So, take and use Thy work!
Amend what flaws may lurk,
What strain o' the stuff, what warpings
past the aim!

My times be in Thy hand!
Perfect the cup as planned!
Let age approve of youth, and death
complete the same!

THE LOST LEADER.

JUST for a handful of silver he left us; Just for a ribbon to stick in his coat, Found the one gift of which fortune bereft us,

Lost all the others she lets us devote. They, with the gold to give, doled him

out silver,

So much was theirs who so little allowed. How all our copper had gone for his service!

Rags were they purple, his heart had been proud!

We that had loved him so, followed him, honored him,

Lived in his mild and magnificent eye, Learned his great language, caught his clear accents,

Made him our pattern to live and to die!

Shakespeare was of us, Milton was for us, Burns, Shelley, were with us, - they watch from their graves! He alone breaks from the van and the freemen;

He alone sinks to the rear and the slaves!

We shall march prospering, not through his presence;

Songs may inspirit us, - not from his lyre;

Deeds will be done, while he boasts his quiescence,

Still bidding crouch whom the rest bade aspire. Blot out his name, then, - record one lost soul more,

One task more declined, one more footpath untrod,

One more triumph for devils, and sorrow for angels,

One wrong more to man, one more insult to God!

Life's night begins; let him never come back to us!

207

PAUL REVERE'S RIDE.

LISTEN, my children, and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-
five;

Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year.

He said to his friend, "If the British march

By land or sea from the town to-night,
Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry arch
Of the North Church tower as a signal
light,

One, if by land, and two, if by sea;
And I on the opposite shore will be,
Ready to ride and spread the alarm
Through every Middlesex village and
farm,

For the country folk to be up and to

arm.

Then he said, "Good night!" and with muffled oar

Silently rowed to the Charlestown shore,
Just as the moon rose over the bay,
Where swinging wide at her moorings lay
The Somerset, British man-of-war;
A phantom ship, with each mast and spar
Across the moon like a prison bar,
And a huge black hulk, that was magni-
fied

By its own reflection in the tide.

Meanwhile, his friend, through alley and street, Wanders and watches with eager ears,

Till in the silence around him he hears The muster of men at the barrack door, The sound of arms, and the tramp of feet, And the measured tread of the grenadiers, Marching down to their boats on the shore.

Then he climbed the tower of the Old
North Church,

By the wooden stairs, with stealthy tread,
To the belfry-chamber overhead,
And startled the pigeons from their perch
On the sombre rafters, that round him
made

Masses and moving shapes of shade,
By the trembling ladder, steep and tall,
To the highest window in the wall,
Where he paused to listen and look down
A moment on the roofs of the town,
And the moonlight flowing over all.

Beneath, in the churchyard, lay the dead,
In their night-encampment on the hill,
Wrapped in silence so deep and still
That he could hear, like a sentinel's tread,
The watchful night-wind, as it went
Creeping along from tent to tent,
And seeming to whisper, "All is well!”
A moment only he feels the spell
Of the place and the hour, and the secret

dread

Of the lonely belfry and the dead;
For suddenly all his thoughts are bent
On a shadowy something far away,
Where the river widens to meet the bay,
A line of black that bends and floats

On the rising tide, like a bridge of boats.

Meanwhile, impatient to mount and ride, Booted and spurred, with a heavy stride On the opposite shore walked Paul Re

vere.

Now he patted his horse's side,
Now gazed at the landscape far and near,
Then, impetuous, stamped the earth,
And turned and tightened his saddle-
girth;

But mostly he watched with eager search
The belfry-tower of the Old North Church,
As it rose above the graves on the hill,
Lonely and spectral and sombre and still.
And lo! as he looks, on the belfry's height
A glimmer, and then a gleam of light!
He springs to the saddle, the bridle he
turns,

But lingers and gazes, till full on his sight A second lamp in the belfry burns!

In the world's broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife!

Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant! Let the dead Past bury its dead! Act, act in the living Present! Heart within, and God o'erhead!

Lives of great men all remind us

We can make our lives sublime, And, departing, leave behind us Footprints on the sands of time;

Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o'er life's solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us, then, be up and doing, With a heart for any fate, Still achieving, still pursuing, Learn to labor and to wait.

RESIGNATION.

THERE is no flock, however watched and tended,

But one dead lamb is there! There is no fireside, howsoe'er defended, But has one vacant chair!

The air is full of farewells to the dying, And mournings for the dead;

The heart of Rachel, for her children crying,

Will not be comforted!

Let us be patient! These severe afflictions

Not from the ground arise,

But oftentimes celestial benedictions
Assume this dark disguise.

We

Is but a suburb of the life elysian, Whose portal we call Death.

She is not dead, — the child of our affection,

But gone unto that school Where she no longer needs our poor protection,

And Christ himself doth rule.

In that great cloister's stillness and seclusion,

By guardian angels led, Safe from temptation, safe from sin's pollution,

She lives, whom we call dead.

Day after day we think what she is doing In those bright realms of air;

Year after year, her tender steps pursuing,

Behold her grown more fair.

Thus do we walk with her, and keep unbroken

The bond which nature gives, Thinking that our remembrance, though unspoken,

May reach her where she lives.

Not as a child shall we again behold her:
For when with raptures wild

In our embraces we again enfold her,
She will not be a child;

But a fair maiden, in her Father's mansion,

Clothed with celestial grace;

And beautiful with all the soul's expan

sion

Shall we behold her face.

And though at times impetuous with emotion

And anguish long suppressed,