Cheer. The same in this place as

cheerfulness.

"Alas, regardless of their doom

The little victims play!

No sense have they of ills to come,

No care beyond to-day:

Yet see how all around 'em wait

The ministers of human fate,

And black Misfortune's baleful train:

Ah! shew them where in ambush stand
To seize their prey the murth'rous band!
Ah! tell them they are men."

After having represented the pleasures and hopes of childhood, the poet forewarns them of the evils that await manhood-he calls the dangers of life "the ministers of human fate"-" a baleful train"" murth'rous band."

Victim.-A victim is an animal chosen to be made a sacrifice of. The poet calls these children victims, be

cause he represents them as liable to be sacrificed by the ministers of human fate.

Ministers of human fate.—He means the passions, and all the dangers and diseases of human life which he enumerates in the succeeding stanzas-he calls them the murth'rous band because they destroy.

Ambush.-When people are at war they sometimes conceal a band of troops in a wood, or in some hollow, or behind a hill, to rush out upon the enemy suddenly-men so placed are said to be in ambush-the word is not derived from bushes.

Ah! tell them they are men.

This beautiful line expresses in a few words, that these children are exposed to all the evils to which men are liable.

"These shall the fury Passions tear,
The vultures of the mind,

Disdainful Anger, pallid Fear,

And Shame that skulks behind;

Or pining Love shall waste their youth,
Or Jealousy with rankling tooth,
That inly gnaws the secret heart;
And Envy wan, and faded Care,
Grim-visag'd comfortless Despair,
And Sorrow's piercing dart."

These. That is to say, some of these young victims.

Fury Passions.-Passions as dreadful as furies: let the little reader look into Lempriere's Classical Dictionary for the Furies.

Vultures of the mind. The vulture is the most ravenous of all the birds of prey; it feeds upon carcasses and tears them to pieces with its beak. The passions are therefore called "The Vultures of the mind."

Disdainful anger, &c.-Each of the passions is described with an appropriate or suitable epithet.

Sorrow's piercing dart.-Putting sorrow the last in this series of evils is a fault in the poet; it is what is called an anti-climax-or what is opposite to a climax; which is a figure of speech that raises the interest of what is spoken of from one step to another. An anti climax or the bathos, on the contrary, descends from what is high and magnificent to what is low and vulgar.

"Ambition this shall tempt to rise, Then whirl the wretch from high, To bitter Scorn a sacrifice,

And grinning Infamy.

The stings of Falsehood those shall try
And hard Unkindness' altered eye,

That mocks the tear, it forc'd to flow:
And keen Remorse with blood defil'd,
And moody Madness laughing wild
Amid severest woe."

Ambition,

&c.-Ambition, False

hood, &c. are all personified, and the effects of these evils are represented as actions of these personages. This means this boy.

Grinning Infamy.-Here Infamy also is made a person, and is supposed to mock the wretch who is rendered infamous-this personification is perhaps too bold.

Remorse. Is the sorrow, despair, and terror which the guilty feel when they reflect upon their crimes; particularly when the criminal has shed human blood.

Moody Madness laughing wild
Amid severest moe.