THE SWING.

Southland Times, Issue 1653, 25 October 1872, Page 3

THE SWING.

•■ . » Ifc stand*, no beauty on the lawn, Though beautiful to me, The rugged, crooked, gnarled, stunted, Blossoming apple tree. I love fco ace it rioh with bloo-ns, Or white with feathery snow, Ripening thoughti as well as apples, Out of the Long-Ago. Twelve summers up the stream of Time — It soems but yesterday — I made a awing from its sturdiest bough, In a morn of morry May, And from it swung my love, my Hfe, In the flush of her sunny youth, And I wooed her •hyly, won her braTely, With all her lore and truth. And now I swing another as fair, She* nine years old or ten, She laughs, and sings, and shouts, " Papa, Swing mo again ! again !" And I swing her a^ain and kiss her, " Don't kick at the stars," I c/y, And 6he crackles with laughter, and says " 1 will, If you'll swing me up as high." Gnarly, crooked, rugged, stunted, Blossoming applo bough ! I do not know in the wide, wide world, Another as fair as thou ! Three loves, three lives, three spirits of Hope, Amid thy leaves are hi iden ; And thy fruit is a fruit of Paradise, Pleasant, and unfor bidden. — All the Year Bound.

I War.— France, during the five centuries preceding the past — that is from * 1300 to the year 1800— was engaged in 32ii years of war, of which eighty years were spent in civil war, and 246 $ years in foreign war. Duriu£ thai; period 104 great battles were fought. The record of these five centuries shows that in the fourteenth century there wore forty-three years of war, or five of civil War, and thirty-eight years of foreign war; in the fifteenth century there were seventy-one years of war, or eighteen years of civil war, and fifty- three years of foreign war ; iv tho sixteenth century there were eighty. five years of war, or thirty-three' years of civil war, and fifty-two years of foreign war ; in the seventeenth century there were sixty-nine years of war, or seventeen of civil war, and fifty-two of foreign war ; and in the eighteenth, century there were fifty-eight years of war, or seven of civil war, and: fifty-one, of foreign war. • • ; ' \.