The cackling hen, the tender chicken brood,
And the wild birds that gather round my porch.
This honest sheep-dog's countenance I read;
With him can talk; zor blush to waste a word
On creatures less intelligent and shrewd.
And if the blustering wind that drives the clouds
Care not for me, he lingers round my door,
And makes me pastime when our tempers suit; —
But, above all, my thoughts are my support,
My comfort:- would that they were oftener fixed
On what, for guidance in the way that leads
To heaven, I know, by my Redeemer taught.'
The Matron ended, - nor could I forbear

To exclaim: O happy! yielding to the law

Of these privations, richer in the main !
While thankless thousands are opprest and clogged
By ease and leisure, by the very wealth
And pride of opportunity made poor,-

While tens of thousands falter in their path,
And sink, through utter want of cheering light,
For you the hours of labor do not flag;
For you each evening hath its shining star,
And every Sabbath-day its golden sun.'

9899

"Yes!" said the Solitary, with a smile

That seemed to break from an expanding heart,
"The untutored bird may found, and so construct,
And with such soft materials line, her nest,
Fixed in the centre of a prickly brake,

That the thorns wound her not; they only guard.

Powers not unjustly likened to those gifts
Of happy instinct which the woodland bird

Shares with her species, Nature's grace sometimes
Upon the individual doth confer,

And I own that, tired

Among her higher creatures born and trained
To use of reason.
Of the ostentatious world, a swelling stage
With empty actions and vain passions stuffed,
And from the private struggles of mankind
Hoping far less than I could wish to hope,
Far less than once I trusted and believed,
I love to hear of those, who, not contending

Nor summoned to contend for virtue's prize,
Miss not the humbler good at which they aim,
Blest with a kindly faculty to blunt
The edge of adverse circumstance, and turn
Into their contraries the petty plagues
And hindrances with which they stand beset.
In early youth, among my native hills,
I knew a Scottish Peasant who possessed
A few small crofts of stone-encumbered ground,
Masses of every shape and size, that lay
Scattered about under the mouldering walls
Of a rough precipice; and some, apart,
In quarters unobnoxious to such chance,

As if the moon had showered them down in spite.
But he repined not. Though the plough was scared
By these obstructions, 'round the shady stones
A fertilizing moisture,' said the Swain,

Gathers, and is preserved; and feeding dews

And damps, through all the droughty summer day
From out their substance issuing, maintain
Herbage that never fails: no grass springs up
So green, so fresh, so plentiful, as mine!'
But thinly sown these natures; rare, at least,
The mutual aptitude of seed and soil
That yields such kindly product. He, whose bed
Perhaps yon loose sods cover, the poor Pensioner
Brought yesterday from our sequestered dell
Here to lie down in lasting quiet, he,
If living now, could otherwise report

Of rustic loneliness: that gray-haired Orphan-
So call him, for humanity to him

No parent was

feelingly could have told,

In life, in death, what solitude can breed

Of selfishness, and cruelty, and vice;

Or, if it breed not, hath not power to cure.

-But your compliance, Sir! with our request My words too long have hindered."

Undeterred,

Perhaps incited rather, by these shocks,
In no ungracious opposition, given
To the confiding spirit of his own

Experienced faith, the reverend Pastor said,
Around him looking : “Where shall I begin?
Who shall be first selected from my flock,
Gathered together in their peaceful fold?"
He paused, and having lifted up his eyes
To the pure heaven, he cast them down again
Upon the earth beneath his feet; and spake:

"To a mysteriously united pair

This place is consecrate; to Death and Life,
And to the best affections that proceed

From their conjunction; consecrate to faith
In him who bled for man upon the cross;
Hallowed to revelation; and no less
To reason's mandates; and the hopes
Of pure imagination; above all,

divine

To charity, and love, that have provided,
Within these precincts, a capacious bed
And receptacle, open to the good
And evil, to the just and the unjust;

In which they find an equal resting-place.
Even as the multitude of kindred brooks

And streams, whose murmur fills this hollow vale,
Whether their course be turbulent or smooth,

Their waters clear or sullied, all are lost

Within the bosom of yon crystal Lake,

And end their journey in the same repose!

"And blest are they who sleep; and we that know,

While in a spot like this we breathe and walk, That all beneath us by the wings are covered Of motherly humanity, outspread

And gathering all within their tender shade, Though loth and slow to come! A battle-field In stillness left when slaughter is no more, With this compared, makes a strange spectacle! A dismal prospect yields the wild shore strewn

With wrecks, and trod by feet of young and old
Wandering about in miserable search

Of friends or kindred, whom the angry sea
Restores not to their prayer! Ah! who would
think

That all the scattered subjects which compose
Earth's melancholy vision through the space
Of all her climes-these wretched, these depraved,
To virtue lost, insensible of peace,

From the delights of charity cut off,

To pity dead, the oppressor and the oppressed;
Tyrants who utter the destroying word,

And slaves who will consent to be destroyed -
Were of one species with the sheltered few,
Who, with a dutiful and tender hand,
Lodged, in a dear appropriated spot,

This file of infants; some that never breathed
The vital air; others, which, though allowed
That privilege, did yet expire too soon,
Or with too brief a warning, to admit
Administration of the holy rite-

That lovingly consigns the babe to the arms
Of Jesus, and his everlasting care.

These that in trembling hope are laid apart;
And the besprinkled nursling, unrequired
'Till he begins to smile upon the breast
That feeds him; and the tottering little-one
Taken from air and sunshine when the rose

Of infancy first blooms upon his cheek;
The thinking, thoughtless school-boy, the bold
youth