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sunny months of prosperity; and then not becoming a chrysalis, an inert moth in adversity, but a croaking repining, ill-tempered termagant, who can only recur to the days of her short-lived triumph, to imbitter the misery, and poverty, and hopelessness of a husband, who, like herself, knows not to dig, and is ashamed to beg.

But our paths might all be smoother
And our hearts would aye be blest,
With Contentment for a motto,
And a Heart's-ease for a crest.

FAITH.

BY FRANCES ANN BUTLER.

Better trust all, and be deceived,

And weep that trust, and that deceiving;
Than doubt one heart, that if believed
Had blessed one's life with true believing.
Oh, in this mocking world, too fast
The doubting fiend o'ertakes our youth!
Better be cheated to the last

We are obliged to avail ourselves of severe language in application to a deep-rooted malady. We want words of power. We need energetic and stern applications. No country ever verged more rapidly towards extravagance and expense. In a young republic, like ours, it is ominous of any thing but good. Men of thought, and virtue, and example, are called upon to look to this evil. Ye patrician families, that croak, and complain, and forbode the downfall of the republic, here is the origin of your evils. Instead of training your son to waste his time, as an idle young gentleman at large,-instead of inculcating on your daughter, that the incessant tinkling of a harpsichord, or a scornful and lady-like toss of the head, or dexterity in waltzing, are the chief requisites to make her way in life,-if you can find no better em- be buried in some sunny spot. This, some one has ployment for them, teach him the use of the grub-finely expressed as follows:

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HEART'S-EASE.

I knew her in her brightness,
A creature full of glee,

As the dancing waves that sparkle
O'er a placid summer sea;
To her the world was sunshine,
And peace was in her breast,
For Contentment was her motto,
And a Heart's-case was her crest.

Yet deem not for a moment

That her life was free from care;
She shared the storms and sorrows
That others sigh to bear;

But she met earth's tempests meekly,
In the hope of heaven's rest,
So she gave not up her motto,
Nor cast away her crest.

Alas! the many frowning brows,
And eyes that speak of wo,
And hearts that turn repiningly
From every chastening blow;

Than lose the bl ssed hope of truth.

THE LAST WISH.

Wilson, the ornithologist, requested that he might

In some wild forest shade,
Under some spreading oak, or waving pine,
Or old elm, festooned with the gadding vine,
Let me be laid.

In this dim lonely grot,
No foot intrusive will disturb my dust;
But o'er me songs of the wild birds shall burst,
Cheering the spot.

Not amid charnel stones,

Or coffins dark, and thick with ancient mould,
With tattered pall, and fringe of cankered gold,
May rest my bones;

But let the dewy rose,

The snow-drop and the violet, lend perfume
Above the spot where, in my grassy tomb,
I take repose.

Year after year,

Within the silver birch tree o'er me hung,
The chirping wren shall rear her callow young,
Shall build her dwelling near.

And ever at the purple dawn of day
The lark shall chant a pealing song above,
And the shrill quail shall pipe her hymn of love
When eve grows dim and gray.

The blackbird and the thrush,

The golden oriole, shall flit around,
And waken, with a mellow gust of sound,
The forest's solemn hush.

Birds from the distant sea

Shall sometimes hither flock on snowy wings,
And soar above my dust in airy rings,

Singing a dirge to me.

VOICES OF THE TRUE HEARTED.

No. 6.

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He was not armed like those of eastern clime,
Whose heavy axes felled their heathen foe;
Nor was he clad like those of later time,
Whose breast worn cross betrayed no cross below;
Nor was he of the tribe of Levi born,

Whose pompous rights proclaim how vain their
prayer;--

Whose chilling words are heard at night and morn,
Who rend their robes, but still their hearts would
But he nor steel nor sacred robes had on, [spare;
Yet went he forth, in God's almighty power :
He spoke the word whose will is ever done
From day's first dawn, to earth's remotest hour;
And mountains melted from his presence down,
And hell affrighted fled before his frown.

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THE DEAD.

