AN EMIGRANT'S BLESSING.

That thou may'st in peaceful progress
All thy misery dispel ;-

Queen of nations: once their model

God be with thee!

Fare-thee-well!

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THE DAYS THAT ARE GONE.

WHO is it that mourns for the days that are gone, When a noble could do as he liked with his own? When his serfs, with their burdens well fill'd on their

backs,

Never dared to complain of the weight of a tax?
When his word was a statute, his nod was a law,

And for aught but his 'order' he cared not a straw?
When each had his dungeon and rack for the poor,
And a gibbet, to hang a refractory boor?

They were days when a man with a thought in his pate
Was a man that was born for the popular hate;
And if 't were a thought that was good for his kind,
The man was too vile to be left unconfined;
The days when obedience, in right or in wrong,
Was always the sermon and always the song;

When the people, like cattle, were pounded or driven, And to scourge them was thought a King's license from heaven.

They were days when the sword settled questions of right,

And Falsehood was first to monopolize Might;

THE DAYS THAT ARE GONE.

When the fighter of battles was always adored,

And the greater the tyrant, the greater the lord;

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When the King, who by myriads could number his slain,

Was consider'd by far the most worthy to reign;

When the fate of the multitude hung on his breath – A god in his life, and a saint in his death.

They were days when the headsman was always prepared

The block ever ready-the axe ever bared;

When a corpse on the gibbet aye swung to and fro,
And the fire at the stake never smoulder'd too low;
When famine and age made a woman a witch,
To be roasted alive, or be drown'd in a ditch;
When difference of creed was the vilest of crime,
And martyrs were burn'd half a score at a time.

They were days when the gallows stood black in the way,
The larger the town, the more plentiful they;
When Law never dream'd it was good to relent,
Or thought it less wisdom to kill than prevent;
When Justice herself, taking Law for her guide,
Was never appeased till a victim had died;
And the stealer of sheep, and the slayer of men,
Were strung up together-again and again.

They were days when the crowd had no freedom of speech,

And reading and writing were out of its reach;
When ignorance, stolid and dense, was its doom,

And bigotry swathed it from cradle to tomb;

But the Present, though clouds o'er her countenance

roll,

Has a light in her eyes, and a hope in her soul.

And we are too wise, like the bigots to mourn
For the darkness of days that shall never return.

LET US ALONE.

MANY-and yet our fate is one,
And little after all we crave
Enjoyment of the common sun,
Fair passage to the common grave;
Our bread and fire, our plain attire,
The free possession of our own:
Rulers, be wise, and lords and kings,
Let us alone - let us alone.

We have a faith, we have a law;
A faith in God, a hope in man;
And own, with reverence and awe,
Love universal as His plan.
To Charity we bow the knee,
The earth's refiner and our own:
Bigots, and fighters about words,
Let us alone· - let us alone.

The world is the abode of men,
And not of demons stark and blind
And Eden's self might bloom again
If men did justice to mankind.

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