As home his footsteps he hath turned,
From wandering on a foreign strand ?
If such there breathe, go, mark him well,
For him no minstrel raptures swell !
High though his titles, proud his name,
Boundless his wealth as wish can claim ;
Despite those titles, powers, and pelf,
The wretch concentred all in self;
Living, shall forfeit fair renown,
And doubly dying, shall go down
To the vile dust from whence he sprung,
Unwept, unhonoured, and unsung !
SIR W. Scott.
A sensitive plant in a garden grew,
And the young winds fed it with silver dew;
And it opened its fan-like leaves to the light,
And closed them beneath the breezes of night.
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,
T'ill they die of their own dear loveliness.
And the hayacinth, purple, white, and blue,
Which flung from their bells a sweet peal anew
Of music so delicate, soft, and intense,
It was felt like an odour within the sense.
And the jessamine faint, and the sweet tuberose,
The sweetest flower for scent that blows;
And all rare blossoms from every
clime Grew in that garden, in perfect prime.
SHELLEY.
Men! whose boast it is that ye
Come of fathers brave and free,
If there breathe on earth a slave,
Are ye truly free and brave?
If
ye
do not feel the chain
When it works a brother's pain ;
Are ye not base slaves indeed,
Slaves unworthy to be freed?
Woman! who shall one day bear
Sons to breathe New England air ;
If
ye
hear, without a blush,
Deeds to make the roused blood rush
Like red lava thro' your veins,
For your sisters now in chains ;
Answer, are ye fit to be
Mothers of the brave and free ?
Is true freedom but to break
Fetters for our own dear sake,
And with leathern hearts forget
That we owe mankind a debt?
No! true freedom is to share
All the chains our brothers wear,
And with heart and hand to be
Earnest to make others free !
They are slaves who fear to speak
For the fallen and the weak ;
They are slaves who will not choose
Hatred, scoffing, and abuse,
Rather than in silence shrink
From the truth they needs must think.
They are slaves who dare not
In the right with two or three !
Lowell.
Commit thou all thy griefs
And ways into His hands;
To His sure truth and tender care,
Who earth and heaven commands.
Put thou thy trust in God,
In duty's path go on;
Fix on His word thy stedfast eye,
So shall thy work be done.
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,
He gently clears thy way ;
Wait thou his time--thy darkest night
Shall end in brightest day.
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 meek,
[wrought ? And fragile things, as but for sunshine Thou seest what grief must nurture for the sky, What death must fashion for eternity !
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