We take the arms that Heaven supplies
For Life's long battle with Disease,
Taught by our various need to prize
Our frailest weapons, even these.

But ah! when Science drops her shield ·
Its peaceful shelter proved in vain
And bares her snow-white arm to wield
The sad, stern ministry of pain;

When shuddering o'er the fount of life,
She folds her heaven-anointed wings,
To lift unmoved the glittering knife
That searches all its crimson springs;

When, faithful to her ancient lore,

She thrusts aside her fragrant balm For blistering juice, or cankering ore, And tames them till they cure or calm;

When in her gracious hand are seen

The dregs and scum of earth and seas, Her kindness counting all things clean

That lend the sighing sufferer ease;

Though on the field that Death has won, She saves some stragglers in retreat;

These single acts of mercy done

Are but confessions of defeat.

-

What though our tempered poisons save Some wrecks of life from aches and ails: Those grand specifics Nature gave

Were never poised by weights or scales !

God lent his creatures light and air,
And waters open to the skies;
Man locks him in a stifling lair,

And wonders why his brother dies!

In vain our pitying tears are shed,

In vain we rear the sheltering pile
Where Art weeds out from bed to bed
The plagues we planted by the mile!

Be that the glory of the past;

With these our sacred toils begin:
So flies in tatters from its mast
The yellow flag of sloth and sin,

And lo! the starry folds reveal

The blazoned truth we hold so dear:
To guard is better than to heal,
The shield is nobler than the spear!

MUSA.

MY lost beauty!-hast thou folded quite
Thy wings of morning light

Beyond those iron gates

Where Life crowds hurrying to the haggard Fates,

And Age upon his mound of ashes waits

To chill our fiery dreams,

Hot from the heart of youth plunged in his icy

streams?

Leave me not fading in these weeds of care,
Whose flowers are silvered hair!

Have I not loved thee long,

Though my young lips have often done thee wrong, And vexed thy heaven-tuned ear with careless song ? Ah, wilt thou yet return,

Bearing thy rose-hued torch, and bid thine altar burn?

Come to me! I will flood thy silent shrine
With my soul's sacred wine,

And heap thy marble floors

As the wild spice-trees waste their fragrant stores, In leafy islands walled with madrepores

And lapped in Orient seas,

When all their feathery palms toss, plume-like, in the breeze.

Come to me!-thou shalt feed on honeyed words,
Sweeter than song of birds;-

No wailing bulbul's throat,
No melting dulcimer's melodious note,

When o'er the midnight wave its murmurs float,
Thy ravished sense might soothe

With flow so liquid-soft, with strain so velvetsmooth.

Thou shalt be decked with jewels, like a queen,
Sought in those bowers of green

Where loop the clustered vines

And the close-clinging dulcamara * twines, -
Pure pearls of Maydew where the moonlight shines,

* The "bitter-sweet" of New England is the Celastrus scandens, -"Bourreau des arbres" of the Canadian French.

And Summer's fruited gems,

And coral pendants shorn from Autumn's berried

stems.

Sit by me drifting on the sleepy waves, -
Or stretched by grass-grown graves,
Whose gray, high-shouldered stones,

Carved with old names Life's time-worn roll disowns,
Lean, lichen-spotted, o'er the crumbled bones
Still slumbering where they lay

While the sad Pilgrim watched to scare the wolf away.

Spread o'er my couch thy visionary wing!

Still let me dream and sing,

Dream of that winding shore

Where scarlet cardinals bloom-for me no more, The stream with heaven beneath its liquid floor, And clustering nenuphars

Sprinkling its mirrored blue like golden-chaliced stars!

Come while their balms the linden-blossoms shed!Come while the rose is red,

While blue-eyed Summer smiles

On the green ripples round yon sunken piles Washed by the moon-wave warm from Indian isles, And on the sultry air

The chestnuts spread their palms like holy men in prayer!

O for thy burning lips to fire my brain

With thrills of wild, sweet pain!

On life's autumnal blast,

Like shrivelled leaves, youth's passion-flowers are

cast,

Once loving thee, we love thee to the last!

Behold thy new-decked shrine,

And hear once more the voice that breathed "Forever thine!"

THE VOICELESS.

E count the broken lyres that rest
Where the sweet wailing singers slum-

ber,

But o'er their silent sister's breast

The wild-flowers who will stoop to number?

A few can touch the magic string,

And noisy Fame is proud to win them :

Alas for those that never sing,

But die with all their music in them!

Nay, grieve not for the dead alone

Whose song has told their hearts' sad story,

Weep for the voiceless, who have known
The cross without the crown of glory!
Not where Leucadian breezes sweep

O'er Sappho's memory-haunted billow,
But where the glistening night-dews weep
On nameless sorrow's churchyard pillow.

-

O hearts that break and give no sign
Save whitening lip and fading tresses,
Till Death pours out his cordial wine
Slow-dropped from Misery's crushing presses, -