The New Year comes-good-night, mamma, "I lay | We talked of the house, and the late long rains, And the crush at the French Ambassador's ball, me down to sleep, I pray the Lord"-tell dear papa-"my precious soul And . . . . well, I have not blown out my brains, to keep; If I"-how cold it seems-how dark-kiss me-I cannot see, The New Year comes to-night, mamma, the old year dies with me. You see I can laugh, that is all. CORA M. EAGER. 66 THE LAST TIME THAT I MET LADY RUTH. HERE are some things hard to understand, It is hard to pray the very same prayer I swear that the milk-white muslin so light By the touch of a breast so pure. I deemed her the one thing undefiled The truest, the tenderest, purest child Robert BULWER LYTTON (Owen Meredith). 12 THE SNOW-FLAKE. OW, if I fall, will it be my lot To be cast in some low and lonely spot, 'Twas thus a feathery snow-flake said, It seemed in mid air suspended. "O, no," said the earth, "thou shalt not lie, For thou wilt be safe in my keeping; But revive when the sunbeams are yellow and war, "And then thou shalt have thy choice to be In the jessamine bloom, the anemone, Or aught of thy spotless whiteness; To melt, and be cast in a glittering bead, With the pearls that the night scatters over the mead,、 Regaining thy dazzling brightness; When she blamed me (she, with her fair child's face !) In the cup where the bee and the fire-fly feed, And I said I would for her own sweet sake, Though it was but herself I should worship there, I remember the chair she would set for me, Were left to be happy alone. There she leaned her head on my knees, my Ruth, The last time I met her was here in town, "To wake, and be raised from thy transient sleep, When Viola's mild blue eye shall weep, In a tremulous tear, or a diamond leap In a drop from the unlocked fountain; "Or wouldst thou return to a home in the skies, On the stairs, where her husband was handing her "Then I will drop," said the trusting flake; down, There we met, and she talked to me. She with powder in hair and patch on chin, And I in the garb of a pilgrim priest, And between us both, without and within, A hundred years at least! "But bear it in mind that the choice I 'make Is not in the flowers nor the dew to awake, Nor the mist that shall pass with the morning : For, things of thyself, they expire with thee; But those that are lent from on high, like me, They rise, and will live, from thy dust set free, To the regions above returning. "And if true to thy word, and just thou art, a HANNAH FLAGG GOULD. THE MINSTREL GIRL. GAIN 'twas evening-Agnes knelt, Pale, passionless-a sainted one. Her thin hand veiled her tearful eye, As it were sin to gaze upon The changes of the changeful sky. Of her enthusiast moments came Of its awakened memory: She felt she might not cherish, then, The raptures of a spirit, free And passionate as hers had been, When its sole worship was, to look With a delighted eye abroad; And read, as from an open book, The written languages of God,. How changed she kneels !-the vile, gray hood, Where spring-flowers twined with raven hair, And where the jewelled silk hath flowed, Coarse veil and gloomy scapulaire. And wherefore thus? Was hers a soul, Which, all unfit for nature's gladness, Could grasp the bigot's poisoned bowl, And drain with joy its draught of madness? Read ye the secret, who have nursed In your own hearts intenser feelings, Which stole upon ye, at the first, Like bland and musical revealings From some untrodden paradise, Until your very soul was theirs ; And from their maddening ecstacies Ye woke to mornfulness and prayers. To weave a garland, will not let it wither;- The undying breath, the very soul of song. JOHN GREENLeaf Whittier. The Queen has lands and gold, mother- A babe that is dying of want, mother, As I am dying now, With a ghastly look in its sunken eye, What has poor Ireland done, mother What has poor Ireland done, That the world looks on and sees us starve, Perishing one by one? Do the men of England care not, mother— For the suffering sons of Erin's isle, Whether they live or die? There is many a brave heart here, mother- While only across the channel, mother, There are rich and proud men there, mother, And the bread they fling to their dogs to-night Come nearer to my side, mother, My father when he died; My breath is almost gone; Mother! dear mother! ere I die, AMELIA BLANFORD EDWARDS. IDEAS THE LIFE OF A PEOPLE. HE leaders of our Revolution were men of whom the simple truth is the highest praise. Of every condition in life, they were singularly sagacious, sober, and thoughtful. Lord