-They stand, they lie, above, beneath,
Groans of unpitied anguish breathe,
Tears unavailing shed;
Each, in abstraction of despair,
Seems to himself a hermit there,
among the dead.
Yet respite,-respite from his woes,
Even here, the conscious sufferer feels;
Worn down by torture to repose,
Slumber the vanish'd world reveals:
-Ah! then the eyes, extinct in night,
Again behold the blessed light;
Ah! then the frame of rack'd disease
Lays its delighted limbs at ease;
Swift to his own dear land,
The unfetter'd slave with shouts returns,
Hard by his dreaming tyrant burns
At sight of Cuba's strand.
To blank reality they wake,
In darkness opens every eye:
Peace comes;-the negro's heart-strings break, To him 'tis more than life to die:
-How feels, how fares the man of blood?
In endless exile on the flood,
Rapt, as though fiends his vessel steer'd,
Things which he once believed and fear'd,
-Then scorn'd as idle names,—
Death, judgment, conscience, hell conspire,
With thronging images of fire,
To light up guilt in flames.
Who cried for mercy in that hour,
And found it on the desert sea?
Who to the utmost grasp
of power
Wrestled with life's last enemy?
Who, Marius-like, defying fate,
(Marius on fallen Carthage) sate?
Who, through a hurricane of fears,
Clung to the hopes of future years?
And who, with heart unquail'd,
Look'd from time's trembling precipice
Down on eternity's abyss,
Till breath and footing fail'd?
Is there among this crew not one,
One whom a widow'd mother bare,-
Who mourns far off her only son,
And pours for him her soul in prayer?
Even now, when o'er his soften'd thought,
Remembrance of her love is brought,
To soothe death's agony, and dart
A throb of comfort through his heart,-
Even now a mystic knell
Sounds through her pulse ;-she lifts her eye,
Sees a pale spirit passing by,
And hears his voice, “farewell!"
Mother and son shall meet no more:
-The floating tomb of its own dead,
That ship shall never reach a shore;
But, far from track of seamen led,
The sun shall watch it, day by day,
Careering on its lonely way;
Month after month, the moon shine pale
On falling mast and riven sail;
The stars, from year to year,
Mark the bulged flanks, and sunken deck,
Till not a ruin of the wreck
On ocean's face appear.
Written for a benevolent Society in the metropolis, the object of which is to relieve poor women during the first month of their widowhood, to preserve what little property they may have from wreck and ruin, in a season of embarrassment, when kindness and good counsel are especially needed; and, so far as may be practicable, to assist the destitute with future means of maintaining themselves and their fatherless children.
"The short and simple annals of the poor."-GRAY.
MINE is a tale of every day,
Yet turn not thou thine ear away;
For 'tis the bitterest thought of all,
The worm-wood added to the gall,
That such a wreck of mortal bliss,
That such a weight of wo as this,
Is no strange thing,-but, strange to say!
The tale, the truth of every day.
At Mary's birth, her mother smiled
Upon her first, last, only child,
And, at the sight of that young flower,
Forgot the anguish of her hour;
Her pains return'd;-she soon forgot
Love, joy, hope, sorrow,—she was not.
Her partner stood, like one bereft
Of all,-not all, their babe was left;
By the dead mother's side it slept,
Slept sweetly;-when it woke, it wept.
"Live, Mary, live, and I will be
Father and mother both to thee !"
The mourner cried, and while he spake,
His breaking heart forebore to break;
Faith, courage, patience, from above,
Flew to the help of fainting love.
While o'er his charge that parent yearn'd,
All woman's tenderness he learn'd,
All woman's waking, sleeping care,
-That sleeps not to her babe,-her prayer,
Of power to bring upon its head,
The richest blessings heaven can shed;
All these he learn'd, and lived to say,
"My strength was given me as my day."
So the Red Indian of those woods,
That echo to Lake Erie's floods,
Reft of his consort in the wild,
Became the mother of his child!
Nature (herself a mother) saw
His grief, and loosed her kindliest law:
Warm from its fount life's stream, propell'd,
His breasts with sweet nutrition swell'd,
At whose strange springs, his infant drew
Milk, as the rose-bud drinks the dew.
Mary from childhood rose to youth,
In paths of innocence and truth;
-Train'd by her parent, from her birth,
To go to heaven by way of earth,
She was to him, in after-life,
Both as a daughter and a wife.
Meekness, simplicity, and grace,
Adorn'd her speech, her air, her face;
The spirit, through its earthly mould,
Broke, as the lily's leaves unfold;
Her beauty open'd on the sight,
As a star trembles into light.
Love found that maiden; love will find
Way to the coyest maiden's mind;
Love found and tried her many a year,
With hope deferr'd, and boding fear;
To the world's end her hero stray'd;
Tempests and calms his bark delay'd;
What then could her heart-sickness soothe ?
"The course of true love ne'er ran smooth!"
Her bosom ached with drear suspense,
Till sharper trouble drove it thence:
Affliction smote her father's brain,
And he became a child again.
Written for a benevolent Society
relieve poor women during the
little property they may have
ment, when kindness and
may be practicable, to ass
themselves and their fa'
as thy day:"
i relief;
of grief.
w, from clime to clime,
ged by tide or time,
morning to the sun;
and William soon were one;
ever rang the village bells
a sweeter falls or merrier swells,
nan while the neighbours, young and old,
Stood at their thresholds, to behold,
And bless them, till they reach'd the spot,
Where woodbines girdled Mary's cot,
Where throstles, perch'd on orchard trees,
Sang to the hum of garden bees:
And there no longer forced to roam-
William found all the world at home;
Yea, more than all the world beside,
kind heart to his allied.
Twelve years of humble life they spent,
With food and raiment well content;
In flower of youth and flush of health,
They envied not voluptuous wealth;
The wealth of poverty was theirs,
-Those riches without wings or snares,
Which honest hands, by daily toil,
May dig from every generous soil.
A little farm, while William till'd,
Mary her household cares fulfill'd;
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