THE FUNERAL.

As I passed down the street,

Sighing and singing,

Making its pavement sweet

With flowery flinging,

Came the unwelcome feet,

Sad burthen bringing.

Death! I forgot thou shouldst

Harvest this morning:

Not for thy festival

Was my adorning;

Yet to my heart I take,

Duteous, thy warning.

Out of the pleasant day

Darkly they lay thee:

Shall thine accustomed haunts

Hot tears bedim the eyes
That would behold thee;
Death-spasms wring the hearts

Whose loves infold thee;

While monumental Grief

Waits to inmould thee.

Whither, ah! whither gone,
From our wild weeping?
For what new threshing-floor
Bound with strange reaping?

Taken, we know no more,
Into God's keeping.

THE CHARITABLE VISITOR.

SHE carries no flag of fashion, her clothes are but passing plain,

Though she comes from a city palace all jubilant with

her reign:

She threads a bewildering alley, with ashes and dust

thrown out,

And fighting and cursing children, who mock as she moves about.

Why walk you this way, my lady, in the snow and slippery ice?

These are not the shrines of virtue, - here misery lives, and vice :

Rum helps the heart of starvation to a courage bold

and bad;

And women are loud and brawling, while men sit

maudlin and mad.

I see in the corner yonder the boy with a broken

arm,

And the mother whose blind wrath did it,

guardian from childish harm!

That face will grow bright at your coming, but your steward might come as well,

Or better the Sunday teacher that helped him to read and spell.

Oh! I do not come of my willing, with froward and restless feet:

I have pleasant tasks in my chamber, and friends well

beloved to greet.

To follow the dear Lord Jesus, I walk in the storm

and snow;

Where I find the trace of his footsteps, there lilies and roses grow.

He said that to give was blessèd, more blessed than

to receive;

But what could he take, dear angels, of all that we

had to give,