"Want-total want of daily bread

Came next;-my native pride was strong, And yet I begged from day to day, And made my miserable way

Throughout the city's busy throng!

"I felt that I was one debased,

And what I was I dared not think:
Even from myself I strove to hide
My very name; an honest pride

Made me from common beggary shrink.

"Oh misery!-my homeless heart

Grew sick of life.-I wandered out
With my two children, far away
Into the solitudes that lay

The populous city round about:

"The mother in my soul was strong,
And I was ravenous as the beast;
Man's heart was hard-I stole them bread-
And while I pined the children fed,

And yet each day our wants increased.

"I saw them waste, and waste away,
I strove to think it was not so;
At length, one died-of want he died—
My very brain seemed petrified-

I wept not in that bitter woe!

"I took the other in my arms,

And day by day, like one amazed By an unutterable grief,

I wandered on;-I found relief

In travel, but my brain was crazed.

"How we were fed I cannot tell;
I pulled the berry from the tree,
And we lived on,-I knew no pain
Save a dull stupor in my brain,
And I forgot my misery.

"I joyed to see the little stars;

I joyed to see the midnight moon; I felt at times a wild delight,—

I saw my child before my sight

As gamesome as the young racoon!

"'T was a strange season; and how long
It lasted, whether days or years,
I know not,-it too soon went by ;-
I woke again to agony,

But ne'er again to human tears.

"The Indian found me in the wood,
He took me to his forest-home ;-
They laid my child beneath the tree,
They buried it, unknown to me,

In a wild, lonely place of gloom.

"The Indian women on me gazed
With eyes of tenderness, and then
Slowly came back each 'wildered sense;
Their low tones of benevolence

Gave me my human soul again.

And I have lived with them for years,
And I have been an Indian wife;

And save at times, when thoughts will flow
Back through those dreadful times of woe
To my youth's sunshine long ago,

I almost like the Indian life.

"But one thing in my soul is dark— I have forgot my Fathers' God!

I cannot pray and yet I turn

Toward Him, and my weak soul doth yearn Once more for holy, spiritual food.

"Oh that I had an inward peace

a hope to bless

To cheer my soul-
A faith to strengthen and sustain
My spirit through its mortal pain,-

To comfort my long wretchedness!

"But I am feeble as a child—

I pine as one that wanteth bread;

And idly I repeat each word
Of holy import I have heard,

Or that in early creeds I said.

"But oh! my comfort cometh not!
And whether God is fixed in wrath
And will not heed my misery;-
Or whether he regardeth me,

I know not-gloomy is my path!"

With this arose old Elian Gray

My daughter, God hath left thee not! He hath regarded thy complaintHath seen thy spirit bruised and faint! Thou art not of His love forgot.

"'Tis by His arm I hither cameSurely for this I heard a voice

Which bade me in my place be still;'

I came by his Almighty will,

And greatly doth my soul rejoice!"

He gave her comfort-gave her peace,—
And that lone daughter of despair
For very joy of heart shed tears;
And the dark agony of years

Passed by, like a wild dream of care.

Thus was the old man's mission done;
And she, who 'mong that forest race
Was wife and mother, won his life
From torture, from the scalping-knife,

And sped him to his former place.

CHRIST BLESSING THE BREAD.

BY THE REV. THOMAS DALE, M. A.

1.

ONWARD it speeds! the awful hour from Man's first fall decreed,

When the dark Serpent's wrath shall bruise the Woman's spotless Seed;

The foe He met-the desert path triumphantly He trod, But now a darker, deadlier strife awaits the Son of God!

II.

Soon shall a strange and midnight gloom involve the conscious Heaven,

While in Jehovah's inmost fane the mystic veil is riven! Soon shall one deep and dying groan the solid mountains

rend,

The yawning graves shall yield their dead; the buried Saints ascend!