Chatham spoke only the truth when he said to Franklin, of the men who composed the first colonial Congress: "The Congress is the most honorable assembly of statesmen since those of the ancient Greeks and Romans in the most virtuous times." Given to grave reflection, they were neither dreamers nor visionaries, and they were much too earnest to be rhetoricians. It is a curious fact, that they were generally men of so calm a temper that they lived to extreme age. With the exception of Patrick Henry and Samuel Adams, they were most of them profound scholars, and studied the history of mankind that they might know men. They were so familiar with the lives and thoughts of the wisest and best minds of the past that a classic aroma hangs about their writings and their speech; and they were profoundly convinced of what statesmen always know, and the adroitest mere politicians never perceive-that ideas are the life of a people; that the conscience, not the pocket, is the real citadel of a nation, and that when you have debauched and demoralized that conscience by teaching that there are no natural rights, and that therefore there is no moral right or wrong in political action, you have poisoned the wells and rotted the crops in the ground. The three greatest living statesmen of England knew this also. Edmund Burke knew it, and Charles James Fox, and William Pitt, Earl of Chatham. But they did not speak for the King, or Parliament, or the English nation. Lord Gower spoke for them when he said in Parliament: "Let the Americans talk about their natural and divine rights; their rights as men and citizens; their rights from God and nature! I am for enforcing these measures." My lord was contemptuous, and the King hired the Hessians, but the truth remained true. The Fathers saw the scarlet soldiers swarming over the sea, but more steadily they saw that the national progress had been secure only in the degree that the political system had conformed to natural justice. They knew the coming wreck of property and trade, but they knew more surely that Rome was never so rich as when she was dying, and, on the other hand, the Netherlands, never so powerful as when they were poorest. Farther away, they read the names of Assyria, Greece, Egypt. They had art, opulence, splendor. Corn enough grew in the valley of the Nile. The Syrian sword was as sharp as any. They were merchant princes, and the clouds in the sky were rivaled by their sails upon the sea. They were soldiers, and their frown frightened the world. "Soul, take thine ease," those empires said, languid with excess of luxury and life. Yes: but you remember the king who had built his grandest palace, and was to occupy it upon the morrow; but when the morrow came the palace was a pile of ruins. "Woe is me!" cried the King, "who is guilty of this crime?" "There is no crime," replied the sage at his side; "but the mortar was made of sand and water only, and the builders forgot to put in the lime." So fell the old empires, because the governors forgot to put justice into their governments. GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. I see how plenty surfeits oft, And hasty climbers soonest fall; I see that such as sit aloft Mishap doth threaten most of all. No princely pomp nor wealthy store, No wily wit to salve a sore, No shape to win a lover's eyeTo none of these I yield as thrall; For why, my mind despiseth all. Some have too much, yet still they crave; I little have, yet seek no more. I grudge not at another's gain; I fear no foe, nor fawn on friend; I joy not in no earthly bliss; I weigh not Croesus' wealth a straw; For care, I care not what it is; I fear not fortune's fatal law; My mind is such as may not move I wish but what I have at will; I wander not to seek for more; I like the plain, I climb no hill; In greatest storms I sit on shore, And laugh at them that toil in vain To get what must be lost again. I kiss not where I wish to kill; I feign not love where most I hate; I break no sleep to win my will; I wait not at the mighty's gate. I scorn no poor, I fear no rich; My wealth is health and perfect ease; WILLIAM BYRD. THE RIGHT MUST CONQUER. 