ODE FOR NEW-YEAR'S DAY.

BY GEO. H. COLTON, AUTHOR OF "TECUMSEH."

I. 1.

HARK! I heard a mournful sound,
Deep as ocean's groaning surge;
Minds are wildly wailing round
A low funereal dirge;

And spirit voices meet my ear

With solemn sadness and appalling fear!
What can it be doth thus my soul affright,
And startle e'en the slumbering Night?

It seems with sullen roar Oblivion's wave
Rolling o'er nations dead and Nature in her grave!

I. 2.

Lo! a haggard spectre train,

Wild and shadowy shapes appear,

Bearing on with woful plain

A corse and sable bier;

Disease, and Pain, and Penury,

And Melancholy of the tearful eye,

Friendship with altered brow, and baffled Guile,

Remorse, that ne'er was seen to smile,

Envy, Mistrust, wan Grief, and wasted Care,
And Disappointment sad, and suicide Despair.

"Wearily, O, wearily,"

I. 3.

(The mournful chant was said),

"We bear thy clay-cold corse, O Year, along:

Thy children all are dead;

One by one we saw them die,

And join the Past's innumerable throng.

Thy faithful followers we have been,

Ever wasting hapless Man,

Whose joyless life is shortened to a span,

Tracking his weary steps through each dark scene.
Childhood, and Youth, and withered Age,
On each and all we aye attend,

Till reaching life's last dusty stage,

The pilgrim hails e'en tyrant Death a friend,
Smiles at the icy touch, and joyeth at his end.

II. 1.

"Sisters, brothers, slowly bear

To his grave the perished Year,

Wailing to the darkened air

A dirge above his bier.

Around him flitting, faded Hours,

Scatter upon his corse pale, withered flowers;

For he is hasting to that dim domain,

Whence he may ne'er return again,

The Past,-into that peopled Solitude,

The voiceless, shadowy throng, the years beyond the Flood.

II. 2.

"Ever with the perishing years From the earth man's race decay, Journeying on in dust and tears,

Of Time and Death the prey! Ours is the joy to see them fall,

To wrap them in the winding-sheet and pall,

And bearing their cold forms, like thine, along,
With mockery of inourning song,

Whelm them at last 'neath dark Oblivion's main,

Whence they and thou, O year, shall never wake again!"

Merrily, O, merrily,

Arose another strain,

II. 3.

As this strange company did disappear;
And lo! a joyous train

Passed before my wondering eye,

Bearing in lifted arms the infant Year.

Pleasure, and Youth, and laughing Love,

Hand in hand with Joy and Mirth,

And star-eyed Hope, that ever looks from earth,

And radiant Fancy in light measure move.
On silken wings the blooming Hours

Hovered above the sleeping child,

Dispensing fairest, freshest flowers,

Until the boy awoke, and waking smiled,

To hear this rising strain, so solemn, sweet, and wild.

III. 1.

"See the golden Morn arise,

Where the first faint streaks appear,

Climbing up the dewy skies

To hail the new-born Year,

Attendants of the princely boy,

We bring man's wasted race sweet peace and joy,

While flee yon ghastly train with gloomy Night

Before us and the dawning light.

Raise we on high the joyous natal lay,

And bear the new-born King to meet the early day.

"See the star of Bethlehem

III. 2.

Up the burning east ascend! Cherubim and Seraphim

Upon its course attend!

Away, away the shadows roll,

That hopeless darkened erst the human soul,

As its bright beams on the mean mansion shine,

Where lowly sleeps the Child Divine.

'Peace, peace to men!' the heavenly voices sing,

And 'peace, good will to men!' the heavenly arches ring!

I HAVE read that the people of one of the interior nations of Africa elect their king by fastening a cord to the top of a tree, and requiring all the candidates for the regal office to pull at it; and that candidate who can draw it nearest to the ground, is by acclamation declared king; not because he is wiser or better, but because he unites in his person more of the important properties of weight and power than any other man in the nation.

In savage and idolatrous countries, in all ages, the power to acquire dominion has been regarded as a sufficient guaranty for enslaving the feeble and defenceless. Hence it is that because her muscles are weak, and her frame tender, woman has become the slave and inferior of man, and has been doomed to drudgery and degradation to promote his pleasure or indulge his pride. But as degradation is the consequence of ignorance, and slavery the condition of the brute, he who would degrade or enslave even the feeble, must first degrade and enslave the mind, by keeping it locked up in ignorance, both of the dignity of its origin and the glory of its end. Hence tyranny in pagan countries has denied woman the book of knowledge, and in Mohammedan countries the existence of a soul. But wherever civilisation has dawned on the world, and the influence of Christianity been felt, her chains have fallen off-female character has progressively risen, and female education become of greater and greater importance. But much as she has advanced in both these respects, she is yet very far below her proper level and her ultimate destiny. Her education is yet very far from what it ought to be to make her the instructor of her offspring, the ornament of society, and the free, equal, and happy companion of man; and even where its progress has been sufficiently great, it has been

encumbered with so many wild and wanton growths as to make it almost fruitless of its great and important end.

