still my own

Then I should think as now I do

And know what I have known

But still I to this earth must cling

While brooks and trees and blossoms spring;

And while the sky, the rocks and sea,

Are such sweet silent friends to me.”

Montville Chesterfield Society, March 3^rd 1828

 Augustin Chester

“Come memory, come let me ponder awhile

 Though the dream be too blissful to last

For oh! ‘tis so sweet a lone hour to beguile,

To brighten the wreath of one’s woes with a smile

Newly cull’d from the joys that are past.

And still in life’s wane e’er my care-stricken heart

Shall return to its long home at last

Will memory ever its pleasures impart—

By pointing as Time’s rapid moments depart

To the joys of the days that are past”

                                                    Mary [signature in pencil]

When years have rolled o’er thee,

And summers have fled;

And this comes before thee,

Like one from the dead:

When these scenes and these days

Shall be lost and afar

Let them live in the flame

Of bright memory’s star

Then when friends long departed,

Before thee appear

And the gay and warm-hearted

In fancy are near;

When all fond things together

Remembrance shall bring

For me let one feather

Be plucked from her wing

                                    Elisabeth S. G

New London, August 31, 1828

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