A PRAYER FOR LIFE.

O FATHER, let me not die young! Earth's beauty asks a heart and tongue To give true love and praises to her worth ; Her sins and judgment-sufferings call For fearless martyrs to redeem thy Earth From her disastrous fall.

For though her summer hills and vales might

seem

The fair creation of a poet's dream, –

Ay, of the Highest Poet,

Whose wordless rhythms are chanted by the gyrés

Of constellate star-choirs,

That with deep melody flow and overflow it,

The sweet Earth, — very sweet, despite The rank grave-smell forever drifting in

Among the odors from her censers white Of wave-swung lilies and of wind-swung roses, The Earth sad-sweet is deeply attaint with sin! The pure air, which encloses Her and her starry kin, Still shudders with the unspent palpitating Of a great Curse, that to its utmost shore

Thrills with a deadly shiver Which has not ceased to quiver Down all the ages, nathless the strong beating Of Angel-wings, and the defiant roar Of Earth's Titanic thunders.

Fair and sad, In sin and beauty, our beloved Earth Has need of all her sons to make her glad ; Has need of martyrs to refire the hearth Of her quenched altars, of heroic men With Freedom's sword, or Truth's supernal pen, To shape the worn-out mould of nobleness again. And she has need of Poets who can string

Their harps with steel to catch the lightning's

fire,

And pour her thunders from the clanging wire, To cheer the hero, mingling with his cheer, Arouse the laggard in the battle's rear, Daunt the stern wicked, and from discord wring Prevailing harmony, while the humblest soul Who keeps the tune the warder angels sing In golden choirs above,

And only wears, for crown and aureole,

The glow-worm light of lowliest human love,

Shall fill with low, sweet undertones the chasms

Of silence, 'twixt the booming thunderspasms.

And Earth has need of Prophets fiery-lipped And deep-souled, to announce the glorious dooms

Writ on the silent heavens in starry script,
And flashing fitfully from her shuddering
tombs,
Commissioned Angels of the new-born Faith,
To teach the immortality of Good,
The soul's God-likeness, Sin's coeval death,
And Man's indissoluble Brotherhood.

Yet never an age, when God has need of him, Shall want its Man, predestined by that need,

To pour his life in fiery word or deed, The strong Archangel of the Elohim!

Earth's hollow want is prophet of his coming:

In the low murmur of her famished cry, And heavy sobs breathed up despairingly, Ye hear the near invisible humming Of his wide wings that fan the lurid sky Into cool ripples of new life and hope, While far in its dissolving ether ope Deeps beyond deeps, of sapphire calm, to cheer With Sabbath gleams the troubled Now and Here.

Father thy will be done,
Holy and righteous One!
Though the reluctant years

May never crown my throbbing brows with white,

Nor round my shoulders turn the golden light Of my thick locks to wisdom's royal ermine : Yet by the solitary tears,

Deeper than joy or sorrow, by the thrill, Higher than hope or terror, whose quick germen, In those hot tears to sudden vigor sprung, Sheds, even now, the fruits of graver age,

By the long wrestle in which inward ill Fell like a trampled viper to the ground,

By all that lifts me o'er my outward peers
To that supernal stage

Where soul dissolves the bonds by Nature bound,

Fall when I may, by pale disease unstrung, Or by the hand of fratricidal rage,. I cannot now die young!

THE seraph Abdiel, faithful found
Among the faithless, faithful only he;
Among inuumerable false, unmoved,
Unshaken, unseduced, unterrified,
His loyalty he kept, his love, his zeal;
Nor number, nor example with him wrought
Toswerve from truth, or change his constant mind,
Though single. From amidst them forth he passed,
Long way through hostile scorn, which he sus-
tained

Superior, nor of violence feared aught;
And with retorted scorn his back he turned
On those proud towers to swift destruction doomed.

THE REAPER'S DREAM.

MILTON.

THE road was lone; the grass was dank
With night-dews on the briery bank
Whereon a weary reaper sank.
His garb was old; his visage tanned;
The rusty sickle in his hand
Could find no work in all the land.

He saw the evening's chilly star
Above his native vale afar;
A moment on the horizon's bar
It hung, then sank, as with a sigh ;
And there the crescent moon went by,
An empty sickle down the sky.

To soothe his pain, Sleep's tender palm
Laid on his brow its touch of balm ;
His brain received the slumberous calm;
And soon that angel without name,
Her robe a dream, her face the same,
The giver of sweet visions came.

She touched his eyes; no longer sealed,
They saw a troop of reapers wield
Their swift blades in a ripened field.
At each thrust of their snowy sleeves
A thrill ran through the future sheaves
Rustling like rain on forest leaves.

The neck, whose light was overwound
With bells of lilies, ringing round
Their odors till the air was drowned:
The starry foreheads meekly borne,
With garlands looped from horn to horn,
Shone like the many-colored morn.

The field was cleared. Home went the bands,
Like children, linking happy hands,
While singing through their father's lands;
Or, arms about each other thrown,
With amber tresses backward blown,
They moved as they were music's own.

The vision brightening more and more,
He saw the garner's glowing door,
And sheaves, like sunshine, strew the floor,-
The floor was jasper, - golden flails,
Swift-sailing as a whirlwind sails,

Throbbed mellow music down the vales.

"A gleaner, I will follow far,
With never look or word to mar,
Behind the Harvest's yellow car;
All day my hand shall constant be,
And every happy eve shall see
The precious burden borne to thee!"
At morn some reapers neared the place,
Strong men, whose feet recoiled apace;
Then gathering round the upturned face,
They saw the lines of pain and care,
Yet read in the expression there
The look as of an answered prayer.

THOMAS BUCHANAN READ.

THE RELIGION OF HUDIBRAS.
.... HE was of that stubborn crew
Of errant saints, whom all men grant
To be the true church militant;
Such as do build their faith upon
The holy text of pike and gun;
Decide all controversies by
Infallible artillery,

And prove their doctrine orthodox
By apostolic blows and knocks;
Call fire, and sword, and desolation
A godly, thorough Reformation,
Which always must be carried on
And still be doing, never done';
As if religion were intended
For nothing else but to be mended.
A sect whose chief devotion lies
In odd perverse antipathies;
In falling out with that or this,
And finding somewhat still amiss;
More peevish, cross, and splenetic,
Than dog distract, or monkey sick;
That with more care keep holiday
The wrong, than others the right way;
Compound for sins they are inclined to,
By damning those they have no mind to;
Still so perverse and opposite,
As if they worshipped God for spite ;
The self-same thing they will abhor
One way, and long another for.

SAMUEL BUTLER.

THE COTTER'S SATURDAY NIGHT.

INSCRIBED TO R. AIKEN, ESQ.

"Let not ambition mock their useful toil,

Their homely joys and destiny obscure;

Nor grandeur hear, with a disdainful smile,

The short but simple annals of the poor."-GRAY.

I.

My loved, my honored, much-respected friend, No mercenary bard his homage pays :