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ness. It breaks the father's heart, bereaves the doting mother, extinguishes natural affection, erases conjugal love, blots out filial attachment, blights parental hope, and brings down mourning age in sorrow to the grave. It produces weakness, not strength; sickness, not health; death, not life. It makes wives widows, children orphans, fathers, fiends, and all of them paupers and beggars. It feeds rheumatism, nurses gout, welcomes epidemics, invites cholera, imports pestilence and embraces consumption. It covers the land with idleness, poverty, disease and crime. It fills your jails, supplies your almshouses, and demands your asylums. It engenders controversies, fosters quarrels, and cherishes riots. It crowds your penitentiaries, and furnishes the victims for your scaffolds. It is the life blood of the gambler, the ailment of the counterfeiter, the prop of the highwayman, and the support of the midnight incendiary. It countenances the liar, respects the thief, and esteems the blas phemer. It violates obligation, reverences fraud, and honors infamy. It defames benevolence, hates love, scorns virtue, and slanders innocence. It incites the father to butcher his helpless offspring, helps the husband to massacre his wife, and aids the child to grind the parricidal axe. It burns up man and consumes woman, detests life, curses God, and despises heaven. It suborns witnesses, nurses perjury, defiles the jury box and stains the judicial ermine. It bribes voters, disqualifies votes, corrupts elections, pollutes our institutions, and endangers our government. It degrades the citizen, debases the legislator, dishonors the statesman, and disarms the patriot. It brings shame, not honor; terror, not safety; despair, not hope; misery, not happiness. And with the malevolence of a fiend it calmly surveys its frightful desolations; and insatiated with havoc, it poisons felicity, kills peace, ruins morals, blights confidence, slays reputation, and wipes out national honor; then curses the world and laughs at its ruin.

It does all that, and more. It murders the soul. It is the sum of all villanies; the father of all crimes; the mother of all abominations; the curse of curses; the devil's best friend, and God's worst enemy. -Robert G. Ingersoll.

H

Home Again.

JOME again, mother, your boy will rest
For a time, at least, in the old home nest;
How good to see you in your cornered nook
With knitting, or sewing, or paper, or book,
The same sweet mother my boyhood knew,
The faithful, the patient, the tender and true.

You have little changed; ah, well, maybe
A few gray hairs in the brown I see;
A mark or two under smiling eyes,
So lovingly bent in your glad surprise;
'Tis I who have changed; ah, mother mine,
From a teasing lad, to manhood's prime.

No longer I climb on your knee at night
For a story told in the soft firelight;
No broken slate or book all torn,

Do I bring to you with its edges worn;
But I'll come to you with my graver cares,
You'll help me bear them with tender prayers.

I'll come again as of old-and you
Will help the man to be brave and true;
For the man's the boy, only older grown,
And the world has many a stumbling stone.
Ah, mother mine, there is always rest
When I find you here in the old home nest.
-Abbie C. McKeever.

A

POEMS OF FANCY.

Delights of Fancy.

[From "The Pleasures of Imagination."]

S Memnon's marble harp renowned of old By fabling Nilus, to the quivering touch Of Titan's ray, with each repulsive string Consenting, sounded through the warbling air Unbidden strains; e'en so did Nature's hand To certain species of external things Attune the finer organs of the mind; So the glad impulse of congenial powers, Or of sweet sound, or fair-proportioned form, The grace of motion, or the bloom of light, Thrills through imagination's tender frame, From nerve to nerve; all naked and alive They catch the spreading rays; till now the soul At length discloses every tuneful spring, To that harmonicus movement from without,

Responsive. Then the inexpressive strain
Diffuses its enchantment; Fancy dreams
Of sacred fountains and Elysian groves,
And vales of bliss; the Intellectual Power
Bends from his awful throne a wondering ear,
And smiles; the passions gently soothed away,
Sink to divine repose, and love and joy
Alone are waking; love and joy serene
As airs that fan the summer. O attend,
Whoe'er thou art whom these delights can touch,
Whose candid bosom the refining love
Of nature warms. O listen to my song,
And I will guide thee to her favorite walks,
And teach thy solitude her voice to hear,
And point her loveliest features to thy view.
-Mark Akenside.

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The Minuet.

How she danced-my grandma danced

Long ago.

How she held her pretty head,

How her dainty skirt she spread,

How she turned her little toes

Smiling little human rose!

Long ago.

Grandma's hair was bright and sunny; Dimpled cheeks, too-ah, how funny! Really quite a pretty girl,

Long ago.

Bless her! why, she wears a cap, Grandma does, and takes a nap Every single day; and yet Grandma danced the minuet

Long ago.

Now she sits there, rocking, rocking,
Always knitting grandpa's stocking-
(Every girl was taught to knit
Long ago),

Yet her figure is so neat,

And her way so staid and sweet,

I can almost see her now

Bending to her partner's bow,
Long ago.

Grandma says our modern jumping,
Hopping, rushing, whirling, bumping,
Would have shocked the gentle folk
Long ago.

