Let us, then, be up and doing, THE DYING BOY. I KNEW a boy whose infant feet had trod To gambol in the sun, he turned away, And sought his chamber to lie down and die. And on this wise bestowed his last bequest : 'Mother, I'm dying now There is deep suffocation in my breast, 'I feel the cold sweat stand; My lips grow dry and tremulous, and my breath '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 with 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 the good home you speak of, that blest land Where it is one bright summer always, and Storms do not come. 'I must be happy then! From pain and death you say I shall be free, That sickness never enters there, and we Shall meet again. 'Brother! the little spot I used to call my garden, where long hours We've stayed to watch the budding things and flowers; Forget it not. 'Plant there some box or pine, 'Sister! my young rose tree That all the spring has been my pleasant care, 'And when its roses bloom, I shall be gone away-my short life done; Now mother! sing that tune You sang last night, I'm weary and must sleep! Morning spread over earth her rosy wings, He breathed it not!-The laugh of passers by * LEAVES. R. Montgomery. * * Leaves, That fade and drop into the frozen arms Of winter, there to mingle with dead flowers, THE SEA SHELL. B. Barton. HAST thou heard of a shell on the margin of ocean, Whose pearly recesses the echoes still keep, Of the music it caught when, with tremulous motion, It joined in the concert poured forth by the deep? And fables have told us when far inland carried, To the waste sandy desert, and dark ivied cave, In its musical chambers some murmurs have tarried, It learnt long before of the wind and the wave. Oh! thus should our spirits, which bear many a token They are not of earth, but are exiles while here, Preserve in the banishment, pure and unbroken, Some sweet treasured notes of their own native sphere. Though the dark clouds of sin may at times hover o'er us, And the discords of earth may their melody mar, Yet to spirits redeemed some faint notes of that chorus, Which is born of the blest, will be brought from afar. THE COMMON LOT. 3. Montgomery. "ONCE in the flight of ages past, Unknown the region of his birth, The land in which he lived unknown; That joy, and grief, and hope and fear, The bounding pulse, the languid limb, He suffered-but his pangs are o'er; Had friends-his friends are now no more; |