Hiding deep the strengthening purpose of a freeman in his heart, As the greegree holds his Fetich from the white man's gaze apart.

Ever foremost of his comrades, when the driver's morning horn

blood is but a part,

Of one kindly current throbbing from the universal heart;

Can ye know the deeper meaning of a love in Slavery nursed,

Last flower of a lost Eden, blooming in that Soil accursed?

Fall the keen and burning lashes never on his back or limb;

Scarce with look or word of censure, turns

the driver unto him.

Yet, his brow is always thoughtful, and his eye is hard and stern; Slavery's last and humblest lesson he has never deigned to learn.

And, at evening, when his comrades dance before their master's door,

To

dear to all, but doubly dear the heart whose pulses elsewhere measure only hate and fear.

All around the desert circles, underneath a brazen sky,

Only one green spot remaining where the dew is never dry!

From the horror of that desert, from its atmosphere of hell,

Turns the fainting spirit thither, as the diver seeks his bell.

stands he silent evermore.

and low the sea-waves beat;

rebels against a lot

Where the brute survives the human, and man's upright form is not!

As the serpent-like bejuco winds his spiral fold on fold

Round the tall and stately ceiba, till it withers in his hold;

Slow decays the forest monarch, closer girds the fell embrace, Till the tree is seen no longer, and the vine is in its place,

So a base and bestial nature round the vassal's manhood twines, And the spirit wastes beneath it, like the ceiba choked with vines.

God is Love, saith the Evangel; and our world of woe and sin

Is made light and happy only when a Love is shining in.

Ye whose lives are free as sunshine, find

ing, wheresoe'er ye roam, Smiles of welcome, looks of kindness, making all the world like home;

the glimmer of the heat,

Where, through mingled leaves and blossoms, arrowy sunbeams flash and glisten, Speaks her lover to the slave-girl, and she lifts her head to listen :

"We shall live as slaves no longer! Freedom's hour is close at hand! Rocks her bark upon the waters, rests the boat upon the strand !

"I have seen the Haytien Captain ; I have seen his swarthy crew, Haters of the pallid faces, to their race and color true.

"They have sworn to wait our coming

till the night has passed its noon, And the gray and darkening waters roll above the sunken moon!"

O the blessed hope of freedom! how with joy and glad surprise,

For an instant throbs her bosom, for an instant beam her eyes!

But she looks across the valley, where

her mother's hut is seen,

THE CRISIS.

And she answers, sad and earnest: "It

were wrong for thee to stay ; God hath heard thy prayer for freedom, and his finger points the way.

"Well I know with what endurance, for the sake of me and mine,

Thou hast borne too long a burden never meant for souls like thine.

"Go; and at the hour of midnight, when our last farewell is o'er,

Kneeling on our place of parting, I will

bless thee from the shore.

"But for me, my mother, lying on her

sick-bed all the day, Lifts her weary head to watch me, coming through the twilight gray.

"Should I leave her sick and helpless, even

freedom, shared with thee, Would be sadder far than bondage, lonely toil, and stripes to me.

"For my heart would die within me, and

my brain would soon be wild; I should hear my mother calling through the twilight for her child!"

Blazing upward from the ocean, shines the sun of morning-time, Through the coffee-trees in blossom, and green hedges of the lime.

Side by side, amidst the slave-gang, toil the lover and the maid;

Wherefore looks he o'er the waters, leaning forward on his spade?

Sadly looks he, deeply sighs he: 't is the
Haytien's sail he sees,
Like a white cloud of the mountains,

driven seaward by the breeze!

But his arm a light hand presses, and he hears a low voice call: Hate of Slavery, hope of Freedom, Love is mightier than all.

THE TREATY WITH MEXICO.

ACROSs the Stony Mountains, o'er the desert's drouth and sand, The circles of our empire touch the Western Ocean's strand; From slumberous Timpanogos, to Gila, wild and free,

Flowing down from Nuevo-Leon to California's sea;

And from the mountains of the East, to Santa Rosa's shore,

The eagles of Mexitli shall beat the air

no more.

O Vale of Rio Bravo! Let thy simple children weep;

Close watch about their holy fire let maids of Pecos keep;

Let Taos send her cry across Sierra Madre's pines,

And Algodones toll her bells amidst her corn and vines;

For lo! the pale land-seekers come, with eager eyes of gain, Wide scattering, like the bison herds on broad Salada's plain.

Let Sacramento's herdsmen heed what sound the winds bring down footsteps on the crisping snow, from cold Nevada's crown!

Of Full hot and fast the Saxon rides, with rein of travel slack,

And, bending o'er his saddle, leaves the sunrise at his back; By many a lonely river, and gorge of fir and pine,

On many a wintry hill-top, his nightly camp-fires shine.

O countrymen and brothers! that land of lake and plain,

Of salt wastes alternating with valleys fat with grain;

Of mountains white with winter, looking downward, cold, serene, On their feet with spring-vines tangled and lapped in softest green; Swift through whose black volcanic gates, o'er many a sunny vale, Wind-like the Arapahoe sweeps the bison's dusty trail!

| The eyes of memory will not sleep,-
Its ears are open still;
And vigils with the past they keep
Against my feeble will.

And still the loves and joys of old
Do evermore uprise;

I see the flow of locks of gold,
The shine of loving eyes!

Ah me! upon another's breast
Those golden locks recline;

Closed o'er my steed and I,

An alien from my name and blood, A weed cast out to die,

When, looking back in sunset light, I saw her turret gleam,

And from its casement, far and white,
Her sign of farewell stream,

Like one who, from some desert shore,
Doth home's green isles descry,
And, vainly longing, gazes o'er
The waste of wave and sky;

So from the desert of my fate I gaze across the past; Forever on life's dial-plate

The shade is backward cast!

I've wandered wide from shore to shore,
I've knelt at many a shrine;
And bowed me to the rocky floor
Where Bethlehem's tapers shine;

And by the Holy Sepulchre

I've pledged my knightly sword To Christ, his blessed Church, and her, The Mother of our Lord.

O, vain the vow, and vain the strife!
How vain do all things seem !
My soul is in the past, and life
To-day is but a dream!

In vain the penance strange and long, And hard for flesh to bear;

The prayer, the fasting, and the thong And sackcloth shirt of hair,

The glance that once was mine.

"O faithless priest! O perjured knight!” I hear the Master cry;

"Shut out the vision from thy sight, Let Earth and Nature die.

The Church of God is now thy spouse, And thou the bridegroom art; Then let the burden of thy vows Crush down thy human heart!"

In vain! This heart its grief must know,

Till life itself hath ceased,
And falls beneath the self-same blow
The lover and the priest !

O pitying Mother! souls of light,
And saints, and martyrs old!
Pray for a weak and sinful knight,
A suffering man uphold.

Then let the Paynim work his will,
And death unbind my chain,
Ere down yon blue Carpathian hill
The sun shall fall again.

THE HOLY LAND.

FROM LAMARTINE.

I HAVE not felt, o'er seas of sand,
The rocking of the desert bark;
Nor laved at Hebron's fount my hand,
By Hebron's palm-trees cool and
dark;