THE PROCLAMATION.

S

AINT Patrick, slave to Milcho of the herds

Of Ballymena, wakened with these words:

"Arise, and flee

Out from the land of bondage, and be free!”

Glad as a soul in pain, who hears from heaven The angels singing of his sins forgiven,

And, wondering, sees

His prison opening to their golden keys,

He rose, a man who laid him down a slave,
Shook from his locks the ashes of the grave,
And outward trod

Into the glorious liberty of God.

He cast the symbols of his shame away;

And, passing where the sleeping Milcho lay,
Though back and limb

Smarted with wrong, he prayed, "God pardon him!"

So went he forth: but in God's time he came
To light on Uilline's hills a holy flame;
And, dying, gave

The land a saint that lost him as a slave.

O dark, sad millions, patiently and dumb Waiting for God, your hour, at last, has come, And freedom's song

Breaks the long silence of your night of wrong!

Arise and flee! shake off the vile restraint

Of ages; but, like Ballymena's saint,

The oppressor spare,

Heap only on his head the coals of prayer.

Go forth, like him! like him return again,
To bless the land whereon in bitter pain
Ye toiled at first,

And heal with freedom what your slavery cursed.

ANNIVERSARY POEM.

[Read before the Alumni of the Friends' Yearly Meeting School, at the Annual Meeting at Newport, R. I., 15th 6th Mo., 1863.]

O

NCE more, dear friends, you meet

beneath

A clouded sky :

Not yet the sword has found its sheath,

And on the sweet spring airs the breath

Of war floats by.

Yet trouble springs not from the ground,

Nor pain from chance;

The Eternal order circles round,

And wave and storm find mete and bound

In Providence.

Full long our feet the flowery ways

Of peace have trod,

Content with creed and garb and phrase:

A harder path in earlier days

Led up to God.

Too cheaply truths, once purchased dear,

Are made our own;

Too long the world has smiled to hear

Our boast of full corn in the ear

By others sown ;

To see us stir the martyr fires

Of long ago,

And wrap our satisfied desires

In the singed mantles that our sires
Have dropped below.

But now the cross our worthies bore

On us is laid;