THE DISCARDED. BY FITZ-GREENE HALLECK. "No doubt she was right in rejecting my suit, But why did she kick me down stairs?"-BALLAD. I LIVE, as lives a withered bough, Or shed one tear when I am gone. When I am gone-no matter where, For I am weary of it-black Are sun and stars and sky to me; There's not a wretched one that lives And yet at times, I know not why, There comes a foolish, feverish thought, Of where these shrivelled limbs shall lie, And where this death cold flesh shall rot, When the quick throbbing of my brain, And then I shudder at the tone Of my heart's hymn, and seem to hear And feel the pang which he who dies, When the death foam is on my lip, And then I feel how sad it is To know there's none my fate to weep, For all unheard the damp earth flung And he who tolls will laugh the while, Some dark-robed priest, perhaps, will pray And some hoarse voices sing or say The unfeeling adage, “dust to dust.” VOL. II. And if perchance I leave behind May meet the passing stranger's eye, And I was born and lived and died. And men will trample on my grave, And keep the grass from growing there; And not even one poor flower will wave Above me in the summer air. For there are none to plant it-none Are silent now-there was a time- I breathed-and if the clouds of woe Dimmed the blue heaven of my thought, On which my wild gaze lingered till Those clouds-I feel their dampness still- And she I loved? I must not think Of her, "for that way madness lies !"— Boy, start that champagne cork-I'll drink, And dream no more of Mary's eyes. 4 PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. BY NATHANIEL P. WILLIS. NEW-YORK CITY.-"How it strikes a stranger," is always an amusing, though not always a correct light for looking at the picture of a great city. I occupy a sky parlor in the city hotel, celebrated for its Willard of immortal memory, and its accommodations of inexhaustible capacity-the most convenient and thronged hotel, perhaps, this side the water, though it is a pity it is not a little more visited by one universal guest-the common light of heaven. Hence, over innumerable chimneys and through a medium like a smoked glass, I see the broad mouth of the Hudson, and Hoboken with its industrious ferry-boat plying to and fro, and, nearer to my eye, the flags and long pennants of vessels at the pier, and the black pipes of steamboats smoking and hissing, and more immediately in the foreground scenes of poverty and misery that would have moved the heart of Howard with the deepest yearnings of compassion. I know not how it is, but poverty in New-York seems to me incomparably wretched. In Boston, the poor never im press you with that sick-hearted sense of their misery that is unavoidable in crossing their unhappy pathways here. They are cleaner elsewhere, or not so closely pinched by necessity, they have more cheerful faces, and move with a less broken and dejected gait, and their children do not acquire "the trick of sorrow" so unchangeably. There is a poor woman, now, hanging clothes upon a line on the top of a building, some three stories below my window level. She is perfectly gray, and her hair is tied together and falling over her back, hardly distinguishable, in its mingled dingy sprinkling of white, from her smoked and wrinkled forehead, and her hands, lean and cramped, stretch up to the line, with a weakness and effort that seem like the struggling of sickness more than the healthy action of labor. The expression of her face is that of the most worn and hopeless anxiety. I never saw one of more wretchedness. But this is enough of such a picture. The great impression made upon a stranger's mind on leaving his room, is that of general and undistinguishable hurry and confusion. The carmen halloo and lash their horses into a trot almost impossible from the nature of the vehicle, the omnibuses whip and hurry to pass each other, the jarveys, with their handsome coaches and "frames of horses," (perfect miracles of leanness,) outwhip both carmen and omnibuses; every man you meet avoids you by a most adroit instinct, apparently without being aware that you are near him; the |