The low, heart-broken, and wailing strain

Of a mother that mourns her children slain:

'I have made the crags my home, and spread

On their desert backs my sackcloth bed;

I have eaten the bitter herb of the rocks,

And drunk the midnight dew in my locks;

I have wept till I could not weep, and the pain
Of the burning eyeballs went to my brain.
Seven blackened corpses before me lie,

In the blaze of the sun and the winds of the sky.
I have watched them through the burning day,
And driven the vulture and raven away;
And the cormorant wheeled in circles round,
Yet feared to alight on the guarded ground.
And when the shadows of twilight came,
I have seen the hyena's eyes of flame,
And heard at my side his stealthy tread,
But aye at my shout the savage fled:
And I threw the lighted brand to fright
The jackal and wolf that yelled in the night.

"Ye were foully murdered, my hapless sons,
By the hands of wicked and cruel ones;
Ye fell, in your fresh and blooming prime,
All innocent, for your father's crime.
He sinned-but he paid the price of his guilt
When his blood by a nameless hand was spilt;

MARCH.

HE stormy March is come at last.

With wind and cloud, and changing skies;

I hear the rushing of the blast.

That through the snowy valley fles

Ah. passing few are they who speak,
Wild, stormy month! in praise of thee;
Yet though thy winds are loud and bleak,
Thou art a welcome month to me.

For thou, to northern lands, again
The glad and glorious sun dost bring,
And thou hast joined the gentle train
And wear'st the gentle name of Spring.

And, in thy reign of blast and storm,
Smiles many a long, bright, sunny day,
When the changed winds are soft and warm,
And heaven puts on the blue of May.

the bige of torse mim sões.

And that s the dis

RIZPAH.

And he delivered them into the hands of the Gibeonites, and they hanged them in the hill before the Lord; and they fell all seven together, and were put to death in the days of the harvest, in the first days, in the beginning of barley-harvest.

And Rizpah, the daughter of Aiah, took sackcloth, and spread it for her upon the rock, from the beginning of harvest until the water dropped upon them out of heaven, and suffered neither the birds of the air to rest upon them by day, nor the beasts of the field by night.

H

2 SAMUEL, xxi. 10.

EAR what the desolate Rizpah said,

As on Gibeah's rocks she watched the dead.

The sons of Michal before her lay,

And her own fair children, dearer than they:

By a death of shame they all had died,

And were stretched on the bare rock, side by side.

And Rizpah, once the loveliest of all

That bloomed and smiled in the court of Saul,

All wasted with watching and famine now,
And scorched by the sun her haggard brow,
Sat mournfully guarding their corpses there,
And murmured a strange and solemn air;