DEATH Walketh in the forest.
Do woo the lightning-flash, and through their veins
The fire-shaft, darting, leaves their blackened trunks
A tablet, for ambition's sons to read
Their destiny. The oak that centuries spared,
Grows gray at last, and, like some time-worn man
Stretching out palsied arms, doth feebly cope
With the destroyer, while its gnarled roots
Betray their trust. The towering elm turns pale,
And faintly strews the sere and yellow leaf,
While from its dead arms falls the wedded vine.
The sycamore uplifts a beacon brow,
Denuded of its honors, and the blast,
Swaying the withered willow, rudely asks
For its lost grace, and for its tissued leaf,
With silver lined.
I knew that blight might check The sapling, ere kind Nature's hand could weave Its first spring-coronal, and that the worm,
Coiling itself amid our garden plants,
Did make their unborn buds its sepulchre.
And well I know how wild and wrecking winds
Might take the forest-monarchs by the crown,
And lay them with the lowliest vassal-herb;
And that the axe, with its sharp ministry,
Might, in one hour, such revolution work,
As all Earth's boasted power could never hope
To reinstate. And I had seen the flame
Go crackling up, amid yon verdant boughs,
And with a tyrant's insolence dissolve
Their interlacing, till I felt that man,
For sordid gain, would make the forest's pomp, Its heaven-raised arch and living tracery,
That pale Disease amid those shades would steal
As to a sickly maiden's cheek, and waste
The power and plenitude of those high ranks,
Which in their peerage and nobility,
Unrivalled and unchronicled, had reigned.
And so I said, if in this world of knells
And open tombs, there lingereth one whose dream
Is of aught permanent below the skies,
Even let him come and muse among the trees,
For they shall be his teachers; they shall bow
To Wisdom's lessons his forgetful ear,
And, by the whisper of their faded leaves,
Soften to his sad heart the thought of death.
RADIANT CLOUDS AT SUNSET.
BRIGHT Clouds! ye are gathering one by one,
Ye are sweeping in pomp round the dying sun,
With crimson banner, and golden pall,
Like a host to their chieftain's funeral;
Perchance ye tread to that hallowed spot,
With a muffled dirge, though we hear it not.
But methinks ye tower with a lordlier crest,
And a richer robe as he sinks to rest;
Not thus, in the day of his pride and wrath,
Did ye dare to press on his glorious path,
At his noontide glance ye have quaked with fear,
And hasted to hide in your misty sphere.
Do you say he is dead?—You exult in vain,
With your rainbow tint and your swelling train:
He shall rise again with his strong bright ray,
He shall reign in power when you fade away,
When ye darkly cower in your vapory hall,
Tintless, and naked, and noteless all.
The Soul! The Soul!-with its eye of fire,
Thus, thus shall it soar when its foes expire,
It shall spread its wing o'er the ills that pained,
The evils that shadowed, the sins that stained;
It shall dwell where no rushing cloud hath sway,
And the pageants of earth shall have melted away.
THE BURMANS AND THEIR MISSIONARY.
"Are you Jesus Christ's man? Give us a writing that tells about Jesus Christ."-LETTER OF Rev. Dr. Judson.
THERE is a cry in Burmah, and a rush
Of thousand footsteps from the distant bound
Of watery Siam, and the rich Cathay.
From the far northern frontier, pilgrims meet
The central dwellers in the forest-shades,
And on they press together. Eager hope
Sits in their eye, and on their lips the warmth
Of strong request. Is it for bread they seek,
Like the dense multitude, which, fainting, hung
Upon the Saviour's words, till the third day
Closed in, and left them hungering?
Or raiment ask they. Simply girding on
The scanty garment o'er the weary limb,
They pass unmarked, the lofty domes of wealth
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