BY JOHN G. WHITTIER.

upon the sick.

THE FEMALE MARTYR.

And, where the sickly taper shed

Its light through vapors, damp, confined,

Hush'd as a seraph's fell thy treadMary G-, aged 18, a “Sister of Charity," died A new Electra by the bed in one of our Atlantic cities, during the prevalence

Of suffering human-kind ! of the Indian Cholera, while in voluntary attendance Pointing the spirit, in its dark dismay,

To that pure hope which fadeth not away. « Bring out your dead!” the midnight street Heard and gave back the hoarse, low call;

Innocent teacher of the high Harsh fell the tread of hasty feet

And holy mysteries of Heaven ! Glanced through the dark the coarse white sheet- How turn’d to thee each glazing eye, Her coffin and her pall.

In mute and awful sympathy, • What-only one !” The brutal hackman said,

As thy low prayers were given; As, with an oath, he spurn'd away the dead.

And the o'er-hovering Spoiler wore, the while,

An angel's features-a deliverer's smile !
How sunk the inmost hearts of all,
As rollid that dead-cart slowly by,

A blessed task !--and worthy one
With creaking wheel and harsh hoof-fall!

Who, turning from the world, as thou, The dying turn'd him to the wall,

Ere being's pathway had begun To hear it and to die!

To leave its spring-time flower and sun,
Onward it rollid; while oft its driver stay'd,

Had seal’d her early vow-
And hoarsely clamor'd, « Ho!— bring out your dead.” | Giving to God her beauty and her youth,

Her
pure

affections and her guileless truth.
It paused beside the burial-place;
• Toss in your load!”—and it was done.-

Earth may not claim thee. Nothing here With quick hand and averted face,

Could be for thee a meet reward; Hastily to the grave's embrace

Thine is a treasure far more dear They cast them, one by one

Eye hath not seen it, nor the ear Stranger and friend—the evil and the just,

Of living mortal heard, Together trodden in the church-yard dust!

The joys prepared—the promised bliss above And thou, young martyr !—thou wast there

The holy presence of Eternal Love!
No white-robed sisters round thee trod-
Nor holy hymn, nor funeral prayer

Sleep on in peace. The earth has not

A nobler name than thine shall be.
Rose through the damp and noisome air,

The deeds by martial manhood wrought,
Giving thee to thy God;
Nor flower, nor cross, nor hallow'd taper gave

The lofty energies of thought,

The fire of poesyGrace to the dead, and beauty to the grave!

These have but frail and fading honors ;-thine Yet, gentle sufferer!-there shall be,

Shall Time unto Eternity consign.
In every heart of kindly feeling,
A rite as holy paid to thee

Yea-and, when thrones shall crumble down,
As if beneath the convent-tree

And human pride and grandeur fall, Thy sisterhood were kneeling,

The herald's line of long renownAt vesper hours, like sorrowing angels, keeping

The mitre and the kingly crownTheir tearful watch around thy place of sleeping.

Perishing glories all!

The pure devotion of thy generous heart
For thou wast one in whom the light

Shall live in Heaven, of which it was a part !
Of Heaven's own love was kindled well,
Enduring with a martyr's might,
Through weary day and wakeful night,

Far more than words may tell :
Gentle, and nieek, and lowly, and unknown-
Thy mercies measured by thy God alone!

We live in deeds, not years; in thoughts, not breaths;

In feelings, not in figures on a dial. Where manly hearts were failing, - where

We should count time by heart-throbs. He most lives The throngful street grew soul with death,

Who thinks most-feels the noblest-acts the best; O high soul'd martyr !—thou wast there,

And he whose heart beats quickest, lives the longest; Inhaling from the loathsome air,

Lives in one hour more than in years do some, Poison with every breath.

Whose blood sleeps as it slips along their veins. Yet shrinking not from offices of dread For the wrung dying, and unconscious dead.

P. J. BAILEY.

POEMS ON SOME INCIDENTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY. | TO THE MEMORY OF CHARLES B. STORRS,

BY JOHN G. WHITTIER.

Was it right,

Late President of Western Reserve College.
While my unnumbered brethren toiled and bled,
That I should dream away the entrusted hours
On rose-leaf beds, pampering the coward heart,
With feelings all too delicate for use?

COLERIDGE.

* He fell a martyr to the interests of his colored brethren.

For many months did that mighty man of God apply his disThe general history of any one radical reform is criminating and gigantic mind to the subject of Slavery and the history of all. There is, at first, the deep con- its remedy: and, when his soul could no longer contain his viction of right, and devotedness to the truth what

holy indignation against the upholders and apologists of this ever betide, opposed by the scorn,loathing, and hatred

unrighteous system, be gave veut to his aching heart, and of the mass. Then comes open violence beating down, if possible, the firm endurance of men who poured forth his clear thoughts and holy feelings in such deep have foreseen the peril and do not fear to brave it. and soul-entrancing eloquence, that other men, whom he Then is heard above the clamor the voices of some

would fain in his humble modesty acknowledge his superiors, few whom the world calls noble, who yet by the sat at bis feet and looked up as children to a parent.”-Cor. world's love are not altogether corrupt. And then respondent of the ' Liberator,' 16th of 11th mo. 1833. peal upon peal arise the shouts of victory after vic. Thou hast fallen in thine armor, tory by those who, once dispised, are now going on

Thou martyr of the Lord ! conquering and to conquer. Then high names are

With thy last breath crying – Onward !" given to martyrs; and men believing them to be

And thy hand upon the sword. God-sent, and therefore inimitable, sit down with

The haughty heart derideth, solded arms while the roar, it may be, of a yet And the sinful lip reviles, mightier combat is raging around them.

But the blessing of the perishing
Such was the case when Socrates drank the hem.

Around thy pillow smiles !
lock; when Jesus was the Word-made-flesh, and was
nailed to the cross; when Luther rocked Catholic- When to our cup of trembling
dom with its array of soulless mummeries and count. The added drop is given,
less heresies, to its foundation; when George Fox

And the long suspended thunder shook priestdom in England sorely; and when Sharpe Falls terribly from Heaven,and Wilberforce and Clarkson pleaded for the rights When a new and fearful freedom against the powers of men, and gave to the world a

Is proffer'd of the Lord most noble proof of Truth's might. And such too, is

To the slow consuming Faminenow the case when Anti-Slavery—that only demo. The Pestilence and Sword !cracy which our nation has-defying the triple alli. ance of Love of Power with Love of Gold and

When the refuges of Falsehood Hatred of Man, has kept to the breeze its banner

Shall be swept away in wrath, these more than twenty years, bearing it up and

And the temple shall be shaken down through church aisles and legislative halls,

With its idol to the earth, flapping it in the faces of drowsy wealth and rank,

Shall not thy words of warning and, from beneath it, pouring out defiance and re

Be all remember'd then ? solve upon the startled ear of oppression.

And thy now unbeeded message
In that warfare have been many incidents right

Barn in the hearts of men ?
worthy of the poet's song. And well have some of
them been used. I have bastily thrown together

Oppression's hand may scatter such poems upon them as are at hand, with this

Its nettles on thy tomb, eulogium-that never in any struggle did more Man.

And even Christian bosoms ly and Christian poetry gush up from the deep foun.

Deny thy memory room ; tains of the soul.