There let the shepherd's pipe, the live-long day
Fill all the grove with love's bewitching wo;

And when mild evening comes in mantle gray,
Let not the blooming band make haste to go;
No ghost nor spell my long and last abode shall know.

For though I fly to escape from Fortune's rage,

spite and

And bear the scars of envy,
Yet with mankind no horrid war I wage,

scorn,

Yet with no impious spleen my breast is torn:
For virtue lost, and ruined man,
I mourn.

O man, creation's pride, Heaven's darling child,
Whom Nature's best, divinest gifts adorn,

Why from thy home are truth and joy exiled,
And all thy favorite haunts with blood and tears defiled?

Along yon glittering sky what glory streams!
What majesty attends night's lovely queen'
Fair iaugh our valleys in the vernal beams;
And mountains rise, and oceans roll between,
And all conspire to beautify the scene.
But, in the mental world, what chaos drear!

What forms of mournful, loathsome, furious mien !

Oh! when shall that eternal morn appear,

These dreadful forms to chase, this chaos dark to clear?

O thou, at whose creative smile, yon heaven, In all the pomp of beauty, life and light, Rose from the abyss; when dark Confusion, driven Down, down the bottomless profound of night, Fled, where he ever flies thy piercing sight! Oh! glance on these sad shades one pitying ray To blast the fury of oppressive might,Melt the hard heart to love and mercy's sway, And cheer the wandering soul, and light him on the way.

LESSON CXXII.

Farewell to the Dead.-MRS. HEMANS

COME near !—ere yet the dust

Soil the bright paleness of the settled brow,
Look on your brother, and embrace him now,
In still and solemn trust:

Come near !-once more let kindred lips be pressed
On his cold cheek; then bear him to his rest.

Look yet on this young face!

What shall the beauty, from amongst us gone,
Leave of its image, even where most it shone,
Gladdening its hearth and race?

Dim grows the semblance on man's heart impressed-
Come near! and bear the beautiful to rest.

For tears befit earth's partings.-Yesterday
Song was upon the lips of this pale clay,
And sunshine seemed to dwell

Where'er he moved-the welcome and the blessed-
Now gaze! and bear the silent unto rest.

Look yet on him, whose eye

Meets yours no more in sadness or in mirth!
Was he not fair amidst the sons of earth,

The beings born to die?

But not where death has power may love be blessed
Come near! and bear ye the beloved to rest.

How may the mother's heart

Dwell on her son, and dare to hope again?
The spring's rich promise hath been given in vain,
The lovely must depart!

Is he not gone, our brightest and our best?

Come near! and bear the early-called to rest.

Look on him! is he laid

To slumber from the harvest or the chase?
Too still and sad the sinile upon his face;
Yet that, even that, must fade!

Death holds not long unchanged his fairest guest—
Come near! and bear the mortal to his rest.

His voice of mirth hath ceased

Amidst the vineyards! there is left no place
For him whose dust receives your vain embrace,
At the gay bridal feast!

Earth must take earth to moulder on her breast-
Come near! weep o'er him! bear him to his rest.

Yet mourn ye not as they

Whose spirit's light is quenched!-for him the past
Is sealed. He may not fall, he may not cast
His birthright's hope away!

All is not here of our beloved and blessed-
Leave ye the sleeper with his God to rest.

LESSON CXXIII.

Baneful Effects of Intemperance upon Domestic Life.C. SPRAGUE.

THE Common calamities of life may be endured. Poverty, sickness, and even death, may be met; but there is that which, while it brings all these with it, is worse than all these together. When the husband and father forgets the duties he once delighted to fulfil, and, by slow degrees, becomes the creature of intemperance, there enters into his house the sorrow that rends the spirit, that cannot be allevi ated, that will not be comforted.

It is here, above all, where she, who has ventured every thing, feels that every thing is lost. Woman, silent-suffering, devoted woman, here bends to her direst affliction. The measure of her wo is, in truth, full, whose husband is a

drunkard. Who shall protect her, when he is her insulter, her oppressor? What shall delight her, when she shrinks from the sight of his face, and trembles at the sound of his voice? The hearth is indeed dark, that he has made desolate. There, through the dull midnight hour, her griefs are whispered to herself; her bruised heart bleeds in secret. There, while the cruel author of her distress is drowned in distant revelry, she holds her solitary vigil, waiting, yet dreading his return, that will only wring from her, by his unkindness, tears even more scalding than those she sheds over his transgression.

To fling a deeper gloom across the present, memory turns back, and broods upon the past. Like the recollection to the sun-stricken pilgrim, of the cool spring that he drank at in the morning, the joys of other days come over her, as if only to mock her parched and weary spirit. She recalls the ardent lover, whose graces won her from the home of her infancy; the enraptured father, who bent with such delight over his new-born children; and she asks if this can really be he; this sunken being, who has now nothing for her but the sot's disgusting brutality-nothing for those abashed and trembling children, but the sot's disgusting example!

Can we wonder, that, amid these agonizing moments, the tender cords of violated affection should snap asunder? that the scorned and deserted wife should confess, "there is no killing like that which kills the heart?" that, though it would have been hard for her to kiss, for the last time, the cold lips of her dead husband, and lay his body forever in the dust, it is harder to behold him so debasing life, that even his death would be greeted in mercy? Had he died in the light of his goodness, bequeathing to his family the inheritance of an untarnished name, the example of virtues that should blossom for his sons and daughters from the tombthough she would have wept bitterly indeed, the tears of grief would not have been also the tears of shame. But to behold him fallen away from the station he once adorned, degraded from eminence to ignominy-at home, turning his dwelling to darkness, and its holy endearments to mockeryabroad, thrust from the companionship of the worthy, a self

branded outlaw-this is the wo that the wife feels is more dreadful than death,-that she mourns over as worse than widowhood.

There is yet another picture behind, from the exhibition of which I would willingly be spared. I have ventured to point to those, who daily force themselves before the world; but there is one whom the world does not know of-who hides herself from prying eyes, even in the innermost sanctuary of the domestic temple. Shall I dare to rend the veil that hangs between, and draw her forth?-the priestess dying amid her unholy rites-the sacrificer and the sacrifice?

We compass sea and land, we brave danger and death, to snatch the poor victim of heathen superstition from the burning pile-and it is well; but shall we not also save the lovely ones of our own household, from immolating on this foul altar, not alone the perishing body, but all the worshipped graces of her sex-the glorious attributes of hallowed womanhood!

Imagination's gloomiest reverie never conceived of a more revolting object, than that of a wife and mother defiling, in her own person, the fairest work of her God, and setting at nought the holy engagements for which he created her. Her husband-who shall heighten his joys, and dissipate his cares, and alleviate his sorrows? She, who has robbed him of all joy, who is the source of his deepest care, who lives his sharpest sorrow? These are, indeed, the wife's delights; but they are not hers. Her children-who shall watch over their budding virtues, and pluck up the young weeds of passion and vice? She, in whose own bosom every thing beautiful has withered, every thing vile grows rank? Who shall teach them to bend their little knees in devotion, and repeat their Savior's prayer against "temptation?" She, who is herself temptation's fettered slave? These are truly the

mother's labors; but they are not hers. Connubial love and maternal tenderness bloom no longer for her. A worm has gnawed into her heart, that dies only with its prey-the worm intemperance.