Situated as we are in reference both to time and eternity, all education is valuable or valueless, as it tends to make the relations we shall hereafter occupy happy or miserable. How unwise, then, to spend the vigor of youth in the acquirement of that which youth only can enjoy, and which, if carried into the more advanced period of life, would only be adding the follies of youth to the follies of age! Life is a short drama at best, and the parts which women play are soonest over. It is the old age of the other sex only which is tormented by the plague of avarice and ambition. It is man only whose

pale withered hands are still stretched out, Trembling at once with eagerness and age,

With avarice and convulsions grasping hard.".

Woman's chief ambition is gratified by a single conquest; the scope of her happiness and usefulness is circumscribed by the domestic and social circle. Beyond this her influence is only felt by its moral reflection on the hearts and lives of mankind. Nor is this the result of any system of education-it is a distinguishing circumstance in her existence-one which God never intended to be otherwise.

What, then, is this highest object of woman's ambition-that in which she feels the deepest interest, and from whence she draws the greatest happiness? It is to be beloved-to call one gallant and faithful heart her own. Poverty, exile, slavery and death have no aspect to her so gloomy as the thought of being forgotten. She will smile like an angel over poverty's scantiest meal-she will follow a lover's footsteps to "distant and barbarous climes"-she will ply her hands to the spindle and the distaff with the constancy of a galley-slave-she will meet death with the fortitude of a heroine-but ah! to be neglected-to be neither the object of joy nor grief, of hope nor fear, of love nor hate, but to wither unseen, like a neglected weed, is more than she can endure.

"The keenest pangs the wretched find

Are raptures to the dreary void-
The leafless desert of the mind-
The waste of feeling unemployed."

How then shall she attain and keep that which is thus the soul of her ambition and the well-spring of her life? If the rose on her cheek was perennial, and the fire in her eye unquenchable, then might she trust in the power of beauty; but when sickness tames the bounding pulse, when the rose fades from the cheek, and the fire from the eye, what then remains to be admired but the superior beauties of the immortal mind?

To our sex is given more of the muscular power possessed

in common with the inferior animals; but the God of nature, as if he would form a connecting link between men and angels, has given to woman the tiny form, the fragile frame, and pictured in her countenance the personification of spiritual existence. How mortifying, then, to the ardent admirer of the fair, to find beneath the form of beauty that index of intellect, a starved, meagre, and dwarfish soul!

Flora was once a lovely laughing girl, possessed of all the external charms which this world calls beautiful. She danced like a fairy and sang like an angel; and when she entered the assembly room, each stranger with fluttering heart asked his acquaintance, "Who is that beautiful creature?" A beardless youth of lofty brow stepped down from the shades of Parnassus, burning with poetic ardor, and revolving in his mind a thousand plans of future greatness-she caught his eye, and his soul was wrapt with the vision

The

He wooed, and won, and wedded her, and she (fond enthusiast) thought her happiness complete. For a while he doted fondly on her; but he loves her not now. Why not? She is now his wife, and custom no longer requires that they should consume the time by talking over the little nothings with which the fashionable gallant ekes out an evening's conversation. sweetmeats of the honeymoon pall upon the sense, and his taste requires something more substantial. He talks to her about the realities of life; but she has lived all her days in the world of imagination. He talks to her about science; but she knows not what he says. He talks to her about literature; but she knows not what it is. He talks to her about the world as it is; but he finds her a stranger in it. He talks to her about the world as it has been in past ages; but the light of history has never beamed on her mind. He finds in her no thought, no feeling in harmony with his own. She touches not the strings of his heart, and like the wires of an untuned instrument, they corrode with the rust of loneliness. He becomes solitary in the bosom of his own family, and seeks society elsewhere. Something (it may be jealousy) whispers in the ear of the once happy Flora, "Your husband despises you!" and her peace of mind is ruined for ever. There may be something unkind in his conduct, but it is the legitimate result of disappointment. It is the common fate of the disappointed, not only to be unhappy themselves, but to make