Laughter I'm certain will kill me to-day;
And Short-and-stout is bursting his skin,
And almost in fits is Tall-and-thin,

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,
And has made his last climax a true knotty point.
FREDERICK W. N. BAYLEY

The Old Sexton.

NIGH to a grave that was newly made,
Leaned a sexton old on his earth-worn spade;
His work was done, and he paused to wait
The funeral-train at the open gate.

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,
Year after year of grief and joy,
I've builded the houses that lie around
In every nook of this burial ground.
Mother and daughter, father and son,
Come to my solitude one by one;

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,
Mankind are my subjects, all, all, all !

May they loiter in pleasure, or toilfully spin,
I gather them in-I gather them in.

"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,
He jested, quaffed, and swore;
A drunken private of the Buffs,
Who never looked before.
To-day, beneath the foeman's frown,
He stands in Elgin's place,
Ambassador from Britain's crown,

And type of all her race.

Poor, reckless, rude, low-born, untaught,
Bewildered, and alone,

A heart with English instinct fraught
He yet can call his own.

Ay, tear his body limb from limb,

Bring cord or axe or flame,

He only knows that not through him
Shall England come to shame.

Far Kentish hop-fields round him seemed,
Like dreams, to come and go;

Bright leagues of cherry-blossom gleamed,

One sheet of living snow;

The smoke above his father's door

In gray soft eddyings hung;
Must he then watch it rise no more,
Doomed by himself so young?

Yes, honor calls!—with strength like steel
He put the vision by ;

Let dusky Indians whine and kneel,
An English lad must die.

And thus, with eyes that would not shrink,
With knee to man unbent,
Unfaltering on its dreadful brink,

To his red grave he went.

Vain mightiest fleets of iron framed,
Vain those all-shattering guns,
Unless proud England keep untamed
The strong heart of her sons;
So let his name through Europe ring,—
A man of mean estate,

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
Of the threads of my golden hair;

And when the broad tent of the firmament

Arose on its airy spars,

I penciled the hue of its matchless blue,
And spangled it round with stars.

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.