When the toiler's heart you clutch,
Conscience is not valued much,
He recks not a bloody smutch
On his gold:

Every thing to you defers,
You are potent reasoners,
At your whisper Treason stirs,—
Hunger and Cold!

Rude comparisons you draw,
Words refuse to sate your maw,
Your gaunt limbs the cobweb law
Cannot hold;

You're not clogg'd with foolish pride,
But can seize a right denied ;
Somehow God is on your side,—
Hunger and Cold!

You respect no hoary wrong
More for having triumph'd long;
Its past victims, haggard throng,
From the mould

You unbury; swords and spears
Weaker are than poor men's tears,
Weaker than your silent years,-
Hunger and Cold.

Let them guard both hall and bower;
Through the window you will glower,
Patient till your reckoning hour
Shall be toll'd;

Cheeks are pale, but hands are red,
Guiltless blood may chance be shed,
But ye must and will be fed,—
Hunger and Cold!

God has plans man must not spoil,— Some were made to starve and toil, Some to share the wine and oil,

We are told;

Devil's theories are these,

Stifling hope and love and peace,
Framed your hideous lusts to please,-
Hunger and Cold!

Scatter ashes on thy head,
Tears of burning sorrow shed,
Earth and be by Pity led
To Love's fold:

Ere they block the very door
With lean corpses of the poor,
And will hush for naught but gore,
Hunger and Cold!

HEBE.

I SAW the twinkle of white feet,
I saw the flash of robes descending;
Before her ran an influence fleet,
That bow'd my heart like barley bending.

As, in bare fields, the searching bees
Pilot to blooms beyond our finding,
It led me on,-by sweet degrees,
Joy's simple honey-cells unbinding.

Those graces were that seem'd grim fates;
With nearer love the sky lean'd o'er me;
The long-sought secret's golden gates
On musical hinges swung before me.

I saw the brimm'd bowl in her grasp
Thrilling with godhood; like a lover,
I sprang the proffer'd life to clasp:
The beaker fell, the luck was over.

The earth has drunk the vintage up;
What boots it patch the goblet's splinters?
Can Summer fill the icy cup

Whose treacherous crystal is but Winter's?

O spendthrift haste! Await the gods;
Their nectar crowns the lips of Patience.
Haste scatters on unthankful sods

The immortal gift in vain libations.

Coy Hebe flies from those that woo,
And shuns the hands would seize upon her;
Follow thy life, and she will sue
To pour for thee the cup of honour!

TO THE DANDELION.

DEAR common flower! that growest beside the way,
Fringing the dusty road with harmless gold,
First pledge of blithesome May,

Which children pluck, and, full of pride, uphold,
High-hearted buccaneers, o'erjoy'd that they
An Eldorado in the grass have found,

Which not the rich earth's ample round May match in wealth,-thou art more dear to me Than all the prouder summer-blooms may be.

Gold such as thine ne'er drew the Spanish prow Through the primeval hush of Indian seas, Nor wrinkled the lean brow

Of age, to rob the lover's heart of ease;

'Tis the Spring's largess, which she scatters now To rich and poor alike, with lavish hand,

Though most hearts never understand
To take it at God's value, but pass by
The offer'd wealth with unrewarded eye.

Thou art my tropics and mine Italy;
To look at thee unlocks a warmer clime;
The eyes thou givèst me

Are in the heart, and heed not space or time;
Not in mid June the golden-cuirass'd bee
Feels a more summer-like warm ravishment
In the white lily's breezy tent,

His conquer'd Sybaris, than I, when first
From the dark green thy yellow circles burst.

Then think I of deep shadows on the grass,-
Of meadows where in sun the cattle graze,
Where, as the breezes pass,

The gleaming rushes lean a thousand ways,-
Of leaves that slumber in a cloudy mass,
Or whiten in the wind,-of waters blue

That from the distance sparkle through
Some woodland gap,-and of a sky above,

Where one white cloud like a stray lamb doth move.

My childhood's earliest thoughts are link'd with thee; The sight of thee calls back the robin's

Who, from the dark old tree

song,

Beside the door, sang clearly all day long,
And I, secure in childish piety,

Listen'd as if I heard an angel sing

With news from heaven, which he did bring Fresh every day to my untainted ears,

When birds and flowers and I were happy peers.

How like a prodigal doth Nature seem, When thou, for all thy gold, so common art! Thou teachest me to deem

More sacredly of every human heart,

Since each reflects in joy its scanty gleam
Of heaven, and could some wondrous secret show
Did we but pay the love we owe,

And with a child's undoubting wisdom look
On all these living pages of God's book.

WHAT MR. ROBINSON THINKS.

GUVENER B. is a sensible man;

He stays to his home an' looks arter his folks;
He draws his furrer ez straight ez he can,
An' into nobody's tater-patch pokes;
But John P.

Robinson he

Sez he wunt vote fer Guvener B.

My! aint it terrible? Wut shall we du?

We can't never choose him, o'course,-thet's flat; Guess we shall hev to come round (don't you?) An' go in fer thunder an' guns, an' all that; Fer John P.

Robinson he

Sez he wunt vote fer Guvener B.

Gineral C. is a dreffle smart man :

He's ben on all sides that give places or pelf; But consistency still wuz a part of his plan,— He's ben true to one party-an' thet is himself; So John P.

Robinson he

Sez he shall vote fer Gineral C.

Gineral C. goes in fer the war;

He don't vally principle more'n an old cud;
What did God make us raytional creeturs fer,
But glory an' gunpowder, plunder an' blood?
So John P.
Robinson he

Sez he shall vote fer Gineral C.

We were gittin' on nicely up here to our village,
With good old idees o' wut's right an' wut aint,
We kind o' thought Christ went agin war an' pillage,
An' thet eppyletts worn't the best mark of a saint;
But John P.
Robinson he

Sez this kind o' thing's an exploded idee.

The side of our country must ollers be took,
An' President Polk, you know, he is our country;
An' the angel thet writes all our sins in a book
Puts the debit to him, an' to us the per contry;
An' John P.

Robinson he

Sez this is his view o' the thing to a T.