EPIGRAM.

WHAT is a communist? One who hath yearnings
For equal division of unequal earnings:
Idler, or bungler, or both, he is willing
To fork out his penny, and pocket your shilling.*

THE PEOPLE'S ANTHEM.

WRITTEN FOR MUSIC, AT THE REQUEST OF W. T. WOOD, ESQ.

WHEN wilt thou save the people?

Oh, God of mercy! when?
Not kings and lords, but nations!

Not thrones and crowns, but men !

Flowers of thy heart, oh, God, are they!
Let them not pass, like weeds, away!

Their heritage a sunless day!

God, save the people!

Shall crime bring crime for ever,
Strength aiding still the strong?
Is it thy will, oh, Father,

That man shall toil for wrong?

*And he has two names, Legion and Danger.

"No!" say thy mountains; "No!" thy skies: "Man's clouded sun shall brightly rise,

And songs be heard, instead of sighs."

God, save the people!

When wilt thou save the people?

Oh, God of Mercy! when?

The people, Lord, the people!

Not thrones and crowns, but men !

God! save the people! thine they are,

Thy children, as thy angels fair:

Save them from bondage, and despair!

God! save the people!*

* And who are the people? They are all those persons who, by honestly maintaining themselves, and, perhaps earning a surplus,— or by honestly living on the precious earnings and savings of others --prove their right to govern the community through their representatives. I deny that any human being is born possessed of a right to vote for members of parliament. All men, and all women, are born possessed of the right to acquire the power of doing so; just as all boys are born possessed of the right to acquire the power of using edgetools. But no boy is born possessed of a right to cut even his own fingers; and before any person meddle with mine I would have him understand the nature of edgetools. The right to vote for members of parliament is founded on property and knowledge, that property and knowledge which every self-sustained person possesses, in the labour, or skill, which enables him, or her, to live; and taxation and representation ought to be co-extensive, because Taxes are paid by self-sustained persons alone.

LOVE STRONG IN DEATH.

WE watch'd him, while the moonlight,
Beneath the shadow'd hill,
Seem'd dreaming of good angels,
And all the woods were still.
The brother of two sisters

Drew painfully his breath:

A strange fear had come o'er him,
For love was strong in death.
The fire of fatal fever

Burn'd darkly on his cheek,

And often to his mother

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He spoke, or tried to speak:

I felt, as if from slumber

I never could awake :

Oh, Mother, give me something
To cherish for your sake!
A cold, dead weight is on me,
A heavy weight, like lead:
My hands and feet seem sinking
Quite through my little bed:

I am so tired, so weary—

With weariness I ache:

Oh, Mother, give me something
To cherish for your sake!

LOVE STRONG IN DEATH.

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Some little token give me,

Which I may kiss in sleep-
To make me feel I'm near you,
And bless you, though I weep.
My sisters say I'm better-

But, then, their heads they shake:
Oh, Mother, give me something
To cherish for your sake!
Why can't I see the poplar,

The moonlit stream and hill,

Where, Fanny says, good angels
Dream, when the woods are still?
Why can't I see you, Mother?
I surely am awake:

Oh, haste! and give me something
To cherish for your sake!"
His little bosom heaves not;

The fire hath left his cheek:

The fine chord-is it broken?

The strong chord-could it break?

Ah, yes! the loving spirit

Hath wing'd his flight away:

A mother and two sisters

Look down on lifeless clay.

TO THOMAS LISTER,

FRIEND, I return your English Hexameters, thanking you for them.

More than forty years since, I constructed such

verses,

Choosing a lofty theme, too often worded unsimply. Even now, I remember one stol'n line of the

anthem:

"Thou for ever and ever, God, Omnipotent, reignest!"

Though my verbiage pleased me, long ago did it

journey

Whither dead things tend. For Homer's worldfamous metre

Cannot in English be pleasing. Saxon may write it in Saxon,

Oft for dactyl and spondee using iambic and trochee, Pleased and making a boast of his wasted labour and lost time;

But with grace and simplicity none can write it in

our tongue,

Though the sturdy gothic oft runs into it promptly, As it grandly does in these fine lines from the Bible: "How art thou fall'n from heav'n, oh, Lucifer, son of the Morn!" and