For lowly born was she, and long had eat,
Well-earned, the bread of service :-hers was else
A mounting spirit, one that entertained
Scorn of base action, deed dishonourable,
Or aught unseemly. I remember well
Her reverend image: I remember, too,

With what a zeal she served her master's house:
And how the prattling tongue of garrulous age
Delighted to recount the oft-told tale

Or anecdote domestic. Wise she was,
And wondrous skilled in genealogies,

And could in apt and voluble terms discourse
Of births, of titles, and alliances;
Of marriages, and intermarriages ;
Relationship remote, or near of kin;
Of friends offended, family disgraced—
Maiden high-born, but wayward, disobeying
Parental strict injunction, and regardless
Of unmixed blood, and ancestry remote,
Stooping to wed with one of low degree.
But these are not thy praises; and I wrong
Thy honoured memory, recording chiefly
Things light or trivial. Better 'twere to tell,
How with a nobler zeal, and warmer love,
She served her heavenly master. I have seen
That reverend form bent down with age and pa'n,
And rankling malady. Yet not for this
Ceased she to praise her Maker, or withdrew
Her trust in him, her faith, and humble hope—
So meekly had she learned to bear her cross-
For she had studied patience in the school
Of Christ, much comfort she had thence derived,
And was a follower of the Nazarene.

ON AN INFANT DYING AS SOON AS BORN.

I saw where in the shroud did lurk

A curious frame of Nature's work.
A floweret crushed in the bud,
A nameless piece of Babyhood,
Was in her cradle-coffin lying;

Extinct, with scarce the sense of dying:

So soon to exchange the imprisoning womb
For darker closets of the tomb !

She did but ope an eye, and put

A clear beam forth, then straight up shut

For the long dark: ne'er more to see

Through glasses of mortality.

Riddle of destiny, who can show

What thy short visit meant, or know

What thy errand here below?

Shall we say, that Nature blind

Checked her hand, and changed her mind,

Just when she had exactly wrought

A finished pattern without fault?
Could she flag, or could she tire,

Or lacked she the Promethean fire

(With her nine moons' long workings sickened)
That should thy little limbs have quickened?
Limbs so firm, they seemed to assure
Life of health, and days mature:
Woman's self in miniature!
Limbs so fair, they might supply
(Themselves now but cold imagery)
The sculptor to make Beauty by.
Or did the stern-eyed Fate descry,
That babe, or mother, one must die;
So in mercy left the stock,
And cut the branch; to save the shock
Of young years widowed; and the pain,
When Single State comes back again

To the lone man who, reft of wife,
Thenceforward drags a maimed life?
The economy of Heaven is dark;
And wisest clerks have missed the mark,
Why human buds, like this, should fall,
More brief than fly ephemeral,

That has his day; while shrivelled crones
Stiffen with age to stocks and stones;
And crabbed use the conscience sears
In sinners of an hundred years.
Mother's prattle, mother's kiss,
Baby fond, thou ne'er will miss.
Rites, which custom does impose,
Silver bells and baby clothes;
Coral redder than those lips,

Which pale death did late eclipse;

Music framed for infants' glee,

Whistle never tuned for thee;

Though thou want'st not, thou shalt have them, Loving hearts were they which gave them.

Let not one be missing; nurse,

See them laid upon the hearse
Of infant slain by doom perverse.
Why should kings and nobles have
Pictured trophies to their grave;
And we, churls, to thee deny
Thy pretty toys with thee to lie,

A more harmless vanity?

WORK.

Who first invented work, and bound the free
And holyday-rejoicing spirit down

To the ever-haunting importunity

Of business in the green fields, and the town-
To plough, loom, anvil, spade-and oh! most sad,
To that dry drudgery at the desk's dead wood?
Who but the Being unblest, alien from good,

Sabbathless Satan! he who his unglad

Task ever plies 'mid rotatory burnings,
That round and round incalculably reel-

For wrath divine hath made him like a wheel-
In that red realm from which are no returnings;
Where toiling, and turmoiling, ever and aye
'He, and his thoughts, keep pensive working-day.

PARENTAL RECOLLECTIONS.

[From Poetry for Children, by Charles and Mary Lamb.]

A child's a plaything for an hour;

Its pretty tricks we try

For that or for a longer space;

Then tire, and lay it by.

But I knew one that to itself

All seasons could control;

That would have mocked the sense of pain

Out of a grieved soul.

Thou straggler into loving arms,

Young climber up of knees,
When I forget thy thousand ways

Then life and all shall cease.

FELICIA HEMANS.

[FELICIA DOROTHEA BROWNE was born in Liverpool Sept. 25, 1793, and published her first poems in 1803. She married Captain Hemans, 1812, and died in Dublin May 16, 1835. Her principal works are:-Tales and Historic Scenes, 1816; The Forest Sanctuary, 1826; Lays of Many Lands. 1826; Records of Woman, 1828; Songs of the Affections, 1830; Scenes and Hymns of Life, 1834. She also published various dramas and translations.]

Fifty years ago few poets were more popular than Mrs. Hemans; her verses were familiar to all hearts, and won praise from such fastidious critics as Gifford and Jeffrey, no less than from Wordsworth, Scott and Byron. Yet now they are chiefly forgotten, and without injustice. Her tedious romantic tales, her dramas characterless and without invention, are more frequently below than above the mean of merit. Her lyric poetry is more memorable; yet this, even, is less to be valued for its own sake than as the revelation of a delicate and attractive personality. Sprung from a talent expressive not creative, her verses are stamped with feminine qualities. In their familiar pathos, their love of brilliant adventure, their moral earnestness and habit of obvious reflection, no Pythian enthusiasm fills the poet and compels us to forget her womanhood. The inspiring genius of Mrs. Hemans is neither personal nor artistic passion, but a mild Anglican variety of Christianity. She was a woman of wide culture, yet her acquaintance with the civilisations of the past served only to heighten in her eyes the superiority of Protestant England. For the cause of faith she lays her timidity aside, and in a long and feeble poem, The Sceptic, attempts to scale the fastnesses of unbelief. Happily her religion has a gentler side; a side revealing her to be, as Wordsworth said, ‘a holy spirit.' And as a spirit she passed through the world. This life to her, with all its keenly-felt endearments of natural beauty and of