LYRICS OF LIFE.

THE CHILDREN.

Beautiful the children's faces,
Spite of all that mars and sears:
To my inmost heart appealing;
Calling forth love's tenderest feeling;
Steeping all my soul with tears.

Eloquent the children's faces-
Poverty's lean look, which saith,
Save us! save us! woe surrounds us;
Little knowledge sore confounds us :
Life is but a lingering death!

Give us light amid our darkness;
Let us know the good from ill;
Hate us not for all our blindness;
Love us, lead us, show us kindness-
You can make us what you will!

We are willing, we are ready;

We would learn, if you would teach : We have hearts that yearn towards duty; We have minds alive to beauty;

Souls that any heights can reach !

Raise us by your Christian knowledge

Consecrate to man our powers; Let us take our proper station : We, the rising generation

Let us stamp the age as ours !

We shall be what you will make us—
Make us wise, and make us good;
Make us strong for time of trial;
Teach us temperance, self-denial,
Patience, kindness, fortitude!

Look into our childish faces!
See ye not our willing hearts ?

Only love us-only lead us ;
Only let us know you need us,
And we all will do our parts.

We are thousands-many thousands !
Every day our ranks increase;
Let us march beneath your banner,
We, the legion of true honour,

Combating for love and

peace !

Train us! try us! days slide onward,
They can ne'er be ours again :
Save us, save! from our undoing!
Save from ignorance and ruin;

Make us worthy to be MEN!

Send us to our weeping mothers,
Angel-stamped in heart and brow!
We may be our fathers' teachers :
We may be the mightiest preachers,
In the day that dawneth now!

Such the children's mute appealing,
All my inmost soul was stirred;
And my heart was bowed with sadness,
When a cry, like summer's gladness,

Said, "The children's prayer is heard!"

In ages past, the sovereigns of the earth

Held human lives as dust beneath their feet,
And neighbouring nations born but to be made
Their tributary vassals; distant lands,
Having the sea's broad arm between, appeared
As barbarous-worthy conquest, or contempt,
Long devasting wars, or all the scorn

That ignorance could breed. The earth was then
A feasting place and footstool for its kings.

The kings adorned the soldiers and the priests,

The one with golden garb-with fruitful fields
The other; both becoming thus a power
Within a power, and all cementing close
Despotic thrones. The People, body and mind,
Subdued like metal cast in sandy moulds,
Not knowing its own strength, and being weak
By ignorance, and lack of rational will,

So that they starved not, question'd not the right
Of aught, as ordered by these heaven-sent kings,
With their strong armies and their banded priests.
Whereof it came, that nation thought of nation,
Not as a part of the great family

Of human kind, but, mainly, as a horde

Fit to be slaughtered, plundered, hated, scorned—
Belied in daily speech, and history.

Such thoughts and deeds have with those ages passed,
And nation knowing nation by the truth-

By actual presence, and familiar words,
Spoken or written, henceforth will be slow
To see the red necessity of war,

Save as a brain-disease of knaves and fools,
Nor lend a ready ear to statesmen's tricks,
Hatching an insult or alarm of foes,

Dispersing thus at home men's active thoughts
O'er all their groaning needs and social wrongs."

R. H. HORNE.

TO THE WOMEN OF ENGLAND.

On the western breezes swelling, hear ye not a piercing

cry,

Mingled with the clank of fetters? 'Tis the slave's

wild agony.

Not alone across the ocean comes that loud appealing

prayer.

It has risen up to Heaven, and it stands recorded there. Why should England pause and listen? She has set her captives free

Oh! my Sisters, hear the answer from the bondman o'er the sea.

"HALF COLUMBIA'S SLAVE-GROWN COTTON FINDS ITS WAY TO ENGLAND'S SHORE!"

We have worn the blood-stained fabric-Sisters! let us

wear no more.

All unconsciously we aided in America's disgrace,

Helped to bind the galling fetters upon millions of our

race.

Let the time gone by suffice us, we are not in darkness

now

Never more at Slavery's altar let an English woman

bow.