"Oh! he's gwine-he's gwine!" she wailed, as her tears

fell upon his face.
"Chile! hold my han'!

Ober heah am de path. I

kin see men an' women an' chil'en marchin' 'long! Furder down am de sunlight. It shines on de great ribber. Ober de ribber am--de-gates-of "—

Of heaven! On earth, old and poor and low: beyond the gates, an angel with the rest.

DETROIT FREE PRESS.

W

A MOTHER'S LAMENT.

HERE art thou, my beloved son!

Where art thou! worse to me than dead?

Oh! find me, prosperous or undone !

Or, if the grave be now thy bed,
Why am I ignorant of the same,
That I may rest; and neither blame
Nor sorrow may attend thy name?

Seven years, alas! to have received
No tidings of an only child;
To have despair'd, have hoped, believed,
And been forevermore beguiled—
Sometimes with thoughts of very bliss!
I catch at them, and then I miss;
Was ever darkness like to this?

He was among the prime in worth,
An object beauteous to behold;
Well born, well bred; I sent him forth
Ingenuous, innocent, and bold;

If things ensued that wanted grace
As hath been said, they were not base,
And never blush was on my face.

Ah! little doth the young one dream,
When full of play and childish cares,
What power is in his wildest scream

Heard by his mother unawares!
He knows it not, he cannot guess;
Years to a mother bring distress,
But do not make her love the less.

Neglect me! No, I suffered long

From that ill thought, and, being blind,
Said "Pride shall help me in my wrong;
Kind mother have I been; as kind
As ever breathed;" and that is true;
I've wet my path with tears like dew
Weeping for him when no one knew.

My son, if thou be humbled, poor,
Hopeless of honor and of gain,
Oh! do not dread thy mother's door;
Think not of me with grief and pain;

I now can see with better eyes,
And worldly grandeur I despise,
And fortune with her gifts and lies.

Alas! the fowls of heaven have wings,

And blasts of heaven will aid their flight; They mount-how short a voyage brings The wanderers back to their delight! Chains tie us down by land and sea; And wishes, vain as mine, may be All that is left to comfort thee.

Perhaps some dungeon hears thee groan,
Maim'd, mangled by inhuman men;

Or thou, upon a desert thrown,

Inheritest the lion's den;

Or hast been summon'd to the deep;
Thou, thou, and all thy mates, to keep
An incommunicable sleep.

I look for ghosts, but none will force
Their way to me; 'tis falsely said
That there was ever intercourse

Between the living and the dead;
For surely then I should have sight
Of him I wait for day and night,
With love and longings infinite.

My apprehensions come in crowds;
I dread the rustling of the grass;
The very shadows of the clouds
Have power to shade me as they pass;
I question things, and do not find
One that will answer to my mind,
And all the world appears unkind.

Beyond participation lie

My troubles, and beyond relief.
If any chance to heave a sigh,

They pity me, and not my grief.
Then come to me, my son, or send
Some tidings that my woes may end.
I have no other earthly friend.

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.

THE POWER OF MUSIC.

SOME years since I attended the National Peace Jubilee

held in Boston. Forty thousand people sat or stood in the great Coliseum erected for that purpose. Thousands of wind and stringed instruments. Twelve thousand trained

voices. The masterpieces of all ages rendered hour after hour, and day after day-Handel's "Judas Maccabæus," Spohr's "Last Judgment," Beethoven's "Mount of Olives," Haydn's "Creation," Mendelssohn's "Elijah," Meyerbeer's "Coronation March," rolling on and up in surges that billowed against the heavens. The mighty cadences within were accompanied on the outside by the ringing of the bells of the city and cannon on the commons, discharged by electricity, in exact time with the music, thundering their awful bars of a harmony that astounded all nations.

Sometimes I bowed my head and wept. Sometimes I stood up in the enchantment, and sometimes the effect was so overpowering I felt I could not endure it. When all the voices were in full chorus, and all the batons in full wave, and all the orchestra in full triumph, and a hundred anvils under mighty hammers were in full clang, and all the towers of the city rolled in their majestic sweetness, and the whole building quaked with the boom of thirty cannon, Parepa Rosa, with a voice that will never again be equaled on earth until the archangelic voice proclaims that time shall be no longer, rose above all other sounds in her rendering of our national air, the Star Spangled Banner. It was too much for a mortal, and quite enough for an immortal, to hear, and while some fainted, one womanly spirit, released under its power, sped away to be with God.

O Lord, our God, quickly usher in the whole world's peace jubilee, and all islands of the sea join the five continents, and all the voices and musical instruments of all nations combine, and all the organs that ever sounded requiem of sorrow sound only a grand march of joy, and all the bells that tolled for burial ring for resurrection, and all the cannon that ever hurled death across the nations, sound to eternal victory, and over all the acclaim of earth

and minstrelsy of heaven there will be heard one voice sweeter and mightier than any human or angelic voice, a voice once full of tears, but then full of triumph, the voice of Christ, saying: "I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last." Then, at the laying of the top-stone of the world's history, the same voices shall be heard as when at the laying of the world's corner-stone "the morning stars sang together." T. DE WITT TALMAGE.

LOSSES.

UPON the white sea-sand

There sat a pilgrim band,

Telling the losses that their lives had known;
While evening waned away

From breezy cliff and bay,

And the strong tides went out with weary moan.

One spake, with quivering lip,

Of a fair freighted ship,

With all his household to the deep gone down;

But one had wilder woe

For a fair face, long ago

Lost in the darker depths of a great town.

There were who mourned their youth
With a most loving ruth,

For its brave hopes and memories ever green;
And one upon the west

Turned an eye that would not rest,

For far-off hills whereon its joy had been.

Some talked of vanished gold,

Some of proud honors told,