THE LOT OF THOUSANDS.

BY MRS. JOHN HUNTER.

How many lift the head, look gay, and smile,
Against their consciences.

WHEN hope lies dead within the heart,
By secret sorrow close concealed,
We shrink lest looks or words impart,
What must not be revealed.

"Tis hard to smile, when one could weep; To speak, when one would silent be; To wake, when one should wish to sleep, And wake to agony.

Yet such the lot by thousands cast,
Who wander in this world of care,
And bend beneath the bitter blast,
To save them from despair.

But Nature waits her guests to greet, Where disappointment cannot come; And Time guides with unerring feet, The wearied wanderer home. Constable's Edinburgh Magazine.

COMPARISON.

BY R. B. SHERIDAN, ESQ.

MARKED you her cheek of roseate hue!
Marked you her eye of radiant blue !
That eye in liquid circles moving,
That cheek abashed at man's approving,
The one Love's arrows darting round,
The other blushing at the wound?

A POETICAL SKETCH.

THERE is a feeling in his heart,
A feeling which it well might spare,
That will not break it and depart,

But ever dwells and rankles there:-
Nor music, mirth, nor rosy wine,-
Friendship, nor woman's smiles divine,
Nor sanctity of prayer,—

Nor aught that holy men may say,
Can scare that ravening fiend away!

A sickness of the soul, the balm

Of Hope can neither soothe nor slake ;—
A serpent that no spell can charm,
With eye eternally awake;-

A glance of fire, a tongue of flame,
That Time can neither tire nor tame,

Nor music's voice disarm

A living sense of lasting woe,

That poisons every bliss below!

It was not always thus.-He danced
The earlier hours of life away,

And snatched at joy where'er it chanced

To blossom on his lonely way!

Then Hope was young, and bright, and fair,— He knew nor woe nor wasting care,

But, innocently gay,

Deemed-reckless of the debt it owed'Twould always flow as then it flowed!

As Childhood ripened into Youth,

Those feelings fled :-he drank the springs
Of Knowledge, and the source of Truth,
(What the sage writes the poet sings)
And read in Nature's varying forms,
Her shifting shades of sun and storms,

Unutterable things,—

And wrought, unweariedly, to cull
All that was wild and wonderful!

But even then, at times, would roll,
Unbidden and profoundly deep,
An awful silence o'er his soul

That hushed all other sense to sleep;
And then he saw, too near, the springs
And wild realities of things,

And only waked to weep

That man should be cut off from bliss,
And exiled to a world like this!

He loved I will not say how true

The faithless tongue perchance might lie ;He did not love as others do,

Nor cringe, nor flatter, whine nor sigh!

Look on his inmost heart, and trace,

What time may deepen, not efface,
So firmly wrought the die
That did her lovely image bear,

And warm and glowing stamp it there.

His hopes were crushed;-he strove to hide The past, by mingling with mankind; And left the maid he deified

Idols elsewhere to find.

Now, from Love's sanctuary hurled,
He roves an outcast through the world,
Nor evermore may find-

Wreck of the past-his future stay-
The bonds that has been wrenched away!

He stands as stands a ruined Tower

Which Time in triumph desolates; The ivy wreath that scorns his power, A melancholy gloom creates.

What though it shine in light while yet
The summer suns its fibres fret

The stone it decorates;

So, smiles upon his pallid brow

But wring the ruined heart below!

B. B. W.

SUNSET THOUGHTS.

How beautiful the setting sun reposes o'er the wave!
Like Virtue, life's drear warfare done, descending to the grave;
Yet smiling with a brow of love, benignant, pure, and kind,
And blessing, ere she soars above the realms she leaves behind.

The cloudlets, edged with crimson light, veil o'er the blue serene,
While swift the legions of the night, are shadowing o'er the scene;
The sea-gull, with a wailing moan, up starting, turns to seek
Its lonely dwelling-place, upon the promontory's peak.

The heaving sea,—the distant hill, the waning sky,—the woods-
With melancholy musing fill the swelling heart that broods
Upon the light of other days, whose glories now are dull,
And on the visions Hope could raise, vacant, but beautiful!

Where are the bright illusions vain, that fancy boded forth!
Sunk to their silent caves again, Auroræ of the North?

Oh! who would live those visions o'er, all brilliant though they

seem,

Since Earth is but a desert shore, and Life a weary dream!

Blackwood's Magazine.

THERE IS A TONGUE IN EVERY LEAF.

THERE is a tongue in every leaf,—
A voice in every rill ;-

A voice that speaketh every where,
In flood and fire, through earth and air!
A tongue that's never still!

'Tis the Great Spirit, wide diffused
Through every thing we see,
That with our spirits communeth
Of things mysterious-Life and Death,
Time and Eternity!

I see Him in the blazing sun,
And in the thunder cloud;
I hear Him in the mighty roar
That rusheth through the forests hoar,
When winds are piping loud.

I see Him, hear Him, every where,
In all things—darkness, light,
Silence, and sound; but, most of all,
When slumber's dusky curtains fall,
At the dead hour of night.

I feel Him in the silent dews,
By grateful earth betrayed;

I feel Him in the gentle showers,

The soft south wind, the breath of flowers,

The sunshine, and the shade.

And yet (ungrateful that I am!)

I've turned in sullen mood

From all these things, whereof He said,

When the great whole was finished,

That they were 'very good.'