Would wet her hand with tears, And, looking up to her fixed countenance,

Sob out the name of mother! then she groaned.

66

At length collecting, Zeinab turned her eyes

To heaven, and praised the Lord:

66

'He gave, he takes away!"

The pious sufferer cried;

"The Lord our God is good!"

"Good, is he?" quoth the boy: 'Why are my brethren and my sisters slain?

Why is my father killed ?
Did ever we neglect our prayers,
Or ever lift a hand unclean to
Heaven?

Did ever stranger from our tent
Unwelcomed turn away?
Mother, He is not good!"

Then Zeinab beat her breast in agony,

"O God, forgive the child!

[From The Curse of Kehama.]

LOVE'S IMMORTALITY.

THEY sin who tell us love can die.
With life all other passions fly,

All others are but vanity.

In heaven, Ambition cannot dwell, Nor Avarice in the vaults of hell; Earthly, these passions of the earth They perish where they had their birth.

But Love is indestructible,

Its holy flame forever burneth,

turneth.

Too oft on earth a troubled guest,
At times deceived, at times oppressed,
It here is tried and purified,
Then hath in heaven its perfect rest;
It soweth here with toil and care,
But the harvest-time of Love is there.
Oh! when a mother meets on high
The babe she lost in infancy,
Hath she not then, for pains and
fears,

The day of woe, the watchful night,
For all her sorrows, all her tears,
An over-payment of delight!

young man cried,

And life must be hastening away: You are cheerful, and love to converse upon death!

I

Now tell me the reason, I pray.

am cheerful, young man, Father William replied;

Let the cause thy attention engage; In the days of my youth I remembered my God!

And he hath not forgotten my age.

THE OLD MAN'S COMFORTS, AND HOW HE GAINED THEM.

You are old, Father William, the young man cried,

The few locks that are left you are gray:

You are hale, Father William, a hearty old man,

Now tell me the reason, I pray.

In the days of my youth, Father William replied,

I remembered that youth would fly fast,

And abused not my health and my vigor at first,

That I never might need them at last.

You are old, Father William, the young man cried, And pleasures with youth pass

away,

[From Joan of Arc.] THE MAID OF ORLEANS GIRDING FOR BATTLE.

SCARCE had the earliest ray from Chinon's towers

Made visible the mists that curled along

The winding waves of Vienne, when from her couch

Started the martial maid. She mailed her limbs; The white plumes nodded o'er her helmed head;

She girt the sacred falchion by her side,

And, like some youth that from his mother's arms, For his first field impatient, breaks away, Poising the lance went forth. Twelve hundred men, Rearing in ordered ranks their wellsharped spears,

So serious should my youth appear

among

The thoughtless throng;

So would I seem amid the young and gay

More grave than they,

That in my age as cheerful I might be As the green winter of the holly-tree.

Poor outcast, sleep in peace! the wintry storm

Blows bleak no more on thy unsheltered form;

Thy woes are past; thou restest in the tomb;

I pause, and ponder on the days to

come.

THE PAUper's funERAL. WHAT! and not one to heave the pious sigh?

Not one whose sorrow-swollen and aching eye

For social scenes, for life's endearments fled,

Shall drop a tear and dwell upon the dead!

Poor wretched outcast! I will weep for thee,

And sorrow for forlorn humanity. Yes, I will weep; but not that thou art come

To the stern sabbath of the silent tomb:

For squalid want, and the black scorpion care,

Heart-withering fiends! shall never enter there.

I sorrow for the ills thy life hath known,

As through the world's long pilgrim

age, alone,

Haunted by poverty, and woebegone, Unloved, unfriended, thou didst jour

ney on:

Thy youth in ignorance and labor past,

And thine old age all barrenness and blast.

Hard was thy fate, which, while it doomed to woe,

Denied thee wisdom to support the blow;

And robbed of all its energy thy mind, Ere yet it cast thee on thy fellowkind.

Abject of thought, the victim of distress,

To wander in the world's wide wilderness.

WRITTEN ON SUNDAY MORNING. Go thou and seek the house of prayer!

I to the woodlands wend, and there In lovely nature see the God of love. The swelling organ's peal Wakes not my soul to zeal, Like the wild music of the windswept grove.

The gorgeous altar and the mystic vest

Rouse not such ardor in my breast, As where the noon-tide beam Flashed from the broken stream, Quick vibrates on the dazzled sight; Or where the cloud-suspended rain Sweeps in shadows o'er the plain; Or when reclining on the cliff's huge height,