I feel the cold sweat stand;

We've stayed to watch the budding things My lips grow dry and tremulous, and my and flowers, breath

Forget it not! Comes feebly up. Oh! tell me, is this death?

Plant there some box or pineMother! your hand

Something that lives in winter, and will be

A verdant offering to my memory, Here--lay it on my wrist,

And call it mine!” And place the other thus, beneath my head,

Sister! my young rose tree-And say, sweet mother!--say, when I am That all the spring has been my pleasant dead,

care, Shall I be missed ?

Just putting forth its leaves so green and

fair, Never beside

your
knee

I give it thee.
Shall I kneel down again at night to pray,
Nor with the morning wake, and sing the And when its roses bloom,
lay

I shall be gone away-my short life done! You taught to me!

But will you not bestow a single one

Upon my tomb?” -
Oh, at the time of prayer,
When you look round and see a vacant “Now, mother, sing the tune
seat,

You sang last night--I'm weary and must You will not wait then for my coming feet

sleep! You'll miss me there!”_

Who was it called my name?-Nay, do not

weep, "Father! I'm going home!

You'll all come soon!” To the good home you speak of, that blest land

Morning spread over earth her rosy wingsWhere it is one bright summer always, and And that meek sufferer, cold and ivory Storms do not come.

pale,

Lay on his couch asleep! The gentle air I must be happy then:

Came through the open window, freighted From pain and death you say I shall be with free

The savoury odours of the early springThat sickness never enters there, and we He breathed it not! The laugh of passers Shall meet again!"

by

Jarred like a discord in some mournful tune, Brother! the little spot

But marred not his slumbers---He wag I used to call my garden, where long hours dead!

ANOx.

THE HOUND.

DEAD on the battle field
Lies one in silence sealed,
Grasping his lance and shield

Tightly around:
True to his lord and trust,
Crouched in the gory dust,
Licking the armour rust,

See the brave hound.
Vultures, with instinct rare,
Sail through the tainted air,
Shrieking with lust, to tear

Open the wound:

Still a safe watch he keeps,
E'en while his spirit weeps---
Guarding the slaughtered heaps,

Stands the bold hound.
When thrice the moonbeams rise,
Glazed are his loving eyes;
Down, down he sinks, and dies,

Prone on the ground.
Eager for reeking food,
Swoop down the cursed brood,
Rending with talons rude,

Master and hound.

THE HOMES OF ENGLAND.

The stately homes of England !

The cottage homes of England ! How beautiful they stand,

By thousands on her plains, Amidst their tall ancestral trees,

They are smiling o'er the silvery brooks, O'er all the pleasant land !

And round the hamlet fanes. The deer across their greensward bound Through glowing orchards forth they peep, Through shade and sunny gleam;

Each fror nook of leaves; And the swan glides by them with the sound And fearless there the lowly sleep, Of some rejoicing stream.

As the bird beneath the eaves. The merry homes of England !

The free, fair homes of England !
Around their hearths, by night,

Long, long, in hut and hall,
What gladsome looks of household love May hearts of native proof be reared,
Meet in the ruddy light!

To guard each hallowed wall !
The blessed homes of England !

And green for ever be the groves, How softly on their bowers

And bright the flowery sod, Is laid the holy quietness

Where first the child's glad spirit loves That breathes from Sabbath hours !

Its country and its God!

MRS. HEMAXS.

WHO IS MY NEIGHBOUR ?
Thy neighbour? It is he whom thou Widow and orphan, helpless left;-
Hast power to aid and bless;

Go thou and shelter them.
Whose aching heart and burning brow

Thy neighbour? Yonder toiling slave, Thy soothing hand may press.

Fettered in thought and limb, Thy neighbour? 'Tis the fainting poor, Whose hopes are all beyond the grave; Whose eye with want is dim;

Go thou and ransom him. Whom hunger sends from door to door;

Whene'er thou meet'st a human form Go thou and succour him.

Less favoured than thine own, Thy neighbour? Tis that weary man, Remember 'tis thy neighbour worm, Whose years are at their brim,

Thy brother, or thy son. Bent low with sickness, cares, and pain;

Oh, pass not, pass not heedless by;
Go thou and succour him.

Perhaps thou canst redeem
Thy neighbour? 'Tis the heart bereit The breaking heart from misery;--
Of every earthly gem;

Go share thy lot with him.

Axon.

