I see how plenty surfeits oft, And hasty climbers soonest fall; I see that such as sit aloft Mishap doth threaten most of all. No princely pomp nor wealthy store, No wily wit to salve a sore, No shape to win a lover's eye— To none of these I yield as thrall; For why, my mind despiseth all. Some have too much, yet still they crave; I little have, yet seek no more. They are but poor, though much they have; And I am rich with little store. They poor, I rich; they beg, I give; They lack, I lend; they pine, I live. I laugh not at another's loss, I grudge not at another's gain; I fear no foe, nor fawn on friend; I loathe not life, nor dread mine end. I joy not in no earthly bliss; I weigh not Croesus' wealth a straw; For care, I care not what it is; I fear not fortune's fatal law; My mind is such as may not move I wish but what I have at will; I wander not to seek for more; I like the plain, I climb no hill; In greatest storms I sit on shore, And laugh at them that toil in vain To get what must be lost again. I kiss not where I wish to kill; I feign not love where most I hate; My wealth is health and perfect ease; WILLIAM BYRD. THE RIGHT MUST CONQUER. 'N this world, with its wild whirling eddies and mad foam oceans, where men and nations perish as if without law, and judgment for an unjust thing is sternly delayed, dost thou think that there is therefore no justice? It is what the fool hath said in his heart. It is what the wise in all times were wise because they denied, and knew forever not to be. I tell thee again, there is nothing else but justice. One strong thing I find here below: the just thing, the true thing. My friend, if thou hadst all the artillery of Woolwich trundling at thy back in support of an unjust thing, and infinite bonfires visibly waiting ahead of thee, to blaze centuries long for thy victory on behalf of it, I would advise thee to call halt, to fling down thy baton and say, "In Heaven's name, no!" Thy "success"? Poor fellow! what will thy success amount to? If the thing is unjust, thou hast not succeeded; no, not though bonfires blazed from north to south, and bells rang, and editors wrote leading articles, and the just things lay trampled out of sight to all mortal eyes abolished and annihilated things. It is the right and noble alone that will have victory in this struggle; the rest is wholly an obstruction, a postponement and fearful imperilment of the victory. Towards an eternal centre of right and nobleness, and of that only, is all confusion tending. We already know whither it is all tending; what will have victory, what will have none. The heaviest will reach the centre. The heaviest has its deflections, its obstructions, nay, at times its reboundings; whereupon some blockhead shall be heard jubilating, "See, your heaviest ascends!” but at all moments it is moving centreward fast as it is convenient for it; sinking, sinking; and, by laws older than the world, old as the Maker's first plan of the world, it has to arrive there. Await the issue. In all battles, if you await the issue, each fighter has prospered according to his right. His right and his might, at the close of the account, were one and the same. He has fought with all his might, and in exact proportion to all his right he has prevailed. His very death is no victory over him. He dies indeed; but his work lives, very truly lives. A heroic Wallace, quartered on the scaffold, cannot hinder that his Scotland become, one day, a part of England; but he does hinder that it become, on tyrannous, unfair terms, a part of it; commands still, as with a god's voice, from his old Valhalla and Temple of the Brave, that there be a just, real union, as of brother and brother-not a false and merely semblant one, as of slave and master. If the union with England be in fact one of Scotland's chief blessings, we thank Waliace withal that it was not the chief curse. Scotland is not Ireland; no, because brave men rose there and said, Behold, ye must not tread us down like slaves, and ye shall not and cannot!" Fight on, thou brave, true heart, and falter not, through dark fortune and through bright. The cause thou fightest for, so far as it is true, no further, yet precisely so far, is very sure of victory. The falsehood alone of it will be conquered, will be abolished, as it ought to be; but the truth of it is part of nature's own laws, co-operates with the world's eternal tendencies, and cannot be conquered. THOMAS CARLYLE. THE BLIND MAN. HERE is a world, a pure unclouded clime, Where there is neither grief, nor death, nor time! Nor loss of friends! Perhaps when yonder Beat slow, and bade the dying day farewell, WILLIAM LISLE Bowles. SOMEBODY'S DARLING. NTO a ward of the whitewashed halls, Somebody's darling is dying now. Kiss him once for somebody's sake, Murmur a prayer both soft and low; Been baptized in their waves of light? God knows best! he was somebody's love; Somebody's heart enshrined him there; Somebody wafted his name above, Night and morn, on the wings of prayer. Ah! not by the silver gray That creeps through the sunny hair, And not by the scenes that we pass on our way, On forehead and face have made- For the young are ofttimes old, Though their brows be bright and fair; While their blood beats warm, their hearts are coldO'er them the spring-but winter is there. And the old are ofttimes young When their hair is thin and white; But, bead by bead, I tell The rosary of my years; A patient mother sat beside the death-bed of her child- It was a collier's only child-they called him "Little And oh! to see the briny tears fast flowing down her As she offered up a prayer in thought!