No-they moved with stately grace,
Everything in proper place,
Gliding slowly forward, then
Slowly courtesying back again,
Long ago.

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THE

Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard.

HE curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea;
The plowman homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me.
Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight,
And all the air a solemn stillness holds
Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight,
And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds;

Save that from yonder ivy mantled tower

The moping owl doth to the moon complain
Of such as, wandering near her secret bower,
Molest her ancient solitary reign.

Beneath those rugged elms, that yew tree's shade,
Where heaves the turf in many a moldering heap,
Each in his narrow cell forever laid,

The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep.

The breezy call of incense-breathing morn,

The swallow twittering from the straw-built shed, The cock's shrill clarion, or the echoing horn,

No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed.

For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn,
Or busy housewife ply her evening care;
No children run to lisp their sire's return,
Or climb his knees the envied kiss to share.
Oft did the harvest to their sickle yield,

Their furrow oft the stubborn glebe has broke;
How jocund did they drive their team afield!
How bowed the woods beneath their sturdy stroke'
Let not ambition mock their useful toil!

Their homely joys, and destiny obscure;
Nor grandeur hear with a disdainful smile
The short and simple annals of the poor.
The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,

And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave,
Await alike the inevitable hour;

The paths of glory lead but to the grave.
Nor you, ye proud, impute to these the fault,
If memory o'er their tomb no trophies raise,
Where through the long drawn aisle and fretted vault
The pealing anthem swells the note of praise.

Can storied urn or animated bust

Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath? Can honor's voice provoke the silent dust,

Or flattery soothe the dull, cold ear of death?

Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid

Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire; Hands that the rod of empire might have swayed, Or waked to ecstasy the living lyre:

But knowledge to their eyes her ample page, Rich with the spoils of time, did ne'er unroll;

Chill penury repressed their noble rage,

And froze the genial current of the soul.

Full many a gem of purest ray serene

The dark, unfathomed caves of ocean bear: Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, And waste its sweetness on the desert air.

Some village Hampden, with that dauntless breast
The little tyrant of his fields withstood;
Some mute, inglorious Milton here may rest;
Some Cromwell, guiltless of his country's blood.

The applause of listening senates to command,
The threats of pain and ruin to despise,
To scatter plenty o'er a smiling land,

And read their history in a nation's eyes,

Their lot forbade: nor circumscribed alone
Their growing virtues, but their crimes confined;
Forbade to wade through slaughter to a throne,
And shut the gates of mercy on mankind;

The struggling pangs of conscious truth to hide,
To quench the blushes of ingenuous shame,
Or heap the shrine of luxury and pride
With incense kindled at the muse's flame.

Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife Their sober wishes never learned to stray; Along the cool, sequestered vale of life

They kept the noiseless tenor of their way.

Yet e'en these bones from insult to protect,
Some frail memorial still erected nigh,
With uncouth rhymes and shapeless sculpture decked,
Implores the passing tribute of a sigh.

Their name, their years, spelt by the unlettered muse,
The place of fame and elegy supply;
And many a holy text around she strews,
That teach the rustic moralist to die.

For who, to dumb forgetfulness a prey,

This pleasing, anxious being e'er resigned, Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day,

Nor cast one longing, lingering look behind? On some fond breast the parting soul relies,

Some pious drops the closing eye requires:
E'en from the tomb the voice of nature cries,
E'en in our ashes live their wonted fires.

For thee, who, mindful of the unhonored dead,
Dost in these lines their artless tale relate;
If 'chance by lonely contemplation led,
Some kindred spirit shall inquire thy fate,
Haply some hoary-headed swain may say:
"Oft have we seen him at the peep of dawn,
Brushing with hasty steps the dews away,
To meet the sun upon the upland lawn.
"There at the foot of yonder nodding beech,
That wreathes its old, fantastic roots so high,
His listless length at noontide would he stretch,
And pore upon the brook that babbles by.
"Hard by yon wood, now smiling as in scorn,

Muttering his wayward fancies, he would rove; Now drooping, woful, wan, like one forlorn,

Or crazed with care, or crossed in hopeless love "One morn I missed him on the 'customed hill, Along the heath, and near his favorite tree; Another came-nor yet beside the rill, Nor up the lawn, nor at the wood was he; "The next, with dirges due, in sad array,

[borne;

Slow through the church-way path we saw him Approach and read (for thou canst read) the lay Graved on the stone beneath yon aged thorn."

THE EPITAPH.

Here rests his head upon the lap of earth,
A youth to fortune and to fame unknown;
Fair science frowned not on his humble birth,
And melancholy marked him for her own.
Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere;
Heaven did a recompense as largely send.
He gave to misery all he had-a tear'
He gained from heaven ('twas all he wished) a
No further seek his merits to disclose,

Or draw his frailties from their dread abode: (There they alike iu trembling hope repose), The bosom of his Father and His God.

[friend.

-Gray.

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