.

Spirit that breathest through my lattice, thou

Pause not to dream of the future before us ! That cool'st the twilight of the sultry day,

Pause not to weep the wild cares that come o'er us! Gratefully flows thy freshness round my brow;

Hark, how Creation's deep, musical chorus Thou hast been out upon the deep at play,

Unintermitting, goes up into Heaven ! Riding all day the wild blue waves till now,

Never the ocean wave falters in flowing; Roughening their crests, and scattering high their Never the little seed stops in its growing ;

More and more richly the Rose-heart keeps glowing, spray, And swelling the white sail. I welcome thee Till from its nourisbing stem it is riven. To the scorched land, thou wanderer of the sea !

" Labor is worship !"—the robin is singing ;

- Labor is worship!”--the wild bee is ringing; Nor I alone-a thousand bosoms round Inhale thee in the fulness of delight;

Listen! that eloquent whisper upspringing

Speaks to thy soul from out nature's great heart; And languid forms rise up, and pulses bound

From the dark cloud flows the life-giving shower ; Livelier, at coming of the wind of night;

From the rough sod blows the soft breathing flower;And, languishing to hear thy grateful sound, Lies the vast inland stretched beyond the sight.

Froin the small insect, the rich coral bower, Go forth into the gathering shade; go forth,

Only man, in the plan, ever shrinks from his part. God's blessing breathed upon the fainting earth!

Labor is life!-'Tis the still water faileth ;

Idleness ever despaireth, bewaileth ; Go, rock the little wood-bird in his nest,

Keep the watch wound, for the dark rust as saileth ! Curl the still waters, bright with stars, and rouse The wide old wood from his majestic rest,

Flowers droop and die in the stillness of noon.

Labor is glory!—the flying cloud lightens ; Summoning from the innumerable boughs

Only the waving wing changes and brightens ; The strange, deep harmonies that haunt his breast;

Idle hearts only the dark future frightens; Pleasant shall be thy way where meekly bows

Play the sweet keys wouldst thou keep them in The shutting flower, and darkling waters pass,

tune! And ’twixt the o'ershadowing branches and the grass.

Labor is rest-from the sorrows that greet us; The faint old man shall lean his silver head

Rest from all petty vexations that meet us, To feel thee; thou shalt kiss the child asleep, Rest from sin-promptings that ever entreat us, And dry the moistened curls that overspread Rest from world-syrens that lares us to ill.

His temples, while his breathing grows more deep; Work-and pure slumbers shall wait on thy pillow; And they who stand about the sick man's bed, Work— Thou shalt ride over Care's coming billow ; Shall joy to listen to thy distant sweep,

Lie not down wearied 'neath Wo's weeping willow! And softly part his curtains to allow

Work with a stout heart and resolute will! Thy visit, grateful to his burning brow.

Droop not though shame, sin and anguish are round Go-but the circle of eternal change,

thee! That is the life of nature, shall restore,

Bravely fling off the cold chain that hath bound thee! With sounds and scents from all thy mighty range,

Look to yon pure Heaven smiling beyond thee! Thee to thy birth-place of the deep once more;

Rest not content in thy darkness-a clod ! Sweet odors in the sea-air, sweet and strange,

Work-for some good,—be it ever so slowly! Shall tell the home-sick mariner of the shore;

Cherish some flower, be it ever so lowly! And, listening to thy murmur, he shall deem

Labor ! · True labor is noble and holy ;He hears the rustling leaf and running stream.

Let thy great deeds be thy prayer to thy God!

When a deed is done for Freedom, through the broad earth's aching breast
Runs a thrill of joy prophetic, trembling on from east to west,
And the slave, where'er he cowers, feels the soul within him climb
To the awful verge of manhood, as the energy sublime
Of a century bursts full-blossomed on the thorny stem of Time.

Through the walls of hut and palace shoots the instantaneous throe
When the travail of the Ages wrings earth's systems to and fro:
At the birth of each new Era, with a recognizing start,
Nation wildly looks at nation, standing with mute lips apart,
And glad Truth's yet mightier man-child leaps beneath the Future's heart.

