I painted the flowers of the Eden bowers,
And their leaves of living green,

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,
Came forth among the dead,

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,
God's covenant of peace!

Like a pall at rest on a senseless breast,
Night's funeral shadow slept;—

Where shepherd swains on the Bethlehem plains
Their lonely vigils kept—

When I flashed on their sight the heralds bright

Of Heaven's redeeming plan,

As they chanted the morn of a Saviour born-
Joy, joy to the outcast man!

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,
In curtains of amber and rose.

From my sentinel steep, by the night-brooded deep,
I gaze
with unslumbering eye,

When the cynosure star of the mariner

Is blotted from out of the sky;

And guided by me through the merciless sea,
Though sped by the hurricane's wings,
His compassless bark, lone, weltering, dark,
To the haven-home safely he brings.

I waken the flowers in their dew-spangled bowers,
The birds in their chambers of green,

And mountain and plain glow with beauty again,
As they bask in my matinal sheen.

Oh, if such the glad worth of my presence to earth,
Though fitful and fleeting the while,

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,

A Christmas Hymn.

It was the calm and silent night!
Seven hundred years and fifty-three
Had Rome been growing up to might,

And now was queen of land and sea.
No sound was heard of clashing wars,—
Peace brooded o'er the hushed domain:
Apollo, Pallas, Jove, and Mars

Held undisturbed their ancient reign,
In the solemn midnight,

Centuries ago.

'T was in the calm and silent night!
The senator of haughty Rome,
Impatient, urged his chariot's flight,
From lordly revel rolling home;
Triumphal arches, gleaming, swell

His breast with thoughts of boundless sway; What recked the Roman what befell

A paltry province far away,
In the solemn midnight,
Centuries ago?

Within that province far away

Went plodding home a weary boor;
A streak of light before him lay,

Fallen through a half-shut stable-door,
Across his path. He passed, for naught
Told what was going on within ;
How keen the stars, his only thought-
The air, how calm, and cold, and thin,
In the solemn midnight,
Centuries ago!

Oh, strange indifference! low and high
Drowsed over common joys and cares;

The earth was still, but knew not why;
The world was listening, unawares.
How calm a moment may precede

One that shall thrill the world forever
To that still moment, none would heed,
Man's doom was linked no more to sever,
In the solemn midnight,

Centuries ago!

It is the calm and solemn night!
A thousand bells ring out, and throw
Their joyous peals abroad, and smite

The darkness, charmed and holy now!
The night that erst no name had worn,
To it a happy name is given;

For in that stable lay, new-born,

The peaceful Prince of earth and heaven,
In the solemn midnight,

Centuries ago!

ALFRED DOMETT,

The Ivy Green.

O, A DAINTY plant is the ivy green,

That creepeth o'er ruins old!

Of right choice food are his meals, I ween,

In his cell so lone and cold.

The walls must be crumbled, the stones decayed,

To pleasure his dainty whim;

And the mouldering dust that years have made Is a merry meal for him.

Creeping where no life is seen,

A rare old plant is the ivy green.

Fast he stealeth on, though he wears no wings,

And a stanch old heart has hel

How closely he twineth, how tight he clings
To his friend, the huge oak-tree!
And slyly he traileth along the ground,
And his leaves he gently waves,

And he joyously twines and hugs around
The rich mould of dead men's graves.
Creeping where no life is seen,

A rare old plant is the ivy green.

Whole ages have fled, and their works decayed,
And nations have scattered been;
But the stout old ivy shall never fade
From its hale and hearty green.
The brave old plant in its lonely days
Shall fatten upon the past;

For the stateliest building man can raise
Is the ivy's food at last.

Creeping where no life is seen,

A rare old plant is the ivy green.

The Polish Boy.

CHARLES DICKENS

WHENCE Come those shrieks so wild and shrill,

That cut, like blades of steel, the air,

Causing the creeping blood to chill

With the sharp cadence of despair?

Again they come, as if a heart

Were cleft in twain by one quick blow,

And every string had voice apart

To utter its peculiar woe.

Whence come they? From yon temple, where

An altar, raised for private prayer,

Now forms the warrior's marble bed

Who Warsaw's gallant armies led.