Bright leagues of cherry-blossom gleamed,

One sheet of living snow;

The smoke above his father's door

In gray soft eddyings hung;
Must he then watch it rise no more,
Doomed by himself so young?

Yes, honor calls!—with strength like steel
He put the vision by ;

Let dusky Indians whine and kneel,

An English lad must die.

And thus, with eyes that would not shrink,
With knee to man unbent,
Unfaltering on its dreadful brink,
To his red grave he went.

Vain mightiest fleets of iron framed,
Vain those all-shattering guns,
Unless proud England keep untamed
The strong heart of her sons;
So let his name through Europe ring,―
A man of mean estate,

Who died, as firm as Sparta's king,

Because his soul was great.

SIR FRANCIS HASTINGS DOYLE.

Light.

FROM the quickened womb of the primal gloom
The sun rolled black and bare,

Till I wove him a vest for his Ethiop breast
Of the threads of my golden hair;

And when the broad tent of the firmament

Arose on its airy spars,

I penciled the hue of its matchless blue,
And spangled it round with stars.

15*

I painted the flowers of the Eden bowers,
And their leaves of living green,

And mine were the dyes in the sinless eyes

Of Eden's virgin queen;

And when the fiend's art on the trustful heart

Had fastened its mortal spell,

In the silvery sphere of the first-born tear

To the trembling earth I fell.

When the waves that burst o'er the world accurs'd

Their work of wrath had sped,

And the Ark's lone few, the tried and true,
Came forth among the dead;

With the wond'rous gleams of my bridal beams,

I bade their terrors cease,

As I wrote, on the roll of the storm's dark scroll,
God's covenant of peace!

Like a pall at rest on a senseless breast,
Night's funeral shadow slept;-

Where shepherd swains on the Bethlehem plains
Their lonely vigils kept-

When I flashed on their sight the heralds bright

Of Heaven's redeeming plan,

As they chanted the morn of a Saviour born-
Joy, joy to the outcast man!

Equal favor I show to the lofty and low,

On the just and unjust I descend;

E'en the blind, whose vain spheres roll in darkness and tears,

Feel my smile, the blest smile of a friend.

Nay, the flower of the waste by my love is embraced,

As the rose in the garden of Kings;

At the chrysalis bier of the worm I appear,
And lo! the gay butterfly wings.

The desolate Morn, like a mourner forlorn,
Conceals all the pride of her charms,

Till I bid the bright hours chase night from her bowers, And lead the young day to her arms;

And when the gay Rover seeks Eve for his lover,

I

And sinks to her balmy repose,

wrap their soft rest by the zephyr-fanned west,

In curtains of amber and rose.

From my sentinel steep, by the night-brooded deep,

I gaze with unslumbering eye,

When the cynosure star of the mariner

Is blotted from out of the sky;

And guided by me through the merciless sea,
Though sped by the hurricane's wings,
His compassless bark, lone, weltering dark,
To the haven-home safely he brings.

I waken the flowers in their dew-spangled bowers,
The birds in their chambers of green,

And mountain and plain glow with beauty again,
As they bask in my matinal sheen.

Oh, if such the glad worth of my presence to earth,
Though fitful and fleeting the while,

What glories must rest on the home of the blest,

Ever bright with the Deity's smile!.

WILLIAM PITT PALMER.

A Death-Bed.

HER suffering ended with the day;

Yet lived she at its close,

And breathed the long, long night away

In statue-like repose.

But when the sun, in all his state,

Illumed the eastern skies,

She passed through glory's morning-gate,

And walked in Paradise.

JAMES ALDRICH.

A Christmas Hymn.

Ir was the calm and silent night!
Seven hundred years and fifty-three
Had Rome been growing up to might,

And now was queen of land and sea.
No sound was heard of clashing wars,—
Peace brooded o'er the hushed domain:
Apollo, Pallas, Jove, and Mars

Held undisturbed their ancient reign,
In the solemn midnight,

Centuries ago.

'T was in the calm and silent night!
The senator of haughty Rome,
Impatient, urged his chariot's flight,
From lordly revel rolling home;
Triumphal arches, gleaming, swell

His breast with thoughts of boundless sway; What recked the Roman what befell

A paltry province far away,
In the solemn midnight,
Centuries ago?

Within that province far away

Went plodding home a weary boor;
A streak of light before him lay,

Fallen through a half-shut stable-door,
Across his path. He passed, for naught
Told what was going on within;
How keen the stars, his only thought-
The air, how calm, and cold, and thin,
In the solemn midnight,
Centuries ago!

Oh, strange indifference! low and high
Drowsed over common joys and cares;

The earth was still, but knew not why;
The world was listening, unawares.
How calm a moment may precede

One that shall thrill the world forever!
To that still moment, none would heed,
Man's doom was linked no more to sever,
In the solemn midnight,

Centuries ago!

It is the calm and solemn night!

A thousand bells ring out, and throw Their joyous peals abroad, and smite

The darkness, charmed and holy now! The night that erst no name had worn, To it a happy name is given;

For in that stable lay, new-born,

The peaceful Prince of earth and heaven,
In the solemn midnight,

Centuries ago!

ALFRED DOMMET.

The Evy Green.

O, A DAINTY plant is the ivy green,

That creepeth o'er ruins old!

Of right choice food are his meals, I ween,

In his cell so lone and cold.

The walls must be crumbled, the stones decayed,

To pleasure his dainty whim;

And the mouldering dust that years have made
Is a merry meal for him.

Creeping where no life is seen,

A rare old plant is the ivy green.

Fast he stealeth on, though he wears no wings,

And a stanch old heart has he!