HYMN TO ADVERSITY.

Keen were his pangs; but keener far to feel

He nursed the pinion which impelled the steel,
While the same plumage that had warmed his nest
Drank the last life-drop from his bleeding breast!
LORD BYRON.

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Hymn to Adversity.

DAUGHTER of Jove, relentless power,

Thou tamer of the human breast,

Whose iron scourge and torturing hour
The bad affright, afflict the best!

Bound in thy adamantine chain,

The proud are taught to taste of pain,
And purple tyrants vainly groan

With pangs unfelt before, unpitied and alone.

When first thy sire to send on earth
Virtue, his darling child, designed,
To thee he gave the heavenly birth,

And bade to form her infant mind.
Stern, rugged nurse! thy rigid lore
With patience many a year she bore;

What sorrow was, thou bad'st her know,

And from her own she learned to melt at others' woe.

Scared at thy frown terrific, fly

Self-pleasing Folly's idle brood,

Wild Laughter, Noise, and thoughtless Joy,

And leave us leisure to be good.

Light they disperse, and with them go

The summer friend, the flattering foe;

By vain Prosperity received,

To her they vow their truth, and are again believed.

Wisdom in sable garb arrayed,

Immersed in rapturous thought profound,

And Melancholy, silent maid,

With leaden eye that loves the ground, Still on thy solemn steps attend;

Warm Charity, the general friend,

With Justice to herself severe,

And Pity, dropping soft the sadly pleasing tear.

O! gently on thy suppliant's head,

Dread goddess, lay thy chastening hand,

Not in thy Gorgon terrors clad,

Nor circled with the vengeful band, (As by the impious thou art seen,)

With thundering voice and threatening mien,
With screaming Horror's funeral cry,
Despair, and fell Disease, and ghastly Poverty.

Thy form benign, oh goddess, wear,
Thy milder influence impart,

Thy philosophic train be there

To soften, not to wound, my heart. The generous spark extinct revive, Teach me to love, and to forgive,

Exact my own defects to scan,

What others are to feel, and know myself a man.

THOMAS GRAY.

Resignation.

HERE is no flock, however watched and tended,

TH

But one dead lamb is there;

There is no fireside, howsoe'er defended,

But has one vacan: chair.

RESIGNATION.

The air is full of farewells to the dying,
And mournings for the dead;

The heart of Rachel, for her children crying,
Will not be comforted.

Let us be patient; these severe afflictions
Not from the ground arise;

But oftentimes celestial benedictions

Assume this dark disguise.

We see but dimly through the mists and vapors
Amid these earthly damps;

What seem to us but sad funereal tapers
May be heaven's distant lamps.

There is no death! What seems so is transition:
This life of mortal breath

Is but a suburb of the life elysian,

Whose portals we call death.

She is not dead-the child of our affection—
But gone unto that school

Where she no longer needs our poor protection,
And Christ himself doth rule.

In that great cloister's stillness and seclusion,
By guardian angels led,

Safe from temptation, safe from sin's pollution,
She lives, whom we call dead.

Day after day, we think what she is doing
In those bright realms of air;

Year after year, her tender steps pursuing,
Behold her grown more fair.

Thus do we walk with her, and keep unbroken
The bond which nature gives,

Thinking that our remembrance, though unspoken,
May reach her where she lives.

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Not as a child shall we again behold her;
For when, with raptures wild,

In our embraces we again enfold her,
She will not be a child;

But a fair maiden in her Father's mansion,
Clothed with celestial grace;

And beautiful with all the soul's expansion
Shall we behold her face.

And though at times impetuous with emotion
And anguish long suppressed,

The swelling heart heaves, moaning like the ocean,
That cannot be at rest-

We will be patient, and assuage the feeling
We cannot wholly stay;

By silence sanctifying, not concealing,

The grief that must have way.

HENRY W. LONGFELLOW.

My Child.

CANNOT make him dead!
His fair sunshiny head

Is ever bounding round my study chair;
Yet when my eyes, now dim
With tears, I turn to him,
The vision vanishes-he is not there!

I walk my parlor floor,

And, through the open door,

I hear a footfall on the chamber stair;
I'm stepping toward the hall

To give the boy a call;

And then bethink me that he is not there!

MY CHILD.

I thread the crowded street;

A satcheled lad I meet,

With the same beaming eyes and colored hair;
And, as he's running by,

Follow him with my eye,

Scarcely believing that he is not there!

I know his face is hid

Under the coffin lid;

Closed are his eyes; cold is his forehead fair;
My hand that marble felt;

O'er it in prayer I knelt ;

Yet my heart whispers that he is not there!

I cannot make him dead!

When passing by the bed

So long watched over with parental care,
My spirit and my eye

Seek him inquiringly,

Before the thought comes that he is not there!

When, at the cool, gray break

Of day, from sleep I wake,

With my first breathing of the morning air

My soul goes up with joy,

To Him who gave my boy;

Then comes the sad thought that he is not there!

When at the day's calm close,

Before we seek repose,

I'm with his mother, offering up our prayer,

Whate'er I may be saying,

I am in spirit praying

For our boy's spirit, though-he is not there!

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