So the Evil's triumph sendeth, with a terror and a chill,
Under continent to continent, the sense of coming ill,
And the slave, where'er he cowers, feels his sympathy with God
In hot tear-drops ebbing earthward, to be drunk up by the sod,
Till a corpse crawls round unburied, delving in the nobler clod.

For mankind is one in spirit, and an instinct bears along
Round the earth's electric circle, the swift flash of right or wrong;
Whether conscious or unconscious, yet Humanity's vast frame
Through its ocean sundered fibres feels the gush of joy or shame ;-
In the gain or loss of one race, all the rest have equal claim.

Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide,
In the strife of Truth with Falsehood, for the good or evil side;
Some great cause, God's new Messiah, offering each the bloom or blight,
Parts the goats upon the left hand, and the sheep upon the right,
And the choice goes by forever 'twixt that darkness and that light.

Have ye chosen, O my people, on whose party ye shall stand,
Ere the Doom from its worn sandals shake its dust against our land?
Though the cause of evil prosper, yet the Truth alone is strong,
And, albeit she wander outcast now, I see around her throng
Troops of beautiful tall angels to enshield her from all wrong.

Backward look across the ages, and the beacon-actions see,
That, like peaks of some sunk continent, jut through oblivion's sea ;
Not an ear in court or market for the low foreboding cry
Of those Crises, God's stern winnowers, from whose feet earth's chaff must fy;
Never shows the choice momentous till the judgment hath passed by.

Careless seems the great Avenger; history's pages but record
One death-grapple in the darkness 'twix old systems and the Word;
Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne,-
Yet that scaffold sways the fature, and, behind the dim unknown,
Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own.

We see dimly in the Present what is small and what is great,
Slow of faith how weak an arm may turn the iron helm of fate;
But the soul is still oracular; amid the market's din,
List the ominous stern whisper from the Delphic cave within,-
• They enslave their children's children, who make compromise with sin."

>

Slavery, the earth-born Cyclops, sellest of the giant brood,
Sons of brutish Force and Darkness, who have drenched the earth with blood,
Famished in his self-made desert, blinded by our purer day,
Gropes in yet unblasted regions for his miserable prey :
Shall we guide his gory fingers where our helpless children play?

Then to side with Truth is noble, when we share her wretched crust,
Ere her cause bring fame and profit, and 'tis prosperous to be just;
Then it is the brave man chooses, when the coward stands aside,
Doubting in his abjeet spirit, till his Lord is crucified,
And the multitude make virtue of the faith they had denied.

For Humanity sweeps onward; where to-day the martyr stands,
On the morrow crouches Judas with the silver in his hands;
Far in front the Cross stands ready, and the crackling faggots burn,
While the hooting mob of yesterday in silent awe return
To glean up the scattered ashes into History's golden urn.

'Tis as easy to be heroes as to sit the idle slaves
Of a legendary virtue carved upon our fathers' graves :
Worshippers of light ancestral make the present light a crime,-
Was the Mayflower launched by cowards, steered by men behind their time?
*Turn those tracks toward Past or Future, that make Plymouth rock sublime ?

They were men of present valor, stalwart old iconoclasts,
Unconvinced by axe or gibbet that all virtue was the Past's;
But we make their truth our falsehood, thinking that hath made us free,
Hoarding it in mouldy parchments, while our tender spirits flee
The rude grasp of that great Impulse, which drove them across the sea.

They have rights who dare maintain them; we are traitors to our sires,
Smothering in their holy ashes Freedom's new-lit altar fires;
Shall we make their creed our jailor ? Shall we, in our haste to slay,
From the tombs of the old prophets steal the funeral lamps away,
To light up the martyr-faggots round the prophets of to-day?

New occasions teach new duties; Time makes ancient good uncouth;
They must upward, still, and onward, who would keep abreast of Truth ;
Lo, before us gleam her camp-fires ! we ourselves must Pilgrims be,
Launch our Mayflower, and steer boldly through the desperate winter sea,
Nor attempt the Future's portal with the Past's blood-rusted key.

SONG.

BY THOMAS MOORE.

Oh, no!- not e'en when first we loved,

Were thou as dear as now thou art, Thy beauty then my senses moved,

But now thy virtues bind my heart. What was but passion's sigh before,

Has since been turned to reason's vow: And though I then might love thee more,

Trust me, I love thee better now !

