As home his footsteps he hath turned, SIR W. SCOTT. THE GARDEN. A SENSITIVE plant in a garden grew, The snow-drop, and then the violet, Arose from the ground with warm rain wet, And their breath was mixed with fresh odour, sent From the turf, like the voice and the instrument. Then the pied wind-flowers, and the tulip tall, And narcissi, the fairest of them all, Who gaze on their eyes, in the stream's recess, Till they die of their own dear loveliness. And the hayacinth, purple, white, and blue, And the jessamine faint, and the sweet tuberose, SHELLEY. STANZAS ON FREEDOM. MEN! whose boast it is that ye If there breathe on earth a slave, If ye do not feel the chain When it works a brother's pain; Woman! who shall one day bear Deeds to make the roused blood rush For your sisters now in chains; Mothers of the brave and free? Is true freedom but to break They are slaves who fear to speak They are slaves who will not choose Rather than in silence shrink From the truth they needs must think. In the right with two or three! LOWELL. LUTHER'S HYMN. COMMIT thou all thy griefs To His sure truth and tender care, Put thou thy trust in God, Fix on His word thy stedfast eye, Give to the winds thy fears, Hope, and be undismay'd; God hears thy sighs, and counts thy tears, God shall lift up thy head. Through waves, and clouds, and storms, Wait thou his time-thy darkest night EVENING PRAYER AT A GIRLS' SCHOOL. HUSH! 'tis a holy hour-the quiet room Seems like a temple, while yon soft lamp sheds A faint and starry radiance through the gloom, And the sweet stillness, down on bright young heads, [care, With all their clustering locks, untouched by And bowed, as flowers are bowed with night, in prayer. Gaze on, 'tis lovely!-childhood's lip and cheek, Mantling beneath its earnest boon of thought, Gaze-yet what seest thou in those fair and [wrought? meek, And fragile things, as but for sunshine Thou seest what grief must nurture for the sky, What death must fashion for eternity! |