84. TO THE MEMORY OF THOSE WHO FELL IN THE REBEL LION OF 1745. [These stanzas are full of the most delicate and exquisite imagery and deep pathos.] FOW sleep the brave who sink to rest HOW With all their country's wishes bless'd! 2. By fairy hands their knell is rung, COLLINS W 85. THE GRAY FOREST EAGLE. ITH storm-daring pinion and sun-gazing eye, Oh! little he loves the green valley of flowers, Where sunshine and song cheer the bright summer hours; For he hears in those haunts only music, and sees But rippling of waters, and waving of trees; There the red-robin warbles, the honey-bee hums, The timid quail whistles, the shy partridge drums; 2 And if those proud pinions, perchance, sweep along, There's a shrouding of plumage, a hushing of song; The sunlight falls stilly on leaf and in moss, And there's naught but his shadow black gliding across; But the dark, gloomy gorge, where down plunges the foam Of the fierce rock-lashed torrent, he claims as his home; There he blends his keen shriek with the roar of the flood, And the many-voiced sounds of the blast-smitten wood; 3. From the fir's lofty summit, where morn hangs its wreath, He views the mad water's white writhing beneath : On a limb of that moss-bearded hemlock far down, With bright azure mantle and gay mottled crown, The kingfisher watches, while o'er him his foe, The fierce hawk, sails circling, each moment more low; Now poised are those pinions and pointed that beak, His dread swoop is ready, when hark! with a shriek 4. His eyeballs red blazing, high bristling his crest, His snake-like neck arch'd, talons drawn to his breast, With the rush of the wind-gust, the glancing of light, The Gray Forest Eagle shoots down in his flight; One blow of those talons, one plunge of that neck, The strong hawk hangs lifeless, a blood-dripping wreck; And as dives the free kingfisher, dart-like on high With his prey soars the eagle, and melts in the sky. * * * 5. Time whirls round his circle, his years roll away, But the Gray Forest Eagle minds little his sway; The child spurns its buds for youth's thorn-hidden bloom, Seeks manhood's bright phantoms, finds age and a tomb; But the eagle's eye dims not, his wing is unbowed, Still drinks he the sunshine, still scales he the cloud! The green tiny pine shrub points up from the moss, The wren's foot would cover it, tripping across; 6. The beechnut down dropping would crush it beneath, But 'tis warm'd with heaven's sunshine and fann'd by its breath; The seasons fly past it, its head is on high, Its thick branches challenge each mood of the sky; A trunk dry and wasted, a top jagged and bare, 7. Till it rocks in the soft breeze, and crashes to earth, Its brown fragments strewing the place of its birth. The eagle has seen it up-struggling to sight, He has seen it defying the storm in its might, Then prostrate, soil-blended, with plants sprouting o'er, But the Gray Forest Eagle is still as of yore. His flaming eye dims not, his wing is unbow'd, Still drinks he the sunshine, still scales he the cloud! 8. He has seen from his eyrie the forest below, In bud and in leaf, robed with crimson and snow, The thickets, deep wolf-lairs, the high crag his throne, And the shriek of the panther has answer'd his own. He has seen the wild red man the lord of the shades, And the smoke of his wigwams curl'd thick in the glades; He has seen the proud forest melt breath-like away, And the breast of the earth lying bare to the day: 9. He sees the green meadow-grass hiding the lair, And his crag-throne spread naked to sun and to air; And his shriek is now answer'd, while sweeping along, By the low of the herd and the husbandman's song; He has seen the wild red man swept off by his foes, And he sees dome and roof where those smokes once arose; But his flaming eye dims not, his wing is unbow'd, A. B. STREET. 86. MOTHER. [Père Felix, of Paris, is one of the most brilliant orators of the day.] THE word Mother is the first which the heart pronounces, even without ever having learnt it. In the language of every nation it expresses the first respiration of the heart. Those who love to explore the mysteries of human language, concealed in the folds of even the simplest words, say wonderful things of this one phrase, My Mother. Whatever may be the cause, the perfume it exhales never passes away; the word My Mother preserves a charm that ever lingers around the heart. Man may become deaf to every word, insensible to every name; but there is still one word he comprehends, one name that ever vibrates-My Mother. 2. Man may forget all; even God; but he never forgets his mother. Amid the greatest ruins of his heart, this image always stands erect. Above all, when years have passed since we lost her; when our life is already on the decline, and the descending sun casts the lengthened shadow of our past days before us, we seem to see in its sombre shade an image crowned with pure light, which years embellish in proportion as they withdraw it from us; and under the charm of a remembrance always fresh and full of youth, our heart in its secret recesses cries out, "My mother! Ah, yes, it is my mother!" With this thought the heart seems to find a perpetual youth. Our most secret souvenirs, hidden, perhaps, from even our most intimate friends, preserve a charm which is perpetuated and multiplied as our days increase. 3. Whence comes the mysterious charm attached to this word?-Charm incomparable, surviving all that dies during our life-strong and vigorous, resting in the heart until the end? Ah, gentlemen, it is because this word is the most natural and lively expression of a something in our hearts for which we can find none similar. This something, permit me to name it here-because it is impossible in the purely human order to find for it a sense more legitimate, purer, and more sacred, than that which our subject imposes upon it; this something, whence comes this word, Mother-the perfume which embalms it-is Love. 4. On this earth the mother is the sweetest personification of love; her face bears the most beautiful smile of love, because her heart guards its richest treasure. The maternal heart is the birth-place of the love which forms the foundation of our life. PERE FELIX. AT 87. THE EXTRA TRAIN. Ta quiet country station, where flowers climbing be neath the windows, hanging their heads languidly in the summer's heat-where, during the intervals of business, & warm repose reigns over the place in a small room opening from the sunny platform, a telegraph lad sits before his idle instrument. He has so little to do that, to keep him self from dozing in the sultry stillness, he is playing at marbles-superior marbles, a new purchase, and their click, as he gives many a well directed aim, is the only sound on the air. It is 2. But hark! another sound comes from the distance, a shrill, faint whistle, and a hum, swelling into a continuous, increasing roar. A train is coming. Well, let it come. an extra train, and it don't stop here; it may bang away. And bang away it does, with a wild scream, shaking the windows and platform of the station as it rattles through, and making the marbles dance out of their scientific positions. The lad pauses, to watch, through the open door, the flitting carriages and white-glancing faces of the passengers, and then resumes his game. 3. Again there is silence, until, after a warning gurgled from its deep throat, the clock strikes-THREE. He glances listlessly up; then, as if the fingers were pointed with a stern and solemn warning, suddenly utters a dreadful cry, |