Where stranger steps and tongues resound

Along the heedless air;

Your own proud land's heroic soil

Shall be your fitter grave;

She claims from war his richest spoil-
The ashes of her brave.

So, 'neath their parent turf they rest,
Far from the gory field,

Borne to a Spartan mother's breast,

On many a bloody shield;
The sunshine of their native sky
Smiles sadly on them here,

And kindred eyes and hearts watch by
The heroes' sepulchre.

Rest on, embalmed and sainted dead,
Dear as the blood ye gave;
No impious footstep here shall tread
The herbage of your grave;
Nor shall your glory be forgot

While Fame her record keeps,
Or Honor points the hallowed spot
Where Valor proudly sleeps.

Yon marble minstrel's voiceless stone,

In deathless song shall tell,

When many a vanished age hath flown,

The story how ye fell;

Nor wreck, nor change, nor winter's blight,
Nor Time's remorseless doom,

Shall dim one ray of glory's light
That gilds your deathless tomb.

THEODORE O'HARA.

Nearer, my God, to Thee.

NEARER, my God, to thee,

Nearer to thee!

E'en though it be a cross
That raiseth me;

Still all my song shall be,

Nearer, my God, to thee,
Nearer to thee!

Though, like the wanderer,
The sun gone down,
Darkness be over me,
My rest a stone;

Yet in my dreams I'd be
Nearer, my God, to thee,
Nearer to thee!

There let the way appear
Steps unto heaven;
All that thou sendest me
In mercy given;
Angels to beckon me

Nearer, my God, to thee,

Nearer to thee!

Then with my waking thoughts

Bright with thy praise, Out of my stony griefs

Bethel I'll raise; So by my woes to be

Nearer, my God, to thee,

Nearer to thee!

Or if on joyful wing

Cleaving the sky,

Sun, moon, and stars forgot,

Upward I fly;

Still all my song shall be,

Nearer, my God, to thee,

Nearer to thee.

SARAH FLOWER ADAMS.

Lines on a Skeleton.

BEHOLD this ruin! 'T was a skull
Once of ethereal spirit full.

This narrow cell was Life's retreat,

This space was Thought's mysterious seat.
What beauteous visions filled this spot,
What dreams of pleasure long forgot!
Nor hope, nor joy, nor love, nor fear,
Have left one trace of record here.

Beneath this mouldering canopy
Once shone the bright and busy eye,
But start not at the dismal void,-
If social love that eye employed,

If with no lawless fire it gleamed,

But through the dews of kindness beamed, That eye shall be forever bright

When stars and sun are sunk in night.

Within this hollow cavern hung

The ready, swift, and tuneful tongue;
If Falsehood's honey it disdained,

And when it could not praise was chained;

If bold in Virtue's cause it spoke,

Yet gentle concord never broke,-
This silent tongue shall plead for thee
When Time unveils Eternity!

Say, did these fingers delve the mine?

Or with the envied rubies shine?
To hew the rock, or wear a gem,
Can little now avail to them.
But if the page of Truth they sought,
Or comfort to the mourner brought,
These hands a richer meed shall claim
Than all that wait on Wealth and Fame.

Avails it whether bare or shod
These feet the paths of duty trod?
If from the bowers of Ease they fled,
To seek Affliction's humble shed;
If Grandeur's guilty bribe they spurned,
And home to Virtue's cot returned,—
These feet with angel-wings shall vie,
And tread the palace of the sky.

ANONYMOUS.

The Place where Man should Die.

How little recks it where men lie,

When once the moment 's past
In which the dim and glazing eye
Has looked on earth its last,-
Whether beneath the sculptured urn
The coffined form shall rest,

Or in its nakedness return

Back to its mother's breast!

Death is a common friend or foe,
As different men may hold,
And at his summons each must go,
The timid and the bold;

But when the spirit, free and warm,

Deserts it, as it must,

What matter where the lifeless form

Dissolves again to dust?

The soldier falls 'mid corses piled
Upon the battle-plain,

Where reinless war-steeds gallop wild

Above the mangled slain;

But though his corse be grim to see,

Hoof-trampled on the sod,

What recks it, when the spirit free
Has soared aloft to God?

The coward's dying eyes may close
Upon his downy bed,

And softest hands his limbs compose,

Or garments o'er them spread.
But ye who shun the bloody fray,
When fall the mangled brave,
Go-strip his coffin-lid away,
And see him in his grave!

'T were sweet, indeed, to close our eyes,
With those we cherish near,

And, wafted upwards by their sighs,
Soar to some calmer sphere.
But whether on the scaffold high,

Or in the battle's van,

The fittest place where man can die

Is where he dies for man!

MICHAEL JOSEPH BARRY.

A Hundred Years to Come.

WHERE, where will be the birds that sing,
A hundred years to come?

The flowers that now in beauty spring,

A hundred years to come?

The rosy lips, the lofty brow,

The heart that beats so gayly now,
Oh, where will be love's beaming eye,
Joy's pleasant smile, and sorrow's sigh,
A hundred years to come?

Who 'll press for gold this crowded street,
A hundred years to come?

Who 'll tread yon church with willing feet,
A hundred years to come?

Pale trembling age, and fiery youth,

And childhood with its brow of truth;