-she was afraid to speak, Lest she might waken one she loved far dearer than her life; For she had all a mother's heart, that wretched collier's wife. With hands uplifted, see, she kneels beside the sufferer's bed, And prays that God will spare her boy, and take herself instead: She gets her answer from the child, soft falls these words from him— "Mother! the angels do so smile, and beckon Little Jim! I have no pain, dear mother, now; but, oh! I am so dry: R ATTLE the window, winds! Rain, drip on the panes ! There are tears and sighs in our hearts and eyes, And a weary weight on our brains. The gray sea heaves and heaves, On the dreary flats of sand; And the blasted limb of the churchyard yew, The dead are engulfed beneath it, But we have more dead in our hearts to-day RICHARD HENRY STODDARD. THE FUNERAL. WAS walking in Savannah, past a church decayed and dim, When there slowly through the window came a plaintive funeral hymn ; And a sympathy awakened, and a wonder quickly grew, Till I found myself environed in a little negro pew. Out at front a colored couple sat in sorrow, nearly wild, On the altar was a coffin, in the coffin was a child. Just moisten poor Jim's lips once more; and, mother, I could picture him when living-curly hair, protruding do not cry?" With gentle, trembling haste, she held a teacup to his lips He smiled to thank her-then he took three little tiny sips. lip And had seen perhaps a thousand in my hurried southern trip. But no baby ever rested in the soothing arms of death "Tell father, when he comes from work, I said 'good That had fanned more flames of sorrow with his flut night!' to him; tering breath; And no funeral ever glistened with more sympathy profound Than was in the chain of tear drops that enclasped those mourners round. Rose a sad old colored preacher at the little wooden desk, The father and the mother meet, but neither speak a With a manner grandly awkward, with a countenance word: grotesque; He felt that all was over-he knew the child was dead! With simplicity and shrewdness on his Ethiopian face; He took the candle in his hand, and stood beside the| With the ignorance and wisdom of a crushed, undying bed: His quivering lip gave token of the grief he'd fain conceal; And see, the mother joins him!-the stricken couple kneel; With hearts bowed down by sorrow, they humbly ask, of Him In heaven, once more that they may meet their own poor "Little Jim!" race. And he said, "Now, don' be weepin' for dis pretty bit o' clay, For de little boy who lived there, he done gone and He was doin' very finely, and he 'precitate your love; hove. NINE GRAVES IN EDINBORO'. "Now, He didn' give you dat baby, by a hundred thousand mile! He jist think you need some sunshine, an' He lend it for a while! Robert Arnim says concerning the death of Jemmy Camber, one of the jesters of King James I, during his reign in Scotland: An' He let you keep an' love him till your heart was "Jemmy rose, made him ready, takes his horse, and rides to the bigger grown; churchyard in the high towne, where he found the sexton (as the An' dese silver tears you're sheddin's jest de interest women, and three for children; and whoso dyes next, first come, custom is there) making nine graves-three for men, three for on de loan. "Here yer oder pretty chilrun!-Don't be makin' it appear Dat your love got sort o' 'nopolized by this little fellow here. Don't pile up too much your sorrows on deir little mental shelves, So's to kind o' set 'em wonderin' if dey're no account demselves? "Just you think, you poor deah mounahs, creepin' 'long o'er sorrow's way, What a blessed little picnic dis yere baby's got to-day! Your good faders and good moders crowd de little fellow round first served. 'Lend me thy spade,' says Jemmy, and with that digs a hole, which hole he bids him make for his grave; and doth give him a French crowne. The man, willing to please him (more for his gold than his pleasure), did so; and the foole gets upon his horse, rides to a gentleman of the towne, and on the sodaine with. in two houres after dyed; of whom the sexton telling, he was buried there indeed." N the church-yard, up in the old high town, The sexton stood at his daily toil, And then as he delved he sang right lustily, In de angel-tended garden of de Big Plantation "It's nine o' the clock, and I have begun Ground. "An' dey ask him, 'Was your feet sore?' an' take off his little shoes. The settled task that is daily mine; An' dey wash him, and dey kiss him, and dey say, "Just three for women, and three for men ; 'Now, what's de news?' An' de Lawd done cut his tongue loose, den de little fellow say: All our folks down in de valley tries to keep de hebenly way.' "An' his eyes dey brightly sparkle at de pretty things he view; Den a tear come, and he whisper: 'But I want my paryents, too!' But de Angel Chief Musician teach dat boy a little song; Says, 'If only dey be faithful, dey will soon be comin' 'long.' "An' he'll get an education dat will proberly be worth Seberal times as much as any you could buy for him on earth; He'll be in de Lawd's big school-house, widout no contempt or fear, While dere's no end to de bad tings might have happened to him here. "So, my pooah dejected mounahs, let your hearts wid Jesus rest, An' don't go to critersizin' dat ar One wot knows the best! He have sent us many comforts-He have right to take away To the Lawd be praise an' glory, now and ever! Let us pray." WILL M. CARLETON. And, to fill the number, another three "And the first of the graves in a row of three The first they brought was a fair young child, And they saw him buried and went their way; At six o' the clock his task was done; Eight graves were closed, and the ninth prepared- He sat him down on its brink to rest, 'Who will fill it, I wonder, and when? It does not matter: whoe'er they be, They went to him with a man, next day, They went-and they found the sexton dead. And they buried him in it that self-same day, If ye dig, no matter when, Think-it never can be known When ye'll chance to dig your own. Mind ye of the tale ye know Nine graves in Edinbro. IRWIN RUSSELL. WHEN I BENEATH THE COLD RED EARTH AM SLEEPING. 'WAS at the royal feast for Persia won By Philip's war-like son Aloft in awful state The godlike hero sate On his imperial throne; HEN I beneath the cold red earth am sleep- His valiant peers were placed around, ing, Life's fever o'er, Their brows with roses and with myrtles bound, (So should desert in arms be crowned ;) Will there for me be any bright eye weeping The lovely Thais by his side That I'm no more? Will there be any heart still memory keeping Of heretofore? When the great winds through leafless orests rushing, Like full hearts break When the swollen streams, o'er crag and gully gushing, Sad music make Will there be one, whose heart despair is crushing, Mourn for my sake? When the bright sun upon that spot is shining With purest ray, Sate like a blooming Eastern bride None but the brave None but the brave deserves the fair! The song began from Jove, And the small flowers, their buds and blossoms twin- Who left his blissful seats above |