A MOTHER'S RECOMPENSE.

WHAT can a mother's heart repay,

In after years,
For watchful night and weary day
Beside the cradle passed away,

And anxious tears?
To see her dear one tread the earth
In life and health, and childish mirth.
What can a mother's heart repay

For later care,
For words that heavenward point the

way,

For counsel against passion's sway,

And earnest prayer?-
To watch her little pilgrims press
Along the road to holiness.
This will a mother's heart repay,

If that loved band,
Amidst life's doubtfu) battle-fray,
By grace sustained, shall often say,

“Next to God's hand,
All of true happiness we know,
Mother, to thy dear self we owe."

Rev. W. CALVERT

FIDELITY. A BARKING sound the shepherd hears, Not free from boding thoughts, a while A cry as of a dog or fox;

The shepherd stood; then makes his way He halts, and searches with his eye O'er rocks and stones, following the dog Among the scattered rocks :

As quickly as he may; And now at distance can discern

Nor far had gone before he found A stirring in a brake of fern;

A human skeleton on the ground ! And instantly a dog is seen,

The appalled discoverer with a sigh Glancing through that covert green. Looks round to learn the history. The dog is not of mountain breed;

From those abrupt and perilous rocks Its motions, too, are wild and shy;

The man had fallen-that place of fear! With something, as the shepherd thinks, At length upon the shepherd's mind Unusual in its cry:

It breaks, and all is clear: Nor is there any one in sight

He instantly recalled the name, All round, in hollow or on height;

And who he was, and whence he came; Nor shout nor whistle strikes his ear Remembered, too, the very day What is the creature doing here?

On which the traveller passed that way. It was a cove, a huge recess,

But here a wonder, for whose sake
That keeps, till June, December's snow; This lamentable tale I tell;—
A lofty precipice in front,

A lasting monument of words
A silent tarn below;

This wonder merits well: Far in the bosom of Helvellyn,

The dog, which still was hovering nigli, Remote from public road or dwelling, Repeating the same timid cry, Pathway, or cultivated land;

This dog had been, through three months' From trace of human foot or hand.

space,

A dweller in that savage place! There sometimes doth a leaping fish Send through the tarn a lonely cheer; Yes, proof was plain that since the day The crags repeat the raven's croak,

When this ill-fated traveller died, In symphony austere:

The dog had watched about the spot, Thither the rainbow comes, the cloud Or by his master's side: And mists that spread the flying shroud, How nourished there through that long time And sunbeams; and the sounding blast, He knows who gave that love sublime; That if it could would hurry past-

And gave that strength of feeling great, But that enormous barrier holds it fast. Above all human estimate.

WORDSWORTII.

THE LOST DAY.
Lost ! lost ! lost !

Lost! lost! lost !
A gem of countless price,

I feel all search is vain;
Cut from the living rock,

That gem of countless cost
And graved in Paradise;

Can ne'er be mine again.
Set round with three times eight

I offer no reward
Large diamonds, clear and bright,

For till these heart-strings sover,
And each with sixty smaller ones,

I know that Heaven's intrusted gift
All changeful as the light.

Is reft away for ever.
Lost-where the thoughtless throng

But when the sea and land
In Fashion's mazes wind,

Like burning scroll have fled,
Where trilleth folly's song,

I'll see it in His hand
Leaving a sting behind.

Who judgeth quick and dead ;
Yet to my hand 'twas given,

And when of scathe and loss,
A golden harp to buy,

That man can ne'er repair,
Such as the white-robed choir attune The dread inquiry meets my soul,
To deathless minstrelsy.

What shall it answer there?

L. H. SIGOURNEY.

THE WRECK.
ALL night the booming minute-gun And near him, on the sea-weed, lay-
Had pealed along the deep,

Till then we had not wept,
And mournfully the rising sun

But well our gushing hearts might say, Looked o'er the tide-worn steep.

That there a mother slept !
A bark, from India's coral strand,
Before the rushing blast,

For her pale arms a babe had pressed
Had veiled her top-sails to the sand,

With such a wreathing grasp, And bowed her noble mast.

Billows had dashed o'er that fond breast,

Yet not undone the clasp! The queenly ship! brave hearts had striven, Her very tresses had been flung And true ones died with her!

