When, down the crags descending, of his | If Heaven did not in dearest love engage To dash the chalice down and mar the draught. train One cried, "O monarch, for thy life forbear! Coiled in these waters, at their fountainhead, And causing them so feebly to distill, A poisonous snake of hugest growth lies dead, And doth with venom all the streamlet fill." "Alas for us if we that love are fain With wrath and blind impatience to re pay Which nothing but our weakness doth restrain As he repaid his faithful bird that day; If an indignant eye we lift above, Dropped from his hand the cup; one look he Which, but for that keen watchfulness of cast Upon the faithful bird before his feet, Whose dying struggles now were almost past, For whom a better guardian had been meet, Then homeward rode in silence many a mile; love, AFAR IN THE DESERT. FAR in the desert I love to ride With the silent bush-boy alone by my side AFA But if such thoughts did in his bosom When the sorrows of life the soul o'ercast, grow As did in mine the painfulness beguile Of that his falcon's end what man can know? I said, "Such chalices the world fills up seem A sparkling potion in a jewelled cup, And, sick of the present, I turn to the past, And the eye is suffused with regretful tears From the fond recollections of former years, And the shadows of things that have long since fled Flit over the brain like the ghosts of the dead Bright visions of glory that vanished too soon, Nor know we drawn from what infected Day-dreams that departed ere manhood's stream. "Our spirit's thirst they promise to assuage, And we those cups unto our death had quaffed noon, Attachments by fate or by falsehood reft, The home of my childhood, the haunts of my With the death-fraught firelock in my hand, time When the feelings were young and the world was new, Afar in the desert I love to ride Like fresh bowers of Paradise opening to With the silent bush-boy alone by my side, With its scenes of oppression, corruption and And the mighty rhinoceros wallows at will strife The proud man's frown and the base man's fear, In the vlei where the wild ass is drinking his fill. And the scorner's laugh and the sufferer's Afar in the desert I love to ride tear, With the silent bush-boy alone by my side. The malice and meanness and falsehood and O'er the brown Karroo, where the bleating folly cry Dispose me to musing and dark melan- Of the spring-bok's fawn sounds plain Where the zebra wantonly tosses his mane And the stately koodoo exultingly bounds Oh, then there is freedom and joy and pride Undisturbed by the bay of the hunter's Afar in the desert alone to ride. hounds, There is rapture to vault on the champing And the timorous quagha's wild whistling steed And to bound away with the eagle's speed, neigh Is heard by the fountain at fall of day, And the fleet-footed ostrich over the waste Far hid from the pitiless plunderer's view, Afar in the desert I love to ride And the quivered Coranna or Bechuan Which the snake and the lizard inhabit alone, With the twilight but from the old hollow stone, Where grass nor herb nor shrub takes root, But the barren earth and the burning sky, And here, while the night-winds round me sigh And the stars burn bright in the midnight sky As I sit apart by the caverned stone A "still small voice" comes through the wild Like a father consoling his fretful child, Which banishes bitterness, wrath and fear, Saying, "Man is distant, but God is near!" THOMAS PRINGLE. THE BLIND BOY. OH, say, what is that thing called light Which I must ne'er enjoy? What are the blessings of the sight? You talk of wondrous things you see, I feel him warm, but how can he My day or night myself I make Whene'er I sleep or play; And could I ever keep awake, With me 'twere always day. With heavy sighs I often hear You mourn my hapless woe, But sure with patience I can bear A loss I ne'er can know. Then let not what I cannot have My cheer of mind destroy : Whilst thus I sing I am a king, Although a poor blind boy. COLLEY CIBBER. THE CAPTURE. practised soldier whom frequent frays have taught wisdom, he resolved to reconnoitre before he advanced upon a post that might be in possession of an enemy. He therefore dismounted, fastened his horse in a fencecorner, where a field of corn concealed him from notice, and then stealthily crept forward until he came immediately behind one of the outhouses. From this position he was enabled to satisfy himself that no danger was to be apprehended from his visit. He accordingly approached and entered the dwelling, where he soon found himself in the presence of its mistress. N the morning that succeeded the night in which Horseshoe Robinson arrived at Musgrove's the stout sergeant might have have been seen, about eight o'clock, leaving the main road from Ninety-Six, at the point where that leading to David Ramsay's separated