Bid him employ his care for these my friends, You are a man. But I have done. You rush on your destruction. The tale of this unhappy embassy, All Rome will be in tears. THE BATTLE OF WATERLOO. Addison. THERE was a sound of revelry by night, men; A thousand hearts beat happily; and when Soft eyes looked love to eyes which spake again, But hush! hark! a deep sound strikes like a rising knell! Did ye not hear it?-No, 'twas but the wind, To chase the glowing hours with flying feet— more, And kindled a fire. Oh! surely, the light Than greeted my eyes that winter night. Softly Katie approached her now, And pressed a kiss on that marble brow, But Johnnie crept to the quiet breast Said, But the mother, outworn in the struggle and strife Of the madness and toil of the battle of life, Had silently gone to that beautiful shore Where the rich hath need of their gold no more. THE FEMALE MARTYR. "BRING out your dead!" The midnight street Heard and gave back the hoarse, low call; Harsh fell the tread of hasty feet, Glanced through the dark the coarse white sheet, Her coffin and her pall. "What-only one!" the brutal hack-man said, As with an oath he spurned away the dead. How sunk the inmost hearts of all, To hear it and to die! Onward it rolled; while oft its driver stayed, And hoarsely clamored, "Ho! bring out your dead." It paused beside the burial-place; They cast them, one by one, Stranger and friend, the evil and the just, And thou, young martyr! thou wast there; Nor flower, nor cross, nor hallowed taper gave Yet, gentle sufferer! there shall be, In every heart of kindly feeling, A rite as holy paid to thee As if beneath the convent-tree Thy sisterhood were kneeling, At vesper hours, like sorrowing angels, keeping Their tearful watch around thy place of sleeping. For thou wast one in whom the light Of Heaven's own love was kindled well; Gentle, and meek, and lowly, and unknown, Where manly hearts were failing, where Poison with every breath, Yet shrinking not from offices of dread And, where the sickly taper shed Its light through vapors, damp, confined, Hushed as a seraph's fell thy tread, A new Electra by the bed Of suffering human-kind! Pointing the spirit, in its dark dismay, Innocent teacher of the high And holy mysteries of Heaven! How turned to thee each glazing eye, In mute and awful sympathy, As thy low prayers were given; And the o'er-hovering Spoiler wore, the while, An angel's features, a deliverer's smile! A blessed task! and worthy one Who, turning from the world, as thou, To leave its spring-time flowers and sun, Giving to God her beauty and her youth, Earth may not claim thee. Nothing here Thine is a treasure far more dear: Eye hath not seen it, nor the ear The joys prepared, the promised bliss above, |