1 Old year, you must not go: He frothed his bumpers to the brim; Old year, you shall not die. We did so laugh and cry with you, He was full of joke and jest ; But all his merry quips are o'er. To see him die, across the waste His son and heir doth ride post-haste, Every one for his own. The night is starry and cold, my friends, How hard he breathes! o'er the snow The cricket chirps,--the light burns low,— Shake hands before you die! His face is growing sharp and thin ; Alack! our friend is gone, Close his eyes,up -tie his chin, up Step from the corpse; and let him in That standeth there alone, And waiteth at the door. There's a new foot on the floor, my friends, Ex. LII.-ELIOT AND THE INDIAN. Ir was an autumn morning fair, Ere yet the sun was high; But the early mists were passed away, When on the turf, beside the wood, He came, but not with sword or plume, ANON. the wild, the free,— They gathering, thronged, And backward, silent and amazed, They drew, yet still in wonder gazed. The stranger kneeled ;-and toward his God And in his earnest native tongue He poured a rapid prayer. Perchance his prayer he could not frame, Those rugged Indian words to name; The warriors silent stood and near, That noble foreign speech to hear. Then to the listening chiefs he turned, Upon a stillness so profound, You started from the lightest sound. Oh! it were worth ten years of life, That forest church to see, Its pillars of the living pine, Its dome, the arching tree! While round and round, in circling band, He told of mercy,-full and deep, And of a glorious world on high, And ever as his theme grew higher, Then with the pleading tones of love, He told them of his holy book, And all that lay within ; And when he marked their bosoms swell, He spoke his blessing and farewell! Full many an outstretched hand sprang forth, For they wist not that upon this earth, Aye, wept!-The haughty Indian chief The strong man's soul was touched with grief, But none may hear an Indian's moan,— He rushed into the woods alone: Yet not unmarked,—his gentle friend And, kneeling down beside him, there, Ex. LIII-CHARACTER OF TRUE ELOQUENCE. WEBSTER. WHEN public bodies are to be addressed on momentous occasions, when great interests are at stake, and strong passions excited, nothing is valuable, in speech, further than it is connected with high intellectual and moral endowments. Clearness, force, and earnestness, are the qualities which produce conviction. True eloquence, indeed, does not consist in speech. It can not be brought from far. Labor and learning may toil for it, but they will toil in vain. Words and phrases may be marshaled in every way,-they can not compass it. It must exist in the man, in the subject, and in the occasion. Affected passion, intense expression, the pomp of declamation, all may aspire after it,-they can not reach it. It comes, if it come at all, like the outbreaking of a fountain from the earth, or the bursting forth of volcanic fires, with spontaneous, original, native force. The graces taught in the schools, the costly ornaments, and studied contrivances of speech, shock and disgust men, when their own lives, and the fate of their wives, their children, and ther country, hang on the decision of the hour. Then, words have lost their power, rhetoric is vain, and all elaborate oratory contemptible. Even genius itself then feels rebuked and subdued, as in the presence of higher qualities. Then, patriotism is eloquent: then, self-devotion is eloquent. The clear conception, outrunning the deductions of logic, the high purpose, the firm resolve, the dauntless spirit, speaking on the tongue, beaming from the eye, informing every feature, and urging the whole man onward, right onward to his object.— this, this is eloquence: or rather it is something greater and higher than all eloquence,-it is action, noble, sublime, godlike action. Ex. LIV.-THE BELL OF THE ATLANTIC. TOLL, toll, toll, MRS. LYDIA H. SIGOURNEY. Thou Bell by billows swung; And, night and day, thy warning words Wrecked on yon rocky shore; Toll for the master bold, The high-souled and the brave, Toll for the hardy crew, Sons of the storm and blast, Toll for the man of God, Whose hallowed voice of prayer Of that intense despair! groan How precious were those tones Amid the fierce and freezing storm, Toll for the lover lost To the summoned bridal train! He cometh not, pale maiden,- Toll for the absent sire, Who to his home drew near, * It is a touching and remarkable fact, that the bell of the Atlantic supported by some portions of the wreck and the contiguous rock, continued, for days after the melancholy wreck of the vessel,-swept by heavy surges, to toll the requiem of the dead. |