from it, and cautiously urging his way into the deep forest by the more private path into which he had entered. The knowledge that Innis was encamped along the Ennoree, within a short distance of the mill, had compelled him to make an extensive circuit to reach Ramsay's dwelling, whither he was now bent, and he had experienced considerable delay in his morning journey by finding himself frequently in the neighborhood of small foraging-parties of Tories, whose motions he was obliged to watch for fear of an encounter. He had once already been compelled to use his horse's heels in what he called "fair flight," and once to ensconce himself a full half hour under cover of the thicket afforded him by a swamp. He now, therefore, according to his own phrase, "dived into the "I am alone," said Robinson. "And a little road that scrambled down through the little wettish, mistress," he added as he took woods toward Ramsay's with all his eyes off his hat and shook the water from it; "it about him, looking out as sharply as a fox has just sat up a rain, and looks as if it was on a foggy morning;" and, with this cir- going to give us enough on't. You don't cumspection, he was not long in arriving mind doing a little dinner-work on a Sunday, within view of Ramsay's house. Like a I see. Like a I see. Shelling of beans, I s'pose, is tanta "Mistress Ramsay," said he, walking up to the dame, who was occupied at a table, with a large trencher before her, in which she was plying some household thrift, "luck to you, ma'am, and all your house! I hope you haven't none of these clinking and clattering bullies about you that are as thick over this country as the frogs in the kneading-troughs that they tell of?" "Good lack, Mr. Horseshoe Robinson!" exclaimed the matron, offering the sergeant her hand. "What has brought you here? What news? Who are with you? For patience' sake, tell me!" mount to dragging a sheep out of a pond, as the preachers allow on the Sabbath. Ha, ha! Where's Davy?" "He's gone over to the meeting-house on Ennoree, hoping to hear something of the army at Camden; perhaps you can tell us the news from that quarter?" "Faith, that's a mistake, Mistress Ramsay, though I don't doubt that they are hard upon the scratches by this time. But at this present speaking I command the flying artillery. We have but one man in the corps, and that's myself; and all the guns we have got is this piece of ordnance that hangs in this old belt by my side," pointing to his sword," and that I captured from the enemy at Blackstock's. I was hoping I mought find John Ramsay at home: I have need of him as a recruit." “Ah, Mr. Robinson, John has a heavy life of it over there with Sumter. The boy is often without his natural rest or a meal's victuals, and the general thinks so much of him that he can't spare him to come home. I haven't the heart to complain as long as John's service is of any account, but it does seem, Mr. Robinson, like needless tempting of the mercies of Providence. We thought that he might have been here to-day; yet I am glad he didn't come, for he would have been certain to get into trouble. Who should come in this morning, just after my husband had cleverly got away on his horse, but a young cock-a-whoop ensign that belongs to Ninety-Six, and four great Scotchmen with him, all in red coats? They had been out thieving, I warrant, and were now going home again. And who but they! Here they were swaggering all about my house, and calling for this, and calling for that, as if they owned the fee-simple of everything on the plantation. And it made my blood rise, Mr. Horseshoe, to see them turn out in the yard and catch up my chickens and ducks, and kill as many as they could string about them, and I not daring to say a word, though I did give them a piece of my mind, too. "Who is at home with you?" inquired the sergeant, eagerly. "Nobody but my youngest boy, Andrew,” answered the dame. "And then the filthy, toping rioters-" she continued, exalting her voice. "What arms have you in the house?" asked Robinson, without heeding the dame's rising anger. We have a rifle, and a horseman's pistol that belongs to John. They must call for drink, too, and turn my house, of a Sunday morning, into a tavern-" "They took the route toward Ninety-Six, you said, Mistress Ramsay?" "Yes, they went straight forward upon the road. But, look you, Mr. Horseshoe: you're not thinking of going after them?" "Isn't there an old field about a mile from here on that road?" inquired the sergeant, still intent upon his own thoughts. "Certain," replied the hostess. "You must remember the cobbler that died of drink on the roadside?" "There is a shabby, racketty cabin in the middle of the field. Am I right, good woman?" "Yes." "And nobody lives in it? It has no door to it?" "There ha'n't been a family there these seven years." |