Page 253 - The model orator, or, Young folks' speaker : containing the choicest recitations and readings from the best authors for schools, public entertainments, social gatherings, Sunday schools, etc. : including recitals in prose and verse ...

While her candle, gleaming wide9
O ’er the restless, rolling tide,
Guides with steady, changeless ray,
The lone fisher up the bay— •
Hilda spins beside the sea,
Through the night.

Fifty years of patient spinning
By the sea 1
Old and worn, she sleeps to-day,7
While the sunshine gilds the bay ;
But her candle shining clear
Every night of all the year,
Still is telling3 of her spinning
By the sea !

THE OLD SCHOOL CLOCK.

[Joi.li floyle O'Reilly’s first poem was wmteti in 1S66 while a prisoner in arbor
Hill prison, Dublin, and lay hidden several years in the register of his cti's. Ait.
Vere Foster, e* philanthropist, discovered it ou one of his visits to the prison,
and published it tn one of a scries of copybook*, owned by him anrl adopted by
the National Board of "Education in Ireland. When the board learned who the
author was and where the poem had been written, the entire edition of boots
containing it was suppressed. The board vtas unwilling to sanction U production
Iroiti a political ofFender vviio hadbeett imprisoned.]
LD memories rush o’er my mind just now,
O O f faces and friends of the past;

O f that happy time when life’s dream was all bright*
Ere the clear sky of youth was o'crcast
Very dear arc those memories; they’ve clung round my heart
And bravelv withstood Time’s rude shock ; 1
t'
But not one is more hallowed or dear to me now,
Than the lace of the old school clock.

i was a quaint old clock, with a quaint old face,
And great iron weights and chains ;