Laughter I'm certain will kill me to-day; And Tiger is free, yet they do not quail, Though temper has all gone wrong with him No! they 've tied a knot in the Tiger's tail, And he carried the Tub along with him; He's a freehold for life, with a tail out of joint, The Old Sexton. NIGH to a grave that was newly made, A relic of by-gone days was he, And his locks were gray as the foamy sea; And these words came from his lips so thin: "I gather them in—I gather them in— Gather-gather—I gather them in. "I gather them in; for man and boy, But come they stranger, or come they kin, I gather them in-I gather them in. Many are with me, yet I 'm alone; I'm King of the Dead, and I make my throne On a monument slab of marble cold My sceptre of rule is the spade I hold. Come they from cottage, or come they from hall, May they loiter in pleasure, or toilfully spin, "I gather them in, and their final rest Is here, down here, in the earth's dark breast!" And the sexton ceased as the funeral-train Wound mutely over that solemn plain; And I said to myself: When time is told, A mightier voice than that sexton's old, Will be heard o'er the last trump's dreadful din ; “I gather them in—I gather them in— Gather-gather-gather them in." PARK BENJAMIN, The Private of the Buffs. LAST night among his fellow-roughs, And type of all her race. Poor, reckless, rude, low-born, untaught, A heart with English instinct fraught Ay, tear his body limb from limb, Bring cord or axe or flame, He only knows that not through him Far Kentish hop-fields round him seemed, Bright leagues of cherry-blossom gleamed, One sheet of living snow; The smoke above his father's door In gray soft eddyings hung; Yes, honor calls!—with strength like steel Let dusky Indians whine and kneel, And thus, with eyes that would not shrink, To his red grave he went. Vain mightiest fleets of iron framed, Who died as firm as Sparta's king, Because his soul was great. SIR FRANCIS HASTINGS DOYLE. Light. FROM the quickened womb of the primal gloom The sun rolled black and bare, Till I wove him a vest for his Ethiop breast And when the broad tent of the firmament Arose on its airy spars, I penciled the hue of its matchless blue, I painted the flowers of the Eden bowers, And mine were the dyes in the sinless eyes Of Eden's virgin queen; And when the fiend's art on the trustful heart Had fastened its mortal spell, In the silvery sphere of the first-born tear To the trembling earth I fell. When the waves that burst o'er the world accurs'd Their work of wrath had sped, And the Ark's lone few, the tried and true, With the wond'rous gleams of my bridal beams, I bade their terrors cease, As I wrote, on the roll of the storm's dark scroll, Like a pall at rest on a senseless breast, Where shepherd swains on the Bethlehem plains When I flashed on their sight the heralds bright Of Heaven's redeeming plan, As they chanted the morn of a Saviour born- Equal favor I show to the lofty and low, On the just and unjust I descend; E’en the blind, whose vain spheres roll in darkness and tears Feel my smile, the blest smile of a friend. Nay, the flower of the waste by my love is embraced, As the rose in the garden of Kings; At the chrysalis bier of the worm I appear, And lo! the gay butterfly wings. The desolate Morn, like a mourner forlorn, Conceals all the pride of her charms. Till I bid the bright hours chase night from her bowers, And lead the young day to her arms; And when the gay Rover seeks Eve for his lover, And sinks to her balmy repose, I wrap their soft rest by the zephyr-fanned west, From my sentinel steep, by the night-brooded deep, When the cynosure star of the mariner Is blotted from out of the sky; And guided by me through the merciless sea, I waken the flowers in their dew-spangled bowers, And mountain and plain glow with beauty again, Oh, if such the glad worth of my presence to earth,' What glories must rest on the home of the blest, Ever bright with the Deity's smile! WILLIAM PITT PALMER A Death-Bed. HER suffering ended with the day; Yet lived she at its close, And breathed the long, long night away In statue-like repose. But when the sun, in all his state, Illumed the eastern skies, She passed through glory's morning-gate, And walked in Paradise. JAMES ALDRICH. |