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Ah! my heart has it e'er been so,

Cold clouds shading life's sunniest glow,

Warm hopes drowned in the cold wave's flow

In the same low room my mother pressed
Each child to her softly heaving breast,
And closed her eyes and went to rest.
The old walls crumbled long ago,
Hushed the big wheel's buzzing slow,
Worn to shreds is the shining tow.

Yet with the bursting leaves and flowers,
The gushing songs and pearly showers,
Life brightens as in childhood's hours,
And hope, this golden morn in May,
Spins golden threads that float away
To a heavenly home that is bright for aye.

Waverly Magazine.

THE CONQUERED BANNER.

(Prize Selection at North Mo. State Normal, Jan., 1889.)

Furl that banner, for 'tis weary,

'Round its staff 'tis drooping dreary,
Furl it, fold it, for it is best.

For there's not a man to wave it,
And there's not a sword to save it,

And there's not a hand to lave it
In the blood that heroes gave it,
Furl it, hide it; let it rest.

Take that banner down, 'tis tattered;
Broken is its staff and shattered,

And the valiant hosts are scattered

Over whom it floated high.

Oh! 'tis hard for us to fold it,

Hard to think there's none to hold it,

Hard that those who once

Now must furi it with a sign.

rolled it

Furl that banner-furl it sadly!
Once ten thousand hailed it gladly,
And ten thousand wildly-madly-
Swore it should forever wave—
Swore that foeman's sound could never
Hearts like theirs entwined dissever
Till that flag would wave forever,
O'er their freedom or their grave.

Furl it, for the hand that grasped it,
And the hearts that fondly clasped it
Cold and dead are lying now.
And the banner-it is trailing,
While around it sounds the wailing
Of its people in their woe.

For though conquered they adore it,
Love the cold dead hands that bore it!
Weep for those who fell before it!
Pardon those who trailed and tore it!
Wildly-wildly they deplore it
Now to furl and fold it so.

Furl that banner--true 'tis gory,
But 'tis wreathed around with glory,
And 'twill live in song and story
Though its folds are in the dust.
For its fame on brightest pages,
Penned by poets and by sages,
Shall go sounding down the ages:
Furl its folds though now we must.

Furl that banner--softly-slowly—
Treat it gently—it is holy-
For it droops above the dead!
Touch it not-unfold it never!
Let it drop there-furled forever,
For its people's hopes are dead.

Father Ryan.

ROBERT E. LEE.

When the future historian comes to survey the character of Robert E. Lee, he will find it rising like a huge mountain above the undulating plain of humanity, and he will have to lift his eyes high, high toward heaven to catch its summit.

He possessed every virtue of the other great commanders without their vices. He was a foe without hate, a friend without treachery, a soldier without cruelty, and a victim without murmuring. He was a public officer without vice, a private citizen without wrong, a Christian without hypocrisy, and a man without guile. He was Cæsar without Cæsar's ambition, Frederick without Frederick's tyranny, Napoleon without Napoleon's selfishness, and Washington without Washington's reward. He was obedient to authority as a servant, and royal in authority as a king. In life, gentle as a woman, in thought modest and pure as a virgin! Watchful as a Roman Vestal in duty, submissive to law as Socrates, and grand in battle as Achilles.-B. H. AN.

THE PURITANS.

The Puritans-the most remarkable body of men, perhaps, which the world has ever produced! The odious and ridiculous parts of their character lie on the surface. He that runs may read them; nor have there been wanting attentive and malicious observers to point them out. For many years after the Restoration they were the theme of unmeasured invective and derision. They were not men of letters; they were, as a body, unpopular; they could not defend themselves; and the public would not take them under its protection. They were therefore abandoned to the tender mercies of the satirists and the dramatists. The ostentatious simplicity of their dress, their sour aspect, their stiff posture, their long

graces, their Hebrew names, their contempt of human learning, and their detestation of polite amusement were, indeed, fair game for the laughers. But it is not from the laughers alone that the philosophy of human history is to be learnt.

Those who roused the people to resistance, who formed, out of the most unpromising material, the finest army that Europe had ever seen, who trampled down king, church and aristocracy, who made the name of England terrible to every nation on the face of the earth, were no vulgar fanatics.

The Puritans were men whose minds had derived a peculiar character from the daily contemplation of superior beings and eternal interests. Not content with acknowledging in general terms an overruling Providence, they habitually ascribed every event to the will of the Great Being, for whose power nothing was too vast, for whose inspection nothing was too minute. To know Him, to serve Him, to enjoy Him, was with them the great end of existence. They recognized no title to superiority but His favor and confident of that favor, they despised all the accomplishments and all the dignities of the world. If they were unacquainted with the works of philosophers and of poets, they were deeply read in the oracles of God. If their names were not found in the registers of heralds, they felt assured that they were recorded in the Book of Life. If their steps were not accompanied by a splendid train of menials, legions of ministering angels had charge over them. Their palaces were houses not made with hands; their diadems, crowns of glory which should never fade away! On the rich and the eloquent, on nobles and priests, they looked down with contempt; for they esteemed themselves rich in a more precious treasure and eloquent in a more sublime language. The very meanest of them was a being to whose fate a mysterious and terrible importance belonged. For his sake empires had risen and flourished and decayed. For his sake the

Almighty had proclaimed his will by the pen of the evangelist and the harp of the prophet. It was for him that the sun had been darkened, that the rocks had been rent, that the dead had arisen, that all nature had shuddered at the sufferings of her expiring God.

The Puritan was made up of two different men, the one all self-abasement, penitence, gratitude, passion; the other proud, calm, inflexible, sagacious. He prostrated himself in the dust before his Maker; but he set his foot on the neck of his king. In his devotional retirement he prayed with convulsions, and groans, and tears. He was half maddened by glorious or terrible illusions. He heard the lyres of angels or the tempting whispers of fiends. He caught a gleam of the Beatific Vision, or woke screaming from dreams of everlasting fire. Like Vane, he thought himself intrusted with the sceptre of the millennial year. Like Fleetwood, he cried in the bitterness of his soul that God had hid His face from him. But when he took his seat in the council, or girt on his sword for war, these tempestuous workings of the soul had left no perceptible trace behind them. People who saw nothing of the godly but their uncouth visages, and heard nothing from them but their groans and whining hymns, might laugh at them. But those had little reason to laugh who encountered them in the hall of debate or in the field of battle. These fanatics brought to civil and military affairs an immutability of purpose and a coolness of judgment, which some writers have thought inconsistent with their religious zeal, but which were, in fact, the necessary effects of it. The intensity of their feelings on one subject made them tranquil on every other. Death had lost its terrors, and pleasure its charms. They had their smiles and their tears, their raptures and their sorrows, but not for the things of this world. Enthusiasm had made them Stoics, had cleared their minds from every vulgar passion and prejudice, and raised them above the influence of danger and of corruption.-Macaulay.

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