Although my heart, in earlier youth,

Might kindle with more wild desire; Believe me it has gained in truth

Much more than it has lost in fire. The flame now warms my inmost core

That then but sparkled on my brow; And though I seemed to love thee more,

Yet oh I love thee better now.

THE FALCONER

LOVE AND LIVE.
BY JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.

I said once, madly, that I'd hate my race,
I have a falcon swist and peerless

For so much base ingratitude and wrong As e'er was cradled in the pine,

As it had measured out to me, in place No bird had ever eye so fearless

Of justice, which it had deferred so long. Or wing so strong as this of mine;

My best affections I thought wasted long enough, The winds not better love to pilot

On what rewarded only with a cold rebuff.
The clouds with molten gold o'errun,
Than him, a little burning islet,,

I turned away, and went in search of rest
A star above the sunken sun.

And peace in Nature's quiet solitude :But better he loves the lusty morning

Here all I found with loving kindness blest, When the last white star yet stands at bay,

And here I found for resignation,-food :And earth, half-waked, smiles a child's forewarning Here first I learnt to know myself, and sought to know Of the longed-for mother-kiss of day;

W bat I was for, and what for all things live and grow. Then with a lark's heart doth he tower,

In stagnant pools I saw the lily nourished By a glorious upward instinct drawn,

By fragrant roses on their borders shaded; No bee nestles deeper in the flower,

I saw the woodbine here with ivy flourished, Than he in the bursting rose of dawn.

And birds for pleasure in their waters waded; What joy to see his sails uplifted

I saw pink meadow-sweet by poison hemlock grow, Against the worst that gales can dare,

And read a lesson here-a truth that all should know. Through the northwester's surges drifted, Bold viking of the sea of air!

I wandered to the woods and cheerful groves, His eye is fierce, yet mildened over

And found them full of joy and melody; With something of a dove-like ruth,

The birds seemed happy singing of their loves, I am his master less than lover,

And nought seemed lonely I could hear or see; His short and simple name is Truth.

The flowers gave their bloom and fragrance to each Whene'er some hoary owl of Error

other,

And all seemed near akin-as near as friend or Lags, though his native night be past, And at the sunshine hoots his terror,

brother. The falcon from my wrist I cast;

The trees were social and the flowers and birds, Swooping, he scares the birds uncleanly

And nothing lonely was, nor yet unloved; That in the holy temple prey,

All seemed to chide my mood almost in words, 'Then in the blue air floats serenely

More eloquent than I could hear unmoved; Above their hoarse anathema.

To make bird-cradles, vines and branches interlocked, The herd of patriot wolves, that, stealing,

And floral bells sang lullabies as these were rocked. To gorge on martyred Freedom run, Fly, howling, when his shadow, wheeling,

I saw that nothing could exist alone Flashes between them and the sun;

That all was made by love, and lived for love; Well for them that our once proud eagle

And all that lived in borrowed colors shoneForgets his empire of the sky,

All bade me back to love and friendship move. And, stript of every emblem regal,

I went, and tried my best to love my fellow-men, Does buzzard's work for Slavery.

And by the law of life abide, and live again.
Mount up; my falcon brave and kingly,
Stoop not from thy majestic height,
The terror of thy shadow, singly,
Can pnt a thousand wrongs to flight;

THE GOOD.
Wherever in all God's dominions
One ugly falsehood lurks apart,
Let the dread rustle of thy pinions

*** The Prophets, do they live forever."-Zech. 1.5.
Send palsy to its traitor-heart.
No harmless dove, no bird that singeth,
Shudders to see thee overhead;

Those spirits God ordained The rush of thy fierce swooping bringeth

To stand the watchmen on the outer wall,

Upon whose soul the beams of truth first fall,
To innocent hearts no thrill of dread;
Let frauds and wrongs and falsehoods shiver,

They who reveal the Ideal, the unattained,
For, still, between them and the sky,

And to their age, in stirring tones and high, The falcon Truth hangs poised forever,

Speak out for God, Truth, Man and LibertyAnd marks them with his vengeful eye.

Such Prophets, do they die ?

BY ANNE C. LYNCH.