'N this world, with its wild whirling eddies and mad foam oceans, where men and nations perish as if without law, and judgment for an unjust thing is sternly delayed, dost thou think that there is therefore no justice? It is what the fool hath said in his heart. It is what the wise in all times were wise because they denied, and knew forever not to be. I tell thee again, there is nothing else but justice. One strong thing I find here below: the just thing, the true thing. My friend, if thou hadst all the artillery of Woolwich trundling at thy back in support of an unjust thing, and infinite bonfires visibly waiting ahead of thee, to blaze centuries long for thy victory on behalf of it, I would advise thee to call halt, to fling down thy baton and say, "In Heaven's name, no!" Thy "success"? Poor fellow! what will thy success amount to? If the thing is unjust, thou hast not succeeded; no, not though bonfires blazed from north to south, and bells rang, and editors wrote leading articles, and the just things lay trampled out of sight to all mortal eyes abolished and annihilated things. It is the right and noble alone that will have victory in this struggle; the rest is wholly an obstruction, a postponement and fearful imperilment of the victory. Towards an eternal centre of right and nobleness, and of that only, is all confusion tending. We already know whither it is all tending; what will have victory, what will have none. The heaviest will reach the centre. The heaviest has its deflections, its obstructions, nay, at times its reboundings; whereupon some blockhead shall be heard jubilating, "See, your heaviest ascends!” but at all moments it is moving centreward fast as it is convenient for it; sinking, sinking; and, by laws older than the world, old as the Maker's first plan of the world, it has to arrive there. Await the issue. In all battles, if you await the issue, each fighter has prospered according to his right. His right and his might, at the close of the account, were one and the same. He has fought with all his might, and in exact proportion to all his right he has prevailed. His very death is no victory over him. He dies indeed; but his work lives, very truly lives. A heroic Wallace, quartered on the scaffold, cannot hinder that his Scotland become, one day, a part of England; but he does hinder that it become, on tyrannous, unfair terms, a part of it; commands still, as with a god's voice, from his old Valhalla and Temple of the Brave, that there be a just, real union, as of brother and brother-not a false and merely semblant one, as of slave and master. If the union with England be in fact one of Scotland's chief blessings, we thank Wallace withal that it was not the chief curse. Scotland is not Ireland; no, because brave men rose there and said, "Behold, ye must not tread us down like slaves, and ye shall not and cannot!" ་ Fight on, thou brave, true heart, and falter not, through dark fortune and through bright. The cause thou fightest for, so far as it is true, no further, yet precisely so far, is very sure of victory. The falsehood alone of it will be conquered, will be abolished, as it ought to be; but the truth of it is part of nature's own laws, co-operates with the world's eternal tendencies, and cannot be conquered. THOMAS CARLYLE. THE BLIND MAN. HERE is a world, a pure unclouded clime, Where there is neither grief, nor death, nor time! Nor loss of friends! Perhaps when yonder Beat slow, and bade the dying day farewell, WILLIAM LISLE BOWLES. SOMEBODY'S DARLING. NTO a ward of the whitewashed halls, Somebody's darling is dying now. Kiss him once for somebody's sake, Murmur a prayer both soft and low; Been baptized in their waves of light? God knows best! he was somebody's love; Somebody's heart enshrined him there; Somebody wafted his name above, Night and morn, on the wings of prayer. Somebody wept when he marched away, MARIE R. LACOSTE. THE ROSARY OF MY TEARS. COME reckon their age by years, Some measure their life by art; But some tell their days by the flow of their tears, And their lives by the moans of their heart. The dials of earth may show The length, not the depth of years Few or many they come, few or many they goBut time is best measured by tears. Ah! not by the silver gray That creeps through the sunny hair, And not by the scenes that we pass on our way, On forehead and face have made Not so do we count our years; For the young are ofttimes old, Though their brows be bright and fair; While their blood beats warm, their hearts are coldO'er them the spring-but winter is there. And the old are ofttimes young When their hair is thin and white; But, bead by bead, I tell The rosary of my years; From a cross-to a cross they lead; 'tis well, Better a day of strife Than a century of sleep; Give me instead of a long stream of life The tempests and tears of the deep. A thousand joys may foam On the billows of all the years, But never the foam brings the lone back homeHe reaches the haven through tears. ABRAM J. RYAN. |