Page images
PDF
EPUB

and darkened in the mire of this world that shall one day shine very brightly in its heavenly setting. They also suggest the thought that men in the position of workhouse chap

We care not what they "demand" in resolutions, nor what helpless trash they proclaim on the housetops. We do not believe in their power to attain so much as an armistice for two years to come. If an armistice,lains may do a world of good and be great indeed, were offered, and the invading troops were withdrawn, of course we should not object to it, and good use could be made of it. But, mark well, ye armistice mongers! During that suspension of hostilities all negotiations must be between government and government. Our lines should be more strictly guarded than ever. No negotiations or fraternization of parties by public meetings or private conferences; no bargaining with the calm voice of reason; no secret pocketing of Wall's "Common Christianity.”

But armistice there will be none, and we are glad of it. Our sovereign independence is already won and paid for with treasures of brave blood. It shall not be sold by pedlers, to be built into a Yankee platform.

From The Athenæum.

Songs in the Night. A Collection of verses by the late Grace Dickinson. Wertheim & Co.

THESE are songs in the night in sad verity! sung by a poor bed-ridden woman in a union workhouse. The description of the circumstances under which they were sung is touching indeed-one of those pathetic facts of life which beat the best fictions of literature. Grace Dickinson became an inmate of the Halifax workhouse in consequence of being in a decline; and it was there she wrote this collection of verse. At first she jotted her thoughts down on a slate-later she was unable to do this; but curiously enough she had learnt the deaf and dumb alphabet on purpose to converse with a poor deaf and dumb workhouse companion, and when she could not sit up in bed to hold her pencil, she dictated her verses to her mute amanuensis. Books have been composed under many singular conditions, but these we look upon as among the most singular and interesting. The chaplain of the Halifax union workhouse vouches for the verses being a genuine expression of the writer's religious feelings, and as such they give us one more proof that many and many a jewel of God gets trampled

comforters to suffering souls who are let out
of life by that grimmest door of death, the
pauper's grave. Blessings be upon all who
in this way are true to the Master's word!
Several of the pieces in this little book may
fairly claim a place in collections of hymns,
as the following characteristic specimen will
show :-

"My lot on earth is poor and mean,
My circumstances sad indeed;
But Jesus cheers the dreary scene:
He meets me in my greatest need.
"He smiles on me though some may turn,
He pities failings none can see;
He welcomes me, whoe'er may spurn:
How kind my Jesus is to me!

"He comforts and he succors me;
He teaches me to look above,
Beyond this life and its rough sea,
To yonder land of rest and love.
"He hushes all my passions still,

He makes the storm become a calm,
Brings sweet submission to his will,
And holds me with his mighty arm.
"He makes the curse a blessing prove;
He turns my sorrow into joy;
He teaches this hard heart to love,
And make His praises my employ.

"He turns my darkness into light,

He makes this earth become a heaven;
Gives inward peace 'midst outward fright:
All glory to His name be given."

The piety is better than the poetry-such is often the case with hymns; and, apart from the literary estimate, the little book deserved publication for the facts which it contains. There must be many kind hearts that will be touched by the story to put forth a helping hand; for it appears that when poor Grace Dickinson fell worn out at the workhousedoor she had with her a burden of two children. These she had toiled hard for during eighteen months of widowhood, and failed at last. These are still living in the workhouse. The book is printed in their behalf; and the dying mother would undoubtedly have thought her verses had won ample fame if she had known that they would be of service to her little ones, as we trust they may be.

SPRING AT THE CAPITAL.

THE poplar drops beside the way

Its tasselled plumes of silver-gray;

"OUT IN THE COLD."

BY LUCY LARCOM.

WHAT is the threat! "Leave her out in the cold?''

The chestnut pouts its great brown buds, impa- Loyal New England, too loyally bold:

tient for the laggard May.

The honeysuckles lace the wall;
The hyacinths grow fair and tall;
And mellow sun and pleasant wind and odorous
bees are over all.

Down-looking in this snow-white bud,
How distant seems the war's red flood!