TO THE PURE ALL THINGS ARE PURE.
The flowers, I pass, have eyes that look at me,
The birds have ears that hear my spirit's voice,
And I am glad the leaping brook to see,
Because it does at my light step rejoice.
Come, brothers, all who tread the grassy hill,
Or wander thoughtless o'er the blooming fields,
Come learn the sweet obedience of the will;
Thence every sight and sound new pleasure yields.
Nature shall seem another house of thine,
When he who formed thee, bids it live and play,
And in thy rambles e'en the creeping vine
Shall keep with thee a jocund holiday,
And every plant, and bird, and insect, be
Thine own companions born for harmony.

SYMPATHY.

Thou hast not left the rough-barked tree to grow
Without a mate upon the river's bank;
Nor dost thou on one flower the rain bestow,

I see them,-crowd on crowd they walk the earth-But many a cup the glittering drops has drank;
Dry leafless trees to autumn wind laid bare;
And in their nakedness find cause for mirth,
And all unclad would winter's rudeness dare ;
No sap doth through their clattering branches flow,
Whence springing leaves and blossoms bright appear;
Their hearts the living God has ceased to know,
Who gives the spring time to the expectant year;
They mimic life, as if from him to steal
His glow of health to paint the livid cheek.
They borrow words, for thoughts they cannot feel,
That with a seeming heart their tongue may speak :
And in their show of life more dead they live,
Than those that to the earth with many tears they
give.

The bird must sing to one who sings again,
Else would her notes less welcome be to hear;
Nor hast thou bid thy word descend in vain,
But soon some answering voice shall reach my ear;
Then shall the brotherhood of peace begin,
And the new song be raised that never dies,
That shall the soul from death and darkness win,
And burst the prison where the captive lies;
And one by one, new born shall join the strain,
Till earth restores her sons to heav'n again.

THE GRAVEYARD.

My heart grows sick before the wide spread death,
That walks and spreads in seeming life around;
And I would love the corse without a breath,
That sleeps forgotten 'neath the cold, cold ground;
For these do tell the story of decay,
The worm and rotten flesh hide not, nor lie;
But this, though dying too, from day to day,
With a false show doth cheat the longing eye;
And hide the worm that gnaws the core of life,
With painted cheek, and smooth deceitful skin;
Covering a grave with sights of darkness rife,
A secret cavern filled with death and sin;
And men walk o'er these graves and know it not,
For in the body's health the soul's forgot.

TIME INSTANT.

Is there no hope of better things for our world, and must that, which hath been, still be? Is our life really a lie, and can it, by no possibility, come true? 'Twere painful inexpressibly to think thus. 'Twere to make the universe a chaos and our life a riddle. When, stepping forth in one of these perfect June mornings, we find ourself so gloriously compassed-that magnificent vault above and this prodigal earth under us-yon ever-stirring sea kissing its shores, and the fresh early breeze wafting a blessing unto us-and then think, for a moment, on the falsities, the disorders, the everlasting clash and unrest, the disunion and disharmony of this our social condition-we cannot believe 'tis to endure as now. We must needs dream of man, the nobler being, harmonized with nature, the meaner creation.

Sprung from the same original, one wisdom and love, brightest often, has found at last its destroying supervises both.

It needs not many years to teach us how at odds is the unsophisticated spirit with the social order whereunto 'tis born. Where lives he, to whom the revelation of what the world truly is was not a shock and an anguish unspeakable? Evermore 'tis by a downhill path one reaches the platform, whereon the world's tasks are to be executed and worldly success achieved. Were the whole truth to burst at once upon us, we were overwhelmed. But one beauteous illusion after another fades away-one principle after another is surrendered as romantic and impracticable-compromise after compromise is struck with absolute verity-lash on lash of the torturing scourge of necessity drives us into the beaten ways and bows us to " things as they are"ray by ray goes out of our birth star, till

"At length the man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day."

