In the world's broad field of battle,
In the bivouac1 of life,

Be not like dumb driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife!

Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant!
Let the dead Past bury its dead!
Act, act in the living Present!
Heart within, and God o'erhead!
Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time;
Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o'er life's solemn main
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.
Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labour and to wait.

2

ABOU-BEN-ADHEM AND THE ANGEL.-
Leigh Hunt.

ABOU-BEN-ADHEM-(may his tribe increase!)—
Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace,
And saw, within the moonlight in his room,
Making it rich, and like a lily in bloom,
An angel, writing in a book of gold.

1 Bivouac, the guard or watch of a whole army, in cases of great danger of surprise or attack: or the encampment of an army without tents. 2 Main, sea or ocean. Life is here compared to a voyage over a sea. 3 Forlorn, helpless, wretched, destitute. 4 Achieving, doing, performing.

Exceeding peace had made Ben-Adhem bold,
And to the Presence in the room he said,

"What writest thou ?"-The vision raised its head, And, with a look made all of sweet accord,

Answered, "The names of those who love the Lord." "And is mine one ?" said Abou. "Nay, not so," Replied the Angel.

Abou spoke more low,
But cheerly still; and said, "I pray thee, then,
Write me as one that loves his fellow-men."
The Angel wrote and vanished.

The next night,

It came again with a great wakening light,

And showed the names whom love of God had blest,And, lo! Ben-Adhem's name led all the rest.1

THE PALMER.2-Scott.

"OPEN the door, some pity to show!
Keen blows the northern wind!
The glen3 is white with the drifted snow,1
And the path is hard to find.

"No outlaw 5 seeks your castle gate,
From chasing the king's deer;
Though even an outlaw's wretched state

Might claim compassion here!

1 Led all the rest, stood first. Palmer, a pilgrim, so called from the custom of bearing branches of palm by those who had visited the Holy Land.

"The faded palm-branch in his hand,

Showed pilgrim from the Holy Land."-Scott.

3 Glen, a valley. Drifted snow, snow driven by wind into heaps, making the path dangerous to the traveller. 5 Outlaw, one who, for his crimes, is excluded from the benefit of the law. Such a person might, in former times, be robbed, injured, or even murdered, without fear of punishment.

"A weary palmer, worn and weak,
sin;

I wander for my

Oh, open, for Our Lady's' sake!
A pilgrim's blessing win!

"The hare is crouching in her form,

The hart beside the hind;3
An aged man, amid the storm,

No shelter can I find.

"You hear the Ettrick's4 sullen roar,
Dark, deep, and strong is he,
And I must ford 5 the Ettrick o'er,
Unless you pity me.

"The iron gate is bolted hard,
At which I knock in vain;
The owner's heart is closer barred,
Who hears me thus complain.

66

Farewell, farewell! and Heaven grant,
When old and frail

you be,

You never may the shelter want

That's now denied to me!"

The ranger on his couch lay warm,
And heard him plead in vain;
But oft, amid December's storm,
He'll hear that voice again:

For lo! when through the vapours dank
Morn shone on Ettrick fair,
A corpse, amid the alders' rank,
The palmer weltered there.

2 Form, the bed of a river in Selkirkshire, 7 Ranger, gamekeeper,

1 Our Lady, Mary the mother of Jesus. hare. 3 Hind, female deer. 4 Ettrick, a Scotland. 6 5 Ford, wade. Frail, feeble. forester. 8 Dank, wet, moist. 9 Alders, a kind of birch.

THE SOLDIER'S DREAM.-Campbell.

OUR bugles sang truce,1 for the night cloud had lowered,2
And the sentinel stars set their watch in the sky;
And thousands had sunk on the ground overpowered-
The weary to sleep, and the wounded to die.

3

When reposing that night on my pallet of straw,
By the wolf-scaring fagot, that guarded the slain,
At the dead of the night, a sweet vision I saw,
And thrice, ere the morning, I dreamt it again.

Methought, from the battle-field's dreadful array,
Far, far I had roamed on a desolate 5 track;
'Twas autumn, and sunshine arose on the way
To the home of my fathers, that welcomed me back.
I flew to the pleasant fields traversed so oft

In life's morning march," when my bosom was young: I heard my own mountain-goats bleating aloft,

And knew the sweet strain, that the corn-reapers sung.

Then pledged we the wine-cup, and fondly I swore From my home and my weeping friends never to part: My little ones kissed me a thousand times o'er,

And my wife sobbed aloud in her fulness of heart.

Stay, stay with us!-rest; thou art weary and worn
And fain was their war-broken soldier to stay-
But sorrow returned with the dawning of morn,

And the voice, in my dreaming ear, melted away.

Our bugles sang truce, gave the signal to cease fighting for a time. A bugle is a musical instrument. 2 Lowered (pronounced so as to rhyme with overpowered, third line), appeared stormy, gloomy, or threatening. 3 Wolf-scaring fagot, fires lighted to frighten away the wolves. 4 Vision, a dream. 5 Desolate, dreary, solitary, uninhabited. 6 Traversed, wandered over. 7 Life's morning march, the days of childhood. 8 Fain, glad, happy.

THE LAST BUCCANIER.1-Kingsley.

On England is a pleasant place for them that's rich and high,

But England is a cruel place for such poor folks as I;
And such a port for mariners, I ne'er shall see again
As the pleasant Isle of Avés,3 beside the Spanish Main.1

There were forty craft5 in Avés that were both swift and stout,

All furnished well with small arms and cannons round

about;

And a thousand men in Avés made laws so fair and free

To choose their valiant captains, and obey them loyally.7

Thence we sailed against the Spaniard,8 with his hoards of plate and gold,

Which he wrung with cruel tortures from Indian folk of old;

Likewise the merchant captains, with hearts as hard as stone,

Who flog men and keel-haul them, and starve them to the bone.

1 Buccanier, a name given to the privateers and pirates of the Spanish Main in former days. They were principally English and French; and they owe their origin to the efforts of the Spaniards to keep all the newly-discovered countries of America for themselves. Them, etc., a rough sailor is supposed to relate the story, hence the sentences are not always grammatically correct; these few words might be rendered in paraphrasing, "for those who are rich," etc. Isle of Avés, a small island north of South America. 4 Spanish Main, that part of the Atlantic Ocean which washes the north of South America, from the Leeward Islands to the Isthmus of Darien. The term is also applied to the coast. 5 Craft, small sailing ships. Small arms, pistols, swords. 7 Loyally, faithfully. 8 Spaniard, Spanish soldiers had conquered a large part of Central and South America, and, by cruelly treating the natives, had obtained a large amount of treasure. 9 Keel-haul, to drag under the keel or bottom of the ship.