To wrap the fair child's form, We saw her mighty cable riven

Where still their wet, long streamers clung, Like floating gossamer:

All tangled by the storm.
We saw her proud flag struck that morn,
A star once o'er the seas,

And beautiful, 'midst that wild scene, Her helm beat down, her deck uptorn- Gleamed up the boy's dead face, And sadder things than these.

Like slumber, trustingly serene,

In melancholy grace. We saw her treasures cast away

Deep in her bosom lay his head, The rocks with pearl were sown;

With half-shut violet eye; And, strangely sad, the ruby's ray

He had known little of her dread,
Flashed out o'er fretted stone;

Nought of her agony !
And gold was strewn the wet sands o'er,
Like ashes by a breeze;

Oh, human love! whose yearning heart,
And gorgeous robes—but, oh! that shore Through all things vainly true,
Had sadder sights than these !

So stamps upon thy mortal part

Its passionate adieu !
We saw the strong man, still and low, Surely thou hast another lot,
A crushed reed thrown aside !

There is some home for thee,
Yet, by that rigid lip and brow,

Where thou shalt rest, remembering not Not without strife he died !

The moaning of the sea !

MRS. HEMAXS.

THE GRAVES OF A HOUSEHOLD.

THEY grew in beauty, side by side,

They filled one home with glee;Their graves are severed far and wide,

By mount, and stream, and sea.
The same fond mother bent at night

O'er each fair sleeping brow;
She had each folded flower in sight--

Where are those dreamers now?

One, 'midst the forests of the West,

By a dark stream is laid-
The Indian knows his place of rest,

Far in the cedar shade.

One sleeps where southern vines are dressed

Above the noble slain;
He wrapt his colours round his breast,

On a blood-red field of Spain.
And one-o'er her the myrtle showers

Its leaves, by soft winds fanned;
She faded 'midst Italian flowers

The last of that bright band.
And parted thus they rest, who played

Beneath the same green tree;
Whose voices mingled as they prayed

Around one parent knee!
They that with smiles lit up the hall,

And cheered with song the hearth-
Alas for love! if thou wert all,
And nought beyond, O Earth!

MRS. HEMANS.

The sea, the blue lone sea, hath one

He lies where pearls lie deep; He was the loved of all, yet none

O'er his low bed may weep.

THE GREENWOOD SHRIFT.

OUTSTRETCHED beneath the leafy shade
Of Windsor Forest's deepest glade

A dying woman lay;
Three little children round her stood,
And there went up from the greenwood

A woful wail that day.
"O mother!” was the mingled cry,
"O mother, mother! do not die

And leave us all alone.”
“My blessed babes!” she tried to say,
But the faint accents died away

In a low sobbing moan.
And then life struggled hard with death,
And fast and strong she drew her breath,

And up she raised her head;
And peering through the deep wood maze
With a long, sharp, unearthly gaze,

Will he not come?” she said.

'I will go with you, child,' he said;
God sends me to this dying bed.'

Mother, he's here, hard by
While thus the little maiden spoke,
The man, his back against an oak,

Looked on with glistening eye.
The bridle on his neck flung free,
With quivering flank and trembling knee,

Pressed close his bonny bay;
A statelier man, a statelier steed,
Never on greensward paced, I rede,

Than those stood there that day.

So, while the little maiden spoke,
The man, his back against an oak,

Looked on with glistening eye
And folded arms; and in his look
Something that, like a sermon book,

Preached-“ All is Vanity.”

.6

They told me here--they told me there-He spoke of sinners' lost estate,
I think they mocked me everywhere;

In Christ renewed-regenerate;
And when I found his home,

Of God's most blest decree,
And begged him on my bended knee That not a single soul should die
To bring his book, and come with me-- Which turns repentant with the cry,
Mother ! he would not come.

Be merciful to me.” I told him how you dying lay,

He spoke of trouble, pain, and toil,
And could not go in peace away

Endured but for a little while
Without the minister;

In patience, faith, and love..-
I begged him, for dear Christ, his sake, Sure, in God's own good time, to be
But, oh my heart was fit to break-- Exchanged for an eternity
Mother ! he would not stir.

Of happiness above.

So, though my tears were blinding me,
I ran back, fast as fast could be,

To come again to you;
And here—close by-this Squire I met,
Who asked (so mild) what made me fret;

And when I told him true,

Then-as the spirit ebbed away--
He raised his hands and eyes, to pray

That peaceful it might pass;
And then-the orphans' sobs alone
Were heard as they knelt every one

Close round on the green grass.