GIFTED FOR GIVING.

"Freely ye have received, freely give."

MATT. X. 8.

BE true, O poet, to your gift divine!
And let your heart go throbbing through your
line,

Till it grows vital with the life that burns
In joy and grief, in faith and doubt, by turns,
And full, complete expression gives to these
In the clear ringing of its cadences !

Pour your soul's passion through the tide of song,

Nor ask the plaudits of the changeful throng. Sing as the bird sings, when the morning

beam

With gentlest touch awakes it from its dream, And life and light, their motion and their glow,

Gush through the song, with flow and overflow;

Sing as the stream sings, winding through the

maze

Of woods and meadows with no thought of praise,

Its murmurous music, or in storm or calm, Blending its low, sweet notes with Nature's psalm;

Sing as the wind sings, when the forest trees
Are vocal with its mystic melodies,
And every leaf lifts up its tiny harp
To answer back in tones distinct and sharp.
Though purblind men, the devotees of greed,
To song or singer give but little heed,
And the deaf multitudes refuse to turn
From Mammon's shrines diviner lore to learn,
The angels, in their starry homes, shall know
How true a spirit walks the earth below,
And, pausing in their song, to list your lyre,
Shall whisper through the spaces, "Come up
higher!"

INSPIRATION.

HENRY DAVID THOREAU, an original writer and a strong lover of nature, was born July 12, 1817, and graduated at Harvard College in 1845. After an interesting and eccentric life he died at Concord, Mass., May 6, 1862. An account of his life was published by his friend Ralph Waldo Emerson in the Atlantic Monthly for August, 1862.

IF with light head erect I sing,

Though all the Muses lend their force,
From my poor love of anything,

The verse is weak and shallow as its source.

But if with bended neck I grope,
Listening behind me for my wit,
With faith superior to hope,

More anxious to keep back than forward it;

Making my soul accomplice there
Unto the flame my heart hath lit,
Then will the verse forever wear,
Time cannot bend the line which God has writ.

I hearing get, who had but ears,
And sight, who had but eyes before;

I moments live, who lived but years,

And truth discern, who knew but learning's lore.

Now chiefly is my natal hour,
And only now my prime of life;

Of manhood's strength it is the flower;
'T is peace's end, and war's beginning strife.

It comes in summer's broadest noon,
By a gray wall, or some chance place,
Unseasoning time, insulting June,
And vexing day with its presuming face.

I will not doubt the love untold
Which not my worth nor want hath bought,
Which wooed me young, and wooed me old,
And to this evening hath me brought.

HENRY DAVID THOREAU.

To raise poor grovelling Nature from the mire,
To give her wings, and teach her to aspire;
To nurse heroic moods; meek worth to cheer;
To dry on Sorrow's cheek the trembling tear;
And still be ready, let who will deride,
To take the lists on injured Virtue's side.

This is thy calling. Tasks like these
Claim and repay the soul's best energies.
Nor need'st thou fear, while thus employed,
That life should seem a burthen or a void.
Joys shall be thine, man makes not, nor un-
makes;

Cheer, which the fickle world nor gives nor takes;

Unhoped-for streams that in the desert rise, And sunshine bursting through the cloudiest skies!

From light to light thy steps shall tend, Thy prospects ever brightening to the end; Thy soul acquiring as it goes The tone and feelings that befit the close. Such path, O gifted one, be thine to tread ! And when the Judge of quick and dead To each his sentence shall assign, "Well done, thou faithful servant!" shall be thine!

And thou shalt rise the tasks of heaven to share,

Join the blest choir, and feel no stranger there. And power and honor to the Lamb" shall

seem

To thee no new and uncongenial theme. The strains to which thy earthly powers were given

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He doth not list in magic caves the music of life's ocean;

Borne freely on its winds and waves, he feels their every motion.

The glory which around him shines is no fictitious ray;

It is the sun which shines on all, the light of common day.

But he has won an open eye to see things as they are,

A glory in God's meanest works which passeth fiction far.

His ear is open to discern stirrings of angel wings,

And angel whispers come to him from mute and common things.

And Nature, ever meeting him with the same radiant face,

And filling still her daily round with the old quiet grace,

Is fresh and glorious as at first, and mightier far to bless,

His youth's strong passion growing ripe in deep home-tenderness.

And truths to which his childhood clung, like songs repeated often

By the sweet voice of one we love, do but the surer soften.

One thing he scorns with bitter scorn, the lived or spoken lie,

ROME, March, 1847.

HENRY FRANCIS LYTE (abridged).

THE POET'S FOOD.

THE poet does not dwell apart, enshrined in golden beams;

He is not mailed from time's rude blows in a panoply of dreams.

No Pegasus bears him aloft in pathways mid the clouds;

But he must tread the common earth mingling in common crowds.

He dwells not in fair solitudes a still and lone recluse ;

But he must handle common tools to his di

viner use.

the inward eye,

Is slow to brand his fellow-man as false, or base, or mean,

Or aught which hath fed human hearts as common or unclean.

Nature prepares no royal food for this her royal guest;

No special banquet is for him at life's full table dressed.