Yet no time, nor custom, nor debasement itself, can utterly destroy our inwrought impressions of the existence of a somewhat purer and nobler than actually greets the sense, the possession whereof 'tis man's prerogative to achieve. Manifold and unmistakable are the intimations thereof. Of the myriad things, that recall our youth, not one but remembers us of youth's high purposes and hopes. Music bears witness to us of a more exalted than our wonted sphere. And nature, with its undying harmonies and ever fresh beauty, hath perpetual rebuke for our disorder and deformity. But especially does poesy, the ever-living witness of the Divine to man, point unceasingly to an ideal, challenging our aspirations.

From all which causes it is that reform is measurably a demand of every age. However self content and however absorbed by its own immediate schemes, it cannot evade the thought of a possible advance. Our own time is one altogether unwonted in this regard. The reform-call is universal. One malfeasance and defect after another has been assaulted, till no mountain-side but hath echoed back, and no remotest valley that hath not been startled, by the vehement demand for new and better lifecon litions. Governments, once keeping afar the inquiries of the mass by pompous awes and terrors, have at last felt the pressure of the common hand on their shoulders, and been fain to render, as they might, a justification of their existence. The Church, no longer the Ark, the touch whereof is death, has been, mayhap, even rudely handled, and anywise been moved to asssign men's largest good as the sole reason for its surviving. And throughout all departments of social life the same movement has gone. Intemperance itself-earth's coeval and universal curse-that foul, prodigious birth, to which the world, desperate of resistance, has been fain to yield an annual sacrifice, from its hopefulest and

Theseus, and life looks greener in expectancy of this deliverance. Madness, that thing of horrid mystery, before which, as 'twere a fiend incarnate, other days have quailed in helpless awe, has by modern benevolence been looked steadily in the eye and tamed. Nor has the "prisoner" been forgot. No more, like the old time, leprous, are they shut out from sympathetic interchange with the sound, and branded irrecoverable, so left to die uncared of. "Twas remembered that a condemned one accepted the Christ of God while the people's "honorable ones" flouted and murdered him—that to one cut judicially off was "Paradise opened," while over the self-complacent, who settled and witnessed his fate, a doom impended so appalling as to draw tears from the guiltless victim of their bar. barity. That most illustrious of chivalrous banners, the ensign of Howard, the Godfrey of the crusade for the redemption of the outcast, has gathered about it a host of congenial spirits, and many a prison of ours, like that of Paul and Silas, has echoed with hymns of the "free"-of those born into the “ glorious liberty of the sons of God."

But grateful as these movements are to the philanthropic heart, 'tis impossible not to see, that, after all, they are neither central nor permanent. 'Tis but shearing off the poisonous growths, the roots whereof are left intact and vigorous. The hour has come, we think, for assaying that radical reform, wherein all reforms else are comprised. Our social order itself rests on principles unsound and pernicious, and why not strike at the root of the tree? It pains us to witness so much of honorable, real and faithful endeavour little better than flung away in tasks, which still must be renewed at the instant of completion. Might we but live to see even the corner-stone laid of a right Christian Society! What now be we but sons of Ishmael? Of a huge majority 'tis the anxious, everlasting cry, "how shall we exist ?" Not, how shall we achieve the noblest good?" Not, "how shall we unfold most completely the godlike within us?" And can it be God's unrepealable ordinance that the great mass of them bearing His impress shall drudge through their life-term to supply their meanest wants, perpetually overtasked, shrouded thick in intellectual night, uncognisant of the marvels of wisdom and beauty testifying His presence in our world, unparticipant of a joy above that of the beasts that perish? Must war and pestilence and famine, must crime and vice and sickness and remorse still hound this poor life of man through the whole of its quick-finished circle? Must the gallows yet pollute, and the prison gloom, and the brothel curse, and madhouse and poorhouse shadow the green breast of earth? Wo for our wisdom, that to labor, the first great ordinance of Heaven, we have discovered no better instigation than the insufferable goad of starvation!

