EPITAPH ON A JACOBITE

A lost cause is nobly lamented in this epitaph by one who was himself a Whig.

To my true king I offered free from stain
Courage and faith; vain faith, and courage vain.
For him I threw lands, honours, wealth away,
And one dear hope, that was more prized than they.
For him I languished in a foreign clime,
Gray-haired with sorrow in my manhood's prime ;
Heard on Lavernia Scargill's whispering trees,
And pined by Arno for my lovelier Tees;
Beheld each night my home in fevered sleep,
Each morning started from the dream to weep;
Till God, who saw me tried too sorely, gave
The resting-place I asked, an early grave.

O thou, whom chance leads to this nameless stone,
From that proud country which was once mine

own,

By those white cliffs I never more must see, By that dear language which I spake like thee, Forget all feuds, and shed one English tear O'er English dust. A broken heart lies here. LORD MACAULAY.

THE CRY OF THE CHILDREN

Great reforms have been due, at any rate in their beginnings, to authors who have taken to heart the sufferings of children and the poor. When Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote her poem, little children worked in factories under cruel conditions, children who are now cared for and educated by the State. Charles Dickens did much for the reform of workhouses and the service of the sick poor, and he helped the abolition of public executions. Mrs. Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, if not a very fine piece of literature, did much to bring about the freedom of the slaves in the United States.

Do ye hear the children weeping, O my brothers, Ere the sorrow comes with years?

They are leaning their young heads against their mothers,

And that cannot stop their tears.

The young lambs are bleating in the meadows,
The young birds are chirping in the nest,
The young fawns are playing with the shadows,
The young flowers are blowing toward the west-
But the young, young children, O my brothers,
They are weeping bitterly!

They are weeping in the playtime of the others,
In the country of the free.

Do you question the young children in their sorrow,
Why their tears are falling so?

The old man may weep for his to-morrow
Which is lost in long ago.

The old tree is leafless in the forest,

The old year is ending with the frost,

The old wound, if stricken, is the sorest,
The old hope is hardest to be lost.

But the young, young children, O my brothers, Do you ask them why they stand

Weeping sore before the bosoms of their mothers, In our happy Fatherland.

They look up with their pale and sunken faces, And their looks are dread to see,

For the man's hoary anguish draws and presses Down the cheeks of infancy.

"Your old earth," they say, "is very dreary; Our young feet," they say,

are very weak! Few paces have we taken, yet are wearyOur grave-rest is very far to seek.

Ask the aged why they weep, and not the children; For the outside earth is cold;

And we young ones stand without, in our bewildering,

And the graves are for the old.

'True," say the children, "it may happen

That we die before our time.

Little Alice died last year-her grave is shapen
Like a snowball, in the rime.

We looked into the pit prepared to take her.
Was no room for any work in the close clay!
From the sleep wherein she lieth none will wake
her,

Crying, 'Get up, Alice, it is day.'

If you listen by that grave, in sun and shower, With your ear down, little Alice never cries.

Could we see her face, be sure we should not know

her,

For the smile has time for growing in her eyes.

And merry go her moments, lulled and stilled in The shroud by the kirk-chime!

It is good when it happens," say the children, "That we die before our time.'

Alas, alas, the children! they are seeking
Death in life, as best to have.

They are binding up their hearts away from breaking,

With a cerement from a grave.

Go out, children, from the mine and from the city, Sing out, children, as the little thrushes do.

Pluck your handfuls of the meadow-cowslips pretty, Laugh aloud, to feel your fingers let them through! But they answer, Are your cowslips of the

meadows

Like our weeds a-near the mine?

Leave us quiet in the dark of the coal-shadows, From your pleasures fair and fine!

"For oh," say the children, "we are weary
And we cannot run or leap.

If we cared for any meadows, it were merely
To drop down in them and sleep.

Our knees tremble sorely in the stooping,

We fall upon our faces, trying to go;

And, underneath our heavy eyelids drooping,

The reddest flower would look as pale as snow.
For, all day, we drag our burdens tiring
Through the coal-dark, underground—
Or all day we drive the wheels of iron
In the factories, round and round.

"For, all day, the wheels are droning, turningTheir wind comes in our faces—

Till our hearts turn, our heads with pulses burning, And the walls turn in their places.

Turns the sky in the high window blank and reeling,

Turns the long light that drops adown the wall,
Turn the black flies that crawl along the ceiling,
All are turning, all the day, and we with all.
And all day the iron wheels are droning,
And sometimes we could pray,

'O ye

wheels' (breaking out in mad moaning),

Stop! be silent for to-day!'”

Ay! be silent! Let them hear each other breathing

For a moment, mouth to mouth!

Let them touch each other's hand in a fresh wreathing

Of their tender human youth!

Let them feel that this cold metallic motion

Is not all the life God fashions or reveals.

Let them prove their living souls against the notion

That they live in you, or under you, O wheels !— Still, all day, the iron wheels go onward, Grinding life down from its mark;

And the children's souls, which God is calling sunward.

Spin on blindly in the dark.

Now tell the poor young children, O my brothers, To look up to Him and pray;

So the blessed One who blesseth all the others, Will bless them another day.

They answer, "Who is God that He should hear

us,