قالت تربي سارة بنت المعلم بطرس البستاني يا بين ويحك هل ابقيت في البشر. عينا بلا دمعة حرَّى ولا كدر و هل تركت بذي الدنيا لنا كبدا سليمة وفوادًا غير منفطر الزهر قطفت زهرة بستان ستنبت في روض الجنان نظير الانجم ويحي على غصن بان مال منكسرا وائي قلب عليه غير منكسر يا من مضت وفي عني غير غائبة وشخصها لم يفت سمعي ولا بصري تبكي على فقدك الأتراب دمع دم اغنت ثراك به عن مديع المطر قد كنت بين بنات العصر جوهرة عظيمة الشان تزرب الفصل الدرد اين اللغات واين العلم والسفا لم يترك البين من عين ولاا يا ونج قلب أب يبكي ووالدة حزينة تستعيضُ النوم بالسهر ان كنت سرت عن الابصار نازحة فان شخصك في الإكباد لم يسر لبست ثوب بياض في النعيم كما البست كل حزين أسودَ الخَبَرِ يا قبر اكرم فتاة فيك قد نزلت كريمة من ذوات الطهر وتخفر سارت بغير وداع سارة عجلا فهل سلام لها ياتي من السفر يا نيمة مالها من يقظة ٢١ وغيبة مالها في الدهر من حضر ان لم تعد نحونا يوما فنحنُ غدًا نسعى اليها ولو كنا على حَذَرِ WERDEH'S ARABIC POEM, LAMENTING THE DEATH OF SARAH BISTANY. THE TRANSLATION. Oh sad separation! Have you left among mortals, Thou hast plucked off a flower from our beautiful garden, Far purer and fairer than pearls of the ocean. Where now is thy knowledge of language and science? Ah, wo to the heart of fond father and mother, Our Sarah departed, with no word of farewell, If she never comes back to us here in our sorrow, AGASSIZ. ONCE in the leafy prime of Spring, The birds in boyhood he had known Made all the landscape gay. I saw the streamlet from the hills "This his dear eyes have seen!" Far cliffs of ice his feet had climbed The name of Agassiz! And, standing on the mountain crag He made that spot my home. And looking round me as I mused, Once Agassiz stood there! I walked beneath no alien skies, His grand, beloved head. His smile was stamped on every tree, Reflected back his fame. Great keeper of the magic keys That could unlock the guarded gates, Thine ashes rest on Charles's banks, Thine was the heaven-born spell that sets THE HEIRESS OF WASHINGTON. WHEN Congress, at its second session, held at New York in the mid-summer of 1790, voted to give to George Washington the selection of a site on the Potomac for the national capital, that selection was not only left to the successful General, who had just brought the nation safely through the fires of Revolution, but to the Surveyor, who, as a young man, had spent his early life mapping out the plantations. on its banks. Nearly forty years before, young Washington, accompanying Braddock to his sad defeat, had encamped on the very spot where the Washington Observatory now stands. As the young aidde-camp looked out from the door of his tent at even-tide, he remarked on the favorable character of such a location for the site of a great city. Since that day, Arlington, so beautiful for situation that de Tocqueville has said that no place in Europe possessed a lovelier prospect, had come into his possession by marriage. No day passed that he did not look across the stately Potomac upon those forest-bearing hills, now crowned by the public buildings of the Capitol, and crowded with the homes of more than a hundred thousand people. Those hills rose just across the river against the lower edge of his own plantation, and the two families that lived opposite each other, often exchanged visits; and on Sundays they always met in the Episcopal church of Alexandria. His daily contemplation of this place made him fully aware of its natural advantages as the site of the future metropolis. The two branches of the Potomac, between which the city is situated, promised ample room for that commerce which the first President always expected to centralize in his favorite city. Alexandria and Georgetown, places of large size for that day of small things, were to constitute its suburbs, and were expected to be, as they have been, swallowed up in the superior greatness of their common center. Nor is it unlikely that that observant mind was at all unconscious of the influence of the proximity of a large city on the DAVID BURNS'S COTTAGE. value of the plantation belonging to his wife, on which he then lived, and which was afterwards to descend to his fosterchildren, the Custises. During the winters of 1790-91 Washington was busily engaged with the four planters who lived on the left bank of the Potomac, settling the terms on which they would consent that their plantations should become the site of the future capital. It would seem as if no great exertion would be required to induce these gentlemen to agree to exchange their boundless acres of forest and half-tilled plantation for the crowded and valuable squares of what was expected to be the largest city on the continent. But David Burns,-" that obstinate Mr. Burns," as Washington called him,-who owned the whole of the west end of Washington, was for some time opposed to the arrangement. For three generations, he and his ancestry had lived on that spot and had acquired a wealth that old Scotland had denied them. The place was originally laid out as a plantation of six hundred acres; and so small did that amount of land then seem that it bore the name of the Widow's Mite. But by degrees the place grew and enlarged till it stretched from Georgetown to where the Capitol now stands. In 1790, its owner AGASSIZ. ONCE in the leafy prime of Spring, The birds in boyhood he had known Made all the landscape gay. I saw the streamlet from the hills "This his dear eyes have seen!" Far cliffs of ice his feet had climbed The name of Agassiz! And, standing on the mountain crag He made that spot my home. And looking round me as I mused, Once Agassiz stood there! I walked beneath no alien skies, His grand, beloved head. His smile was stamped on every tree, Reflected back his fame. Great keeper of the magic keys That could unlock the guarded gates, Thine ashes rest on Charles's banks, All hearts in golden chains Thine was the heaven-born spell that se Our warm and deep affections free,— Who knew thee best must love thee be: And longest mourn for th |