Think ye his dim and failing eye
Is kindled at your pageantry?
Sorrowing of soul, and chained of limb,
What is your carnival to him?
Down with the Law that binds him thus !

Unworthy freemen, let it find
No refuge from the withering curse

Of God and human-kind !
Open the prison's living tomb,
And usher from its brooding gloom
The victims of your savage code,
To the free sun and air of God,
Nor longer dare as crime to brand
The chastening of the Almighty's hand.

LINES ON PASSING THE GRAVE OF MY

SISTER.

On yonder shore, on yonder shore,

Now verdant with the depth of shade,
Beneath the white-armed sycamore,

There is a little infant laid.
Forgive this tear-a brother weeps--
'Tis there the faded flow'ret sleeps.

She sleeps alone, she sleeps alone,

And summer's forests o'er her wave;
And sighing winds at autumn moan

Around the little stranger's grave,
As though they murmured at the fate
Of one so lone and desolate.

In sounds that seem like Sorrow's own,

Their funeral dirges faintly creep; Then deep’ning to an organ tone,

In all their solemn cadence sweep, And pour, unheard, along the wild, Their desert anthem o'er a child.

She came, and passed. Can I forget

How we whose hearts had hailed her birth, Ere three autumnal suns had set,

Consigned her to her mother Earth!
Joys and their memories pass away;
But griefs are deeper ploughed than they.
We laid her in her narrow cell,

We heaped the soft mould on her breast, And parting tears, like rain-drops, fell

Upon her lonely place of rest.
May angels guard it-may they bless
Her slumbers in the wilderness.

She sleeps alone, she sleeps alone;

For, all unheard, on yonder shore,
The sweeping flood, with torrent moan,

At evening lifts its solemn roar,
As, in one broad, eternal tide,
The rolling waters onward glide.
There is no marble monument,

There is no stone with graven lie,
To tell of love and virtue blent

In one almost too good to die.• We need no such useless trace To point us to her resting-place.

She sleeps alone, she sleeps alone;

But 'midst the tears and April showers,
The Genius of the Wild hath strewn

His germs of fruit, his fairest flowers,
And cast his robe of vernal bloom,
In guardian fondness, o'er the tomb.

She sleeps alone, she sleeps alone;

But yearly is her grave turf dressed,
And still the summer vines are thrown

In annual wreaths across her breast,
And still the sighing autumn grieves,
And strews the hallowed spot with leaves.

THE DYING BOY.

It must be sweet in childhood to give back
The spirit to its Maker, ere the heart
Hath grown familiar with the paths of sin,
And soon to gather up its bitter fruits.
I knew a boy, whose infant feet had trod
Upon the blossoms of some seven springs,
And when the eighth came round, and called him out
To revel in its light, he turned away,
And sought his chamber, to lie down and die.
'T was night; he summoned his accustomed friends,
And in this wise bestowed his last requests :-

“Mother, I'm dying now;
There's a deep suffocation on my breast,
As if some heavy hand my bosom pressed,
And on my brow I feel the cold sweat stand.

Say, mother, is this death?
Mother, your

hand!
Here, lay it on my wrist,
And place the other thus, beneath my head;
And say, sweet mother, say, when I am dead

Shall I be missed ?

“Never beside your knee
Shall I kneel down again at night, to pray,
Nor in the morning wake, and sing the lay

You taught to me.
Oh! at the time of

prayer,
When
you

look round and see a vacant seat, You will not wait then for my coming feet

You'll miss me there.

“Father, I'm going home, To that great home you spoke of, that bless'd land Where there is one bright summer, always bland,

And tortures do not come.

From faintness and from pain,
From troubles, fears, you say I shall be free-
That sickness does not enter there, and we

Shall meet again.

“Brother, the little spot I used to call my garden, where long hours We've stay'd to watch the coming buds and flowers,

Forget it not.

Plant there some box or pine, Something that lives in winter, and will be A verdant offering to my memory,

And call it mine.

“ Sister, the young rose-tree, That all the spring has been my pleasant care, Just putting forth its leaves so green and fair,

I give to thee:

And when its roses bloom
I shall be gone away—my short course run-
And will you not bestow a single one

Upon my tomb?

“Now, mother, sing the tune

sang last night; I'm weary, and must sleep Who was it called my name? Nay, do not weep,

You'll all come soon!”

You

Morning spread over earth her rosy wings,
And that meek sufferer, cold and ivory pale,
Lay on his couch asleep. The morning air
Came through the open window, freighted with
The fragrant odors of the lovely spring.
He breathed it not. The laugh of passers by
Jarred like a discord in some mournful note,
But worried not his slumber-he was dead!

GOD OUR REFUGE.

BEREFT of all, when hopeless care

Would sink us to the tomb,
O what can save us from despair ?

What dissipate the gloom ?

No balm that earthly plants distil

Can soothe the mourner's smart;