Wo for a social system, wherein the individual and the general good staud irreconcilably opponent Without prevalent sickness the physician must famish. But for quarrel and litigation the lawyer's hearth fire must go out. On the existence of war's "butcher-work" the soldier's hopes are based. The monopolist grows fat on the scarcity that makes others lean. The builder and an associated host are lighted to wealth by the conflagration that lays half a city in ashes. Everywhere the same disunity prevails, and the precept, "Love thy neighbor as thyself," is practically nullified by the very motive powers of our social existence. The true man can remain such only by fleeing to the desert, or waging everlasting warfare with all influences about him.

How is it the world deals, and ever hath dealt with that extraordinary virtue, the manifestation of the Divine to man? Alas, for the dishonoring tale! Lo, the noble Athenian expiring of the hemlock in the malefactor's prison! Lo, a far higher than the Athenian writhing on the "accursed tree!" Ever 'tis crucifixion the world exacts as penalty of him who would show it a more excellent way." And what reception finds genius, that perpetual witness to a race ingulfed by sense of the immortal and invisible? Does the world hail its Avatar and reverently listen to its utterances, as to the oracle's responses? Alas, for the historic leaf that registers its mortal fate! Society has no allotted place for him who, dowered with this divine attribute, surrenders himself wholly to its inspirations, speaks out its unmodified suggestions, and treads, unquestioning, the path it points out. Obstructions hedge him about, penury cramps and denies him both instruments and occasions, calumny and ridicule dog him, neglect freezes or hate turns to gall his heart's ardent loves, and, with naked feet, he is constrained to tread a stony, thorny way. Even so deals the world with them commissioned of God as its prophets and teachers. No marvel, then, at the frequent perversion and sometimes deep debasement of genius.

Want and fashion, and the broad, deep currents of immemorial opinion 'tis not given, save rarely, even to this to resist and overcome. Blame not, then, that you witness Heaven's own subtle flame burning on strange altars, or the temple vessels desecrated by heathen orgies.

But the social order, that necessitates things like these is it for us to acquiesce therein, or shall we demand a reorganization?

Verily, we crave no impracticable, no irrational thing. We ask a society wherein all God's children shall be sufficiently fed, and clad, and housed— wherein every individual shall find leisure, sphere, and means for the fit, harmonious unfolding of all his powers of body and spirit-wherein each shall have his true standing place and environment, and may act his individual self freely and fully out— wherein the highest shall be recognized as highest,

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BY CHARLES WEST THOMPSON.
"What shadows we are, what shadows we pursue."
Well might weep the sentimental Persian,
Looking o'er his host of armed men,
When on Greece he made his wild incursion,

Whence so few might e'er return again.
Well might weep he o'er those countless millions,
Dreaming of the future and the past,

As he gazed, amid the gold pavillions

Round his throne, upon that crowd so vast; Musing with subdued and solemn feelings,

On the awful thoughts that filled his soul,One of those most terrible revealings

That will sometimes o'er the spirit roll : Thoughts, that of that multitude before him, Panting high for fame-athirst to striveEre old time had sped a century o'er him,

Not, perhaps, would one be left alive :
That those hearts now bounding in the glory
Of existence, would be hushed and cold,
Not their very names preserved in story,
Nor upon fame's chronicle enrolled :
All to earth, their proper home departed;
Light heart, strong hand, all gone to kindred
In their vacant room a new race started, [clay;
Careless of the millions passed away.

Well might weep he-well might we, in weeping,
Make our offering at sorrow's call-
When we ponder how our days are creeping,

Like the shadow on the mouldering wall; When we think how soon the sunbeam, setting,

Will depart, and leave it all in shadeAnd our very friends will be forgetting That the day-light o'er it ever played. Life upon a swallow's wing is flying,

O'er the earth it sparkles and is gone;
All our days are but a lengthened dying-
One dark hour before the eternal dawn.
Riches, glory, honor, fame, ambition-

All as swiftly fly, as soon are fled;
Or, if gathered, mend they our condition?
What delight can these afford the dead?

