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94

THE CHRISTIAN WARFARE.

May slake his lips. Nor fear, nor fly,

Heaven's stores shall ope for thee, when earth and wave deny.

Greater and mightier far than thou,

The hosts that bar thy way:
Yet let not that high spirit bow;

A loftier power than they,
Conducts thy march; before Him driven,

Melts Anak's Titan horde, and rampart walled to Heaven.

True, dark ingratitude is there

And disappointment cold,

And mean Suspicion from his lair,
Unwinds his viper fold:

Yet fear not-He whose knight thou art,

With energy divine, can nerve thy human heart.

True, Earth in treacherous charms arrayed—

With eye too wildly sweet,

Would seek to her unhallowed shade,

To lure thy pilgrim feet :

Yet yield not. She who woos thy vows,

With crown of bleeding thorn, enwreathed thy Master's brows.

Say not thy yoke is hard to bear

But look on Him who bore,
For thee a weightier load of care,

And then repine no more.

His yoke is light: His ways are rest—

They that endure with Him, with Him too shall be blest.

Fear not, and thou shalt overcome

Yea, through His love, who led :
With palm of more than conquest bloom
Twine thine unhelmed head.

AUTUMN.

Mid white-robed hosts of fair renown,

The "morning star" shall shine, first jewel of thy crown!

Fear not! in victory thou shalt stand

Upon the glassy sea,

And chaunt, with Heaven's own lyre in hand,

The pæan of the free:

Sing to the Lord! the fight is done!

The fearful foe is 'whelmed the rest eternal, won!

95

Autumn.

THE first severe frost has come, and the miraculous change has passed upon the leaves, which is known only in America. The blood-red sugar-maple, with a leaf brighter, more refined and delicate than a Circassian lip, stand here and there in the forest, like the Sultan's standard in a host, the solitary and farseen autocrat of the wilderness. The Birch, with its amber leaves, ghosts of the departed summer, turned out along the edges of the woods, like a lining of the palest gold. The broad Sycamore, the fan-like Catalpa flaunted their saffron foliage in the sun, spotted with gold, like the wings of the lady-bird the kingly Oak, with its summit shaken bare, still hid his majestic trunk in a drapery of sumptuous dyes, like a stricken monarch gathering his robes of state about, to die royally in his purple. The tall Poplar, with its minaret of silver, stood blanched like a coward in the dying forest, burthening every breeze with its complainings. The Hickory paled through its enduring green: the bright berries of the Mountain Ash flushed with a more sanguine glory in the unob

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structed sun. The gaudy Tulip-tree-the Sybarite of vegetation-stripped of its golden cups, still drank the intoxicating light, in leaves, than which, the lip of an Indian shell was never more delicately tinted. The still deeper-dyed Vines of the lavish wilderness, perishing with the noble things whose summer they had shared, outshone them in their decline.

And, alone and unsympathising in this universal decay, outlaws from nature, stood the Fir and the Hemlock, their frowning and sombre heads less lovely than ever, in contrast with the death-struck glory of their companions.

The dull colours of English autumnal foliage, give you no conception of this marvellous phenomenon: the change there is gradual; in America it is the work of a night—of a single frost! Oh, to have seen the sun set on hills in the still green and lingering summer, and to awake in the morning to a scene like this! It is as if a myriad of rainbows were laced through the tree-tops, as if the sunsets of a summer's gold purple and crimson had been fused in the Alembic of the West, and poured back, in a new deluge of light and colour, over the wilderness.

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It is as if every leaf in these countless trees, had been painted to outflush the tulip-as if, by some electric miracle, the dyes of the earth's heart had been struck upward—and her crystals and ores, her sapphires, hyacinths and rubies had let forth their imprisoned colours, to mount through the roots of the forest, reanimating the perishing leaves, and revelling an hour in their bravery.

N. P. WILLIS.

LET more than the domestic mill,

Be turned by Feeling's river:

Let Charity begin at home,

But not stay there forever.

Che Ballad of Cassandra Zauthwick.

In the following ballad, the author has endeavoured to display the strong enthusiasm of the early Quaker, the short-sighted intolerance of the clergy and magistrates, and that sympathy with the oppressed, which the "common people," when not directly under the control of spiritual despotism, have ever evinced. He is not blind to the extravagance of language and action which characterized some of the pioneers of Quakerism in New England, and which furnished persecution with its solitary but most inadequate excuse.

The ballad has its foundation upon a somewhat remarkable event in the history of Puritan intolerance. Two young persons, son and daughter of Lawrence Southwick, of Salem, who had himself been imprisoned and deprived of all his property for having entertained two Quakers at his house, were fined ten pounds each for non-attendance at church, which, they were unable to pay. The case being represented to the General Court, at Boston, that body issued an order which may still be seen on the court records, bearing the signature of Edward Rawson, Secretary, by which the treasurer of the County was "fully empowered to sell the said persons to any of the English nation at Virginia or Barbadoes, to answer said fines." An attempt was made to carry this barbarous order into execution, but no shipmaster was found willing to convey them to the West Indies. Vide SEWALL'S History, pp. 225-6, G. BISHOP.

To the God of all sure mercies let my blessing rise to-day, From the scoffer and the cruel he hath plucked the spoil

away,

Yea, He who cooled the furnace around the faithful three,
And tamed the Chaldean lions, hath set his handmaid free!

Last night I saw the sunset melt through my prison bars, Last night across my damp earth-floor fell the pale gleam of stars;

In the coldness and the darkness all through the long night

time,

My grated casement whitened with Autumn's early rime.

98

THE BALLAD OF CASSANDRA SOUTHWICK.

Alone, in that dark sorrow, hour after hour crept by ;
Star after star looked palely in and sank adown the sky;
No sound amid night's stillness, save that which seemed to be
The dull and heavy beating of the pulses of the sea;

All night I sat unsleeping, for I knew that on the morrow,
The ruler and the cruel priest would mock me in my sorrow,
Dragged to their place of market, and bargained for, and sold,
Like a lamb before the shambles, like a heifer from the fold!

Oh, the weakness of the flesh was there-the shrinking and the shame ;

And the low voice of the Tempter like whispers to me came: "Why sit'st thou thus forlornly!" the wicked murmur said, "Damp walls thy bower of beauty, cold earth thy maiden bed?

"Where be the smiling faces, and voices soft and sweet, Seen in thy father's dwelling, heard in the pleasant street? Where be the youths, whose glances the summer Sabbath through

Turned tenderly and timidly unto thy father's pew ?

"Why sit'st thou here, Cassandra ?-Bethink thee with what mirth

Thy happy schoolmates gather around the warm bright hearth; How the crimson shadows tremble, on foreheads white and fair, On eyes of merry girlhood, half hid in golden hair.

"Not for thee the hearth-fire brightens, not for thee kind words are spoken,

Not for thee the nuts of Wenham woods by laughing boys are broken,

No first-fruits of the orchard within thy lap are laid,

For thee no flowers of Autumn the youthful hunters braid.

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