How far remote the streaming wounds, the sick-
ening scent of human blood!

For Nature does not recognize

This strife that rends the earth and skies;

No war-dreams vex the winter sleep of clover-
heads and daisy-eyes.

She holds her even way the same,
Though navies sink or cities flame;

A snow-drop is a snow-drop still, despite the
tion's joy or shame.

When blood her grassy altar wets,

She sends the pitying violets

Hater of treason!-ah, that is her crime;
Lover of freedom, too true for her time.

Out in the cold? oh, she chooses the place,
Rather than share in a sheltered disgrace,
Rather than sit at a cannibal feast,
Rather than mate with the blood-reeking beast.
Leave out New England? and what will she do,
Stormy-browed sisters, forsaken by you?
Sit on her Rock, her desertion to weep?
Or, like a Sappho, plunge thence in the deep?
No; our New England can put on no airs;
Nothing will change the calm look that she wears.
Life's a rough lesson, she learned from the first,
Up into wisdom through poverty nursed.

Not more distinct on his tables of stone
Was the grand writing to Moses made known,
na-Than is engraven in letters of light

On her foundations the One Law of Right.

She is a Christian; she smothers her ire,
Trims up the candle, and stirs the home fire,

To heal the outrage with their bloom, and cover Thinking and working and waiting the day

it with soft regrets.

O crocuses with rain-wet eyes!
O tender-lipped anemones!

What do ye know of agony and death and blood-
won victories?

No shudder breaks your sunshine trance,
Though near you rolls, with slow advance,
Clouding your shining leaves with dust, the an-
guish-laden ambulance.

Yonder a white encampment hums;
The clash of martial music comes;
And now your startled stems are all a-tremble
with the jar of drums.

Whether it lessen or increase,

Or whether trumpets shout or cease,
Still deep within your tranquil hearts the happy
bees are murmuring "Peace!"

O flowers! the soul that faints or grieves
New comfort from your lips receives;
Sweet confidence and patient faith are hidden in
your healing leaves.

Help us to trust, still on and on,

That this dark night will soon be gone, And that these battle-stains are but the blood-red trouble of the dawn

Dawn of a broader, whiter day

Than ever blessed us with its ray

When her wild sisters shall leave their mad play.

Out in the cold, where the free winds are blowing,
Out in the cold, where the strong oaks are grow-

ing,

Guards she all growths that are living and great;
Growths to rebuild every tottering State.
"Notions" worth heeding to shape she has
wrought,

Lifted and fixed on the granite of thought;
What she has done may the wide world behold;
What she is doing, too, out in the cold.

Out in the cold! she is glad to be there,
Breathing the northwind, the clear healthful air,
Saved from the hurricane passions that rend
Hearts that once named her a sister and friend.
There she will stay while they bluster and foam,
Planning their comfort when they shall come home,
Building the Union an adamant wall,
Freedom-cemented, that never can fall.
Freedom, dear-bought with the blood of her sons;
See the red current! right nobly it runs!
Life of her life is not too much to give
For the dear nation she taught how to live.
Vainly they shout to you, sturdy Northwest;
'Tis her own heart that beats warm in your breast;
Sisters in nature as well as in name,
Sisters in loyalty, true to that claim.

Freedom your breath is, O broad-shouldered North!
Turn from the subtle miasma gone forth

A dawn beneath whose purer light all guilt and Out of the South land, from Slavery's fen,

wrong shall fade away.

Then shall our nation break its bands,
And, silencing the envious lands,
Stand in the searching light unshamed, with
spotless robe, and clean, white hands.
-Atlantic Monthly.

Battening demons, but poisoning men.

Still on your Rock, my New England, sit sure,
Keeping the air for the great country pure.
There you the "wayward" ones yet shall enfold;
There they will come to you out in the cold.
-Taunton Gazette.

[blocks in formation]

SHORT ARTICLES.-The Sunday Question, 123. Phoebus Apollo's Complaint, 131. Mr. Buckle as a Talker, 134. The Great Stone Book of Nature, 142. Novel Mode of Lighting a Church, 142.

PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY BY

LITTELL, SON & CO.,

& CO., BOSTON.

For Six Dollars a year, in advance, remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded free of postage.

Complete sets of the First Series, in thirty-six volumes, and of the Second Series, in twenty volumes, handsomely bound, packed in neat boxes, and delivered in all the principal cities, free of expense of freight, are for sale at two dollars a volume.

ANY VOLUME may be had separately, at two dollars, bound, or a dollar and a half in numbers.

ANY NUMBER may be had for 13 cents; and it is well worth while for subscribers or purchasers to complete any broken volumes they may have, and thus greatly enhance their value.

LITTLE CHARLEY.

O SUNSHINE, making golden spots
Upon the carpet at my feet,
The shadows of the coming flowers;
The phantoms of forget-me-nots

And roses red and sweet!
How can ye seem so full of joy,
And we so sad at heart, and sore?
Angel of Death, again thy wings

Are folded at our door!

We can but yearn through length of days,
For something lost we fancied ours;
We'll miss the darling when the Spring
Has touched the world to flowers.
For thou wast like that dainty month,
Which streams the violet at its feet;

Thy life was slips of golden sun,
And silver tear-drops braided sweet,
And thou wast light, and thou wast shade
And thine were sweet, capricious ways;
Now lost in purple languors, now
No bird in ripe-red Summer days
Were half so wild as thou!

[blocks in formation]

Within the shrouded room below
He lies a-cold; and yet we know
It is not Charley there;

It is not Charley cold and white,
It is the robe that in his flight
He gently laid aside.
Our darling hath not died!
O rare pale lip! O clouded eyes
O violet eyes grown dim!

Ah, well this little lock of hair
Is all of him.

Is all of him that we can keep,
For loving kisses, and the thought
Of him and death may teach us more
Than all our life hath taught!
God walking over starry spheres,
Doth clasp his tiny hand,

And leads him through a fall of tears,
Into the Mystic Land!

[blocks in formation]

THE SUNKEN CITY.

By day it lies hidden and lurks beneath
The ripples that laugh with light;
But calmly and clearly and coldly as death,
It glooms into shape by night,
When none but the awful heavens and me
Can look on the City that's sunk in the Sea.

Many a castle I built in the air;
Towers that gleamed in the sun;
Spires that soared so stately and fair
They touched heaven every one,

Lie under the waters that mournfully
Closed over the City that's sunk in the Sea.

Many fine houses, but never a home;

Windows, and no live face!

Doors set wide where no beating hearts come;
No voice is heard in the place:

It sleeps in the arms of Eternity-
The silent City that's sunk in the Sea.

There the face of my dead love lies,

Embalmed in the bitterest tears;

No breath on the lips! no smile in the eyes,
Though you watched for years and years;
And the dear drowned eyes never close from me,
Looking up from the City that's sunk in the Sea.

Two of the bonniest Birds of God

That ever warmed human heart

For a nest, till they fluttered their wings abroad, Lie there in their chambers apart,—

Dead! yet pleading most piteously

In the lonesome City that's sunk in the Sea.
And oh, the brave ventures there lying in wreck,
Dark on that shore of the Lost!
Gone down, with every hope on deck,

When all-sail for a glorious coast.
And the waves go sparkling splendidly
Over the City that's sunk in the Sea.

Then I look from my City that's sunk in the Sea, To that Star-Chamber overhead;

And torturingly they question me

"What of this world of the dead

That lies out of sight, and how will it be
With the City and thee, when there's no more

sea?"

-All the Year Round.

MAY.

THE wet leaves flap, the sad boughs sway;
The Spring is dead, and her child May-
May, who fed the nestling bird--
May, who sang at every word-
May, who turned the dew to wine-
May, who bade the sun to shine-

May, who gave us skies of blue-
May, who brought the cuckoo too-
May, who gave the sunbeams power-
May, who sent the hawthorn flower-
May, who buds with soft rain fed-
May, the Spring's dear child, is dead.
-Chambers's Journal.

