That sees through tears the jugglers leap,-
Would now its wearied vision close,

Would childlike on His love repose,
Who "giveth His beloved, sleep!"

And, friends, dear friends,-when it shall be
That this low breath is gone from me,
And round my bier ye come to weep,
Let one, most loving of you all,

Say, "Not a tear must o'er her fall-
He giveth His beloved, sleep."

THE SERAPH AND POET.

MRS. BROWNING.

THE seraph sings before the manifest
God-one, and in the burning of the Seven,
And with the full life of consummate Heaven
Heaving beneath him like a mother's breast
Warm with her first-born's slumber in that nest,
The poet sings upon the earth grave-riven;
Before the naughty world soon self-forgiven
For wronging him; and in the darkness prest
From his own soul by worldly weights. Even so,
Sing, seraph with the glory!

Sing, poet with the sorrow!

Heaven is high

Earth is low.

O merciful One!

When men are farthest, then art Thou most near; When friends pass by, my weaknesses to shun, Thy chariot I hear.

Thy glorious face

Is leaning toward me, and its holy light
Shines in upon my lonely dwelling-place—
And there is no more night.

On bended knee,

I recognise Thy purpose, clearly shown;
My vision thou hast dimmed, that I may see
Thyself, Thyself alone.

I have naught to fear;

This darkness is the shadow of Thy wing;
Beneath it I am almost sacred-here

Can come no evil thing.

Oh! I seem to stand

Trembling, where foot of mortal ne'er hath been, Wrapped in the radiance from Thy sinless land, Which eye hath never seen.

Visions come and go;

Shapes of resplendent beauty round me throng;
From angel lips I seem to hear the flow
Of soft and holy song.

It is nothing now,

When heaven is opening on my sightless eyes,
When airs from Paradise refresh my brow,
The earth in darkness lies.

In a purer clime,

My being fills with rapture-waves of thought
Roll in upon my spirit-strains sublime
Break over me unsought.

Give me now my lyre!

I feel the stirrings of a gift divine:
Within my bosom glows unearthly fire
Lit by no skill of mine.

THE LIVE-OAK.

H. R. JACKSON

WITH his gnarled old arms, and his iron form,

Majestic in the wood,

From age to age, in the sun and storm,

The live-oak long hath stood;

With his stately air, that grave old tree,
He stands like a hooded monk,
With the gray moss waving solemnly
From his shaggy limbs and trunk.

And the generations come and go,
And still he stands upright,

And he sternly looks on the wood below,
As conscious of his might.

But a mourner sad is the hoary tree,
A mourner sad and lone,

And is clothed in funeral drapery

For the long since dead and gone.

For the Indian hunter beneath his shade
Has rested from the chase;

And he here has wooed his dusky maid-
The dark-eyed of her race;

And the tree is red with the gushing gore
As the wild deer panting dies:

But the maid is gone, and the chase is o'er,
And the old oak hoarsely sighs.

In former days, when the battle's din
Was loud amid the land,

In his friendly shadow, few and thin,
Have gathered Freedom's band;

And the stern old oak, how proud was he
To shelter hearts so brave!

But they all are gone-the bold and free-
And he moans above their grave.

And the aged oak, with his locks of gray,

Is ripe for the sacrifice;

For the worm and decay, no lingering prey,
Shall he tower towards the skies!

He falls, he falls, to become our guard,
The bulwark of the free,

And his bosom of steel is proudly bared
To brave the raging sea!

When the battle comes, and the cannon's roar
Booms o'er the shuddering deep,

Then nobly he'll bear the bold hearts o'er
The waves, with bounding leap.

Oh! may those hearts be as firm and true,
When the war-clouds gather dun,
As the glorious oak that proudly grew
Beneath our southern sun.

THE FAMINE.

O THE long and dreary Winter!

O the cold and cruel Winter!
Ever thicker, thicker, thicker
Froze the ice on lake and river,
Ever deeper, deeper, deeper
Fell the snow o'er all the landscape,
Fell the covering snow, and drifted
Through the forest, round the village.

Hardly from his buried wigwam
Could the hunter force a passage;
With his mittens and his snow-shoes
Vainly walked he through the forest,
Sought for bird or beast and found none,
Saw no track of deer or rabbit,
In the snow beheld no footprints,
In the ghastly, gleaming forest

Fell, and could not rise from weakness,
Perished there from cold and hunger.

O the famine and the fever!
O the wasting of the famine!
O the blasting of the fever!
O the wailing of the children!
O the anguish of the women!

All the earth was sick and famished;
Hungry was the air around them,
Hungry was the sky above them,

And the hungry stars in heaven
Like the eyes of wolves glared at them!

LONGFELLOW.