Chase no more the phantom of thy dreaming-
Weary is the hunt, the capture vain;
When thy arms embrace the golden seeming,
It will vanish from thy grasp again.
Trouble not thy heart with anxious carings,-
Thou art but a shadow-so are they ;
Let the things of heaven deserve thy darings,
They alone will never pass away.

SONNETS.

BY RICHARD CHENEVIX FRENCH.

THE NOBLER CUNNING.

Ulysses, sailing by the Sirens' isle,

Sealed first his comrades' ears, then bade them fast
Bind him with many a fetter to the mast,
Least those sweet voices should their souls beguile,
And to their ruin flatter them, the while
Their homeward bark was sailing swiftly past;
And thus the peril they behind them cast,
Though chased by those weird voices many a mile.
But yet a nobler cunning Orpheus used:
No fetter he put on, nor stopped his ear,
But ever, as he passed, sang high and clear
The blisses of the Gods, their holy joys,
And with diviner melody confused
And marred earth's sweetest music to a noise.

VESUVIUS.

As when unto a mother, having chid,

Her child in anger, there have straight ensued,
Repentings for her quick and angry mood,
Till she would fain see all its traces hid
Quite out of sight-even so has Nature bid
Fair flowers, that on the scarred earth she has
To blossom, and called up the taller wood [strew'd,
To cover what she ruined and undid.
Oh! and her mood of anger did not last
More than an instant; but her work of peace,
Restoring and repairing, comforting

The earth, her stricken child, will never cease;
For that was her strange work, and quickly past;
To this her genial toil no end the years shall bring
That her destroying fury was with noise
And sudden uproar-but far otherwise,
With silent and with secret ministries,
Her skill in renovation she employs :
For Nature only loud, when she destroys,
Is silent when she fashions; she will crowd
The work of her destruction, transient, loud,
Into an hour, and then long peace enjoys.
Yea, every power that fashions and upholds
Works silently-all things, whose life is sure,
Their life is calm; silent the light that moulds
And colors all things; and without debate
The stars, which are for ever to endure,
Assume their thrones and their unquestioned state.

FRANCE, 1834.

How long shall weary nations toil in blood,
How often roll the still-returning stone
Up the sharp painful height, ere they will own,
That on the base of individual good,
Of virtue, manners, and pure homes endued
With household graces-that on this alone
Shall social freedom stand-where these are gone,
There is a nation doomed to servitude?
O, suffering, toiling France, thy toil is vain!
The irreversible decree stands sure,
Where men are selfish, covetous of gain,
Heady and fierce, unholy and impure,
Their toil is lost, and fruitless all their pain;
They cannot build a work which shall endure.

WILD FLOWERS.

How thick the wild-flowers blow about our feet,
Thick strewn and unregarded, which, if rare,
We should take note how beautiful they were,
How delicately wrought, of scent how sweet.
And mercies which do every where us meet,
Whose very commonness should win more praise,
Do for that very cause less wonder raise,
And thus with slighter thankfulness we greet.
Yet pause thou often on life's onward way,
Pause time enough to stoop and gather one
Of these sweet wild-flowers-time enough to tell
Its beauty over-this when thou has done,
And marked it duly, then if thou canst lay
It wet with thankful tears into thy bosom, well!

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To one born and bred in New England, the sentiment must be inevitable, that it is a free country.' The language of every-day life teems with that capital idea. It is the first idea that infancy is taught, and the last one forgotten by old age. Freedom, of costly water in the jewelry of our patriotism. Liberty, Free Institutions, Free Soil, &c. are terms

How pleasant it is to think-be it true or falsethat cold, hard-soiled, pure-skyed New England, is, indeed, a free land! that in her long struggle for freedom, she expunged from her soil every crimson spot, every lineament of human slavery, and severed every ligament that connected her with that inhuman institution! And so we thought. We got out of our cradle with that idea. It was in our heart when we first looked up at the blue-sky, and listened to the little merry birds that were swimming in its bosom. It was in our heart, like thoughts of music, when the spring winds came, and spring voices twittered in the tree tops; when the swallow and the lark and all the summer birds sang for joy, and

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