But all life's honest impulses, home joys, and cares, and tears,

The shower of cordial laughter which the clouded bosom cheers,

All earnest voices of his kind, calm thoughts of solitude,

All of the world that is not husks, this is the poet's food.

God's living poem speaks to him God-like in every line;

Not all man's hackneyed renderings can make it less divine.

MRS. ELIZABEth (Rundle) Charles.

A POET'S PRAYER.

-

ALMIGHTY Father! let thy lowly child,
Strong in his love of truth, be wisely bold,
A patriot bard by sycophants reviled,
Let him live usefully, and not die old!
Let poor men's children, pleased to read his
lays,

Love for his sake the scenes where he hath been,

And when he ends his pilgrimage of days,
Let him be buried where the grass is green.
Where daisies, blooming earliest, linger late
To hear the bee his busy note prolong,
There let him slumber, and in peace await
The dawning morn, far from the sensual
throng,

Who scorn the wind-flower's blush, the redbreast's lovely song.

EBENEZER ELLIOTT.

To be the thing that now I feebly dream Flashing within my faintest, deepest gleam.

Ah, caverns of my soul! how thick your shade,

Where flows that life by which I faintly see,
Wave your bright torches, for I need your aid,
Golden-eyed demons of my ancestry!
Your son, though blinded, hath a light within,
A heavenly fire which ye from suns did win.

O Time! O Death! I clasp you in my arms,
For I can soothe an infinite cold sorrow,
And gaze contented on your icy charms,
And that wild snow-pile which we call to-

morrow;

Sweep on, O soft and azure-lidded sky, Earth's waters to your gentle gaze reply.

I am not earth-born, though I here delay;
Hope's child, I summon infiniter powers,
And laugh to see the mild and sunny day
Smile on the shrunk and thin autumnal hours:
I laugh, for hope hath happy place with me;
If my bark sinks, 't is to another sea.

WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING.

In life, in death, on earth, in heaven

No other name for me!

The same sweet style and title given

Through all eternity.

THOMAS HORNBLOWER GILL.

THE HIGHER GOOD.

THEODORE PARKER, an influential liberal theologian, was born at Lexington, Mass., Aug. 24, 1810, and died at Florence, Italy, May 10, 1860. He was a Unitarian minister, but a change came over his religious views and he res gned his charge. In 1864 he became pastor of an independent society, and preached in the Music Hall, Boston, to a large congregation as long as his health permitted. He was an enthusiastic and eloquent friend of freedom and of every movement for moral reform.

FATHER, I will not ask for wealth or fame, Though once they would have joyed my car

nal sense:

I shudder not to bear a hated name,

Wanting all wealth, myself my sole defence. But give me, Lord, eyes to behold the truth; A seeing sense that knows the eternal right; A heart with pity filled, and gentlest ruth;

A manly faith that makes all darkness light: Give me the power to labor for mankind;

Make me the mouth of such as cannot speak; Eyes let me be to groping men, and blind;

A conscience to the base; and to the weak Let me be hands and feet; and to the foolish, mind;

And lead still further on such as thy kingdom seek.

1849.

THEODORE PARKER.

GRAND DIEU, POUR TON. PLAISIR.

WRITTEN DURING TEN YEARS' IMPRISONMENT IN THE

BASTILE.

GRAND Dieu, pour ton plaisir

Je suis dans une cage;
Ecoute mon ramage;
C'est-là mon seul désir:
J'aime mon esclavage,
Grand Dieu, pour ton plaisir.

Je chante tout le jour,
Seigneur, c'est pour te plaire;
Mon extrême misère
Augmente mon amour:
N'ayant point d'autre affaire,
Je chante tout le jour.

Tu l'entends, mon Seigneur, Cet amoureux langage,

Ignoré du faux sage,

Goûté du chaste cœur,
L'amour a son ramage:

Tu l'entends, mon Seigneur.

Je vis en liberté,

Quoique dans l'esclavage:
L'Amour Pur met au large
Le cœur, la volonté :
Dans ma petite cage
Je vis en liberté.

Divine volonté,

Que j'adore et que j'aime !
Plus ma peine est extrême,
Plus j'ai de liberté.

Tous biens sont en toi-même,
Divine volonté.

De ton petit oiseau
Reçois, je te conjure,
Le gazouillant murmure,
Plus tendre qu'il n'est beau;
Et sois la nourriture
De ton petit oiseau.

MAD ME GUYON.

A LITTLE BIRD I AM.

A FREE TRANSLATION OF THE PRECEDING POEM.

A LITTLE bird I am,

Shut from the fields of air, And in my cage I sit and sing

To him who placed me there; Well pleased a prisoner to be, Because, my God, it pleases thee!

Naught have I else to do,

I sing the whole day long; And he whom most I love to please Doth listen to my song;

7

He caught and bound my wandering wing, But still he bends to hear me sing.

Thou hast an ear to hear,

A heart to love and bless;

And, though my notes were e'er so rude,
Thou wouldst not hear the less;
Because thou knowest, as they fall,
That love, sweet love, inspires them all.

My cage confines me round: Abroad I cannot fly;