From The New Monthly Magazine.
THE PRIMEVAL FORESTS OF THE

AMAZONS.*

THE boundless forest district which, in the torrid zone of South America, connects the

Iodiles and the boas are masters of the river;
the jaguar, the peccari, the dante, and the
monkeys traverse the forest without fear and
without danger: there they dwell as in an
ancient inheritance." In fact, just as, geo-
logically speaking, the earth in the epoch of
the growth of arboreal ferns in temperate cli-
mates, the reign of huge and paradoxical am-
phibia, and the possible predominance of a hot
and humid atmosphere, charged with carbonic
acid, was not prepared for man, so the great
primeval forests of tropical America are in
the present day in the same condition, in a
certain sense,
and, as yet, the habitation of
the predecessor of man only-the monkey-
except where clearances are effected.

river basins of the Orinoco and the Amazon is, undoubtedly, one of the wonders of the world. This region deserves, according to De Humboldt, to be called a Primeval, or Virgin Forest, in the strictest sense of the word. If every wild forest, densely covered with trees, on which man has never laid his destroying hand, is to be regarded as a primitive forest, then, argues that great naturalist, the phenomenon is common to many parts both of the temperate and the frigid zones; if, however, this character consists in its im"This aspect of animated nature, in which penetrability, primitive forests belong exclu- man is nothing," Humboldt goes on to resively to tropical regions. ("Views of Na-mark," has something in it strange and sad. ture," Bohn's ed., p. 193.)

To this we reconcile ourselves with difficulty This is the view entertained of a primeval on the ocean, and amid the sands of Africa; forest by one of the great authorities on the though in these scenes, where nothing recalls subject—one who, of all old investigators, to mind our fields, our woods, and our streams, Bonpland, Martius, Poppig, and the Schom- we are less astonished at the vast solitude burgs, and before the time of Wallace and through which we pass. Here, in a fertile Bates, had spent the longest period of time country adorned with eternal verdure, we seek in vain the traces of the power of man; in primeval forests in the interior of a great continent. Although we prefer to use the we seem to be transported into a world difterm in its simplest and accepted sense, of a ferent from that which gave us birth. These forest with which man's toil has had noth- impressions are so much the more powerful, ing to do, we may add, that in Humboldt's in proportion as they are of longer duration. somewhat arbitrary definition as to its "im-A soldier, who had spent his whole life in penetrability," that this is by no means, the missions of the Upper Oroonoko [as De as is often erroneously supposed in Europe, always Humboldt spells the name of the river], slept with us on the bank of the river. He was an occasioned by the interlaced climbing lianas, or creeping plants, for these often constitute but a very small portion of the underwood. The chief obstacles are the shrub-like plants, which fill up every space between the trees in a zone where all vegetable forms have a tendency to become arborescent.

intelligent man, who, during a calm and serene night, pressed me with questions on the magnitude of the stars, on the inhabitants of the moon, on a thousand subjects of which I was as ignorant as himself. Being unable by my answers to satisfy his curiosity, he said to me, in a firm tone: With respect to men,

In these great primeval forests man is not. "In the interior of part of the new conti-I believe there are no more above than you nent," Humboldt says, in another work," we almost accustom ourselves to regard men as not being essential to the order of nature. The earth is loaded with plants, and nothing impedes their development. An immense layer of free mould manifests the uninterrupted action of organic powers. The croc- regions."

would have found if you had gone by land from Javita to Cassiquaire. I think I see in the stars, as here, a plain covered with grass, and a forest traversed by a river.' In citing these words, I paint the impression produced by the monotonous aspect of those solitary

There is more in it, though, than appeared *The Naturalist on the River Amazons: a Rec-at the moment even to the philosophic Humord of Adventures, Habits of Animals, Sketches of boldt. It is the deeply humiliating sense in Brazilian and Indian Life, and Aspects of Nature under the Equator, during Eleven Years of Travel. man that the primeval forest is not yet preBy Henry Walter Bates. Two Vols. John Murray. pared to be his abode, that, except in the

« EelmineJätka »