THE GRAVE.

Permission of G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York.

H, the grave! the grave! It buries every error; covers every defect; extinguishes every resentment. From its peaceful bosom spring none but fond regrets and tender recollections. Who can look down upon the grave even of an enemy, and not feel a compunctious throb, that ever he should have warred with the poor handful of earth that lies moldering before him? But the grave of those he loved, what a place for meditation! Then it is we call up, in long review, the whole history of virtue and gentleness, and the thousand endearments lavished upon us, almost unheeded, in the daily intercourse of intimacy; then it is we dwell upon the tenderness, the solemn and awful tenderness of the parting scene; the bed of death, with all the stifled grief; its noiseless attendants, its mute, watchful assiduities; the last testimonies of expiring love; the feeble, fluttering, thrilling—oh, how thrilling !— pressure of the hand; the last, fond look of the glazed eye, turning upon us, even from the threshold of exist ence; the faint, faltering accents struggling in death to give one more assurance of affection! Aye, go to the grave of buried love and meditate! There settle the account with thy conscience, for every past endearment, unregarded, of that departed being, who never, never, never can return, to be soothed by contrition!

If thou art a child, and hast ever added a sorrow to the soul, or a furrow to the silvered brow of an affectionate parent; if thou art a husband, and hast ever caused the fond bosom that ventured its whole happiness in thy arms, to doubt one moment of thy kindness or thy truth; if thou art a friend, and hast ever wronged in thought, or word, or deed, the spirit that generously confided in thee; if thou art a lover and hast ever given an unmerited pang to the true heart that now lies cold and

still beneath thy feet; then be sure that every unkind look, every ungracious word, every ungenteel action, will come thronging back upon thy memory, and knocking dolefully at thy soul; then be sure thou wilt be down, sorrowing and repentant on the grave, and utter the unheard groan, and pour the unavailing tear, more deep, more bitter, because unheard and unavailing.

WASHINGTON IRVING.

MOLLY CAREW.

OCH hone! and what will I do?

Sure my love is all crost

Like a bud in the frost;

And there's no use at all in my going to bed,
For 'tis dhrames and not sleep comes into my head,
And 'tis all about you,

My sweet Molly Carew

And indeed 'tis a sin and a shame;

You're complater than Nature

In every feature,

The snow can't compare

With your forehead so fair,

And I rather would see just one blink of your eye
Than the purtiest star that shines out of the sky,
And by this and by that,

For the matter o' that,

You're more distant by far than that same!

Och hone! weirasthru!

I'm alone in this world without you.

Och hone! but why should I spake

Of your forehead and eyes,

When your nose it defies

Paddy Blake, the schoolmaster, to put it in rhyme?

Tho' there's one Burke, he says, that would call it snublime,

And then for your cheek!

Troth, 'twould take him a week
Its beauties to tell, as he'd rather.
Then your lips! oh, machree!
In their beautiful glow,

They a patthern might be

For the cherries to grow.

"Twas an apple that tempted our mother, we know,
For apples were scarce, I suppose, long ago;
But at this time o' day,

'Pon my conscience I'll say

Such cherries might tempt a man's father!

Och hone! weirasthru !

I'm alone in this world without you.

Och hone! by the man in the moon,
You taze me all ways

That a woman can plaze,

For you dance twice as high with that thief Pat Magee, As when you take share of a jig, dear, with me,

Tho' the piper I bate,

For fear the owld chate

Wouldn't play you your favourite tune;

And when you're at mass

My devotion you crass,
For 'tis thinking of you

I am, Molly Carew,

While you wear, on purpose, a bonnet so deep,
That I can't at your sweet purty face get a peep :—

Oh, lave off that bonnet,

Or else I'll lave on it

The loss of my wandherin' sowl!

Och hone! weirasthru!

Och hone! like an owl,

Day is night, dear, to me, without you!

Och hone! don't provoke me to do it;
For there's girls by the score

That loves me-and more,

And you'd look very quare if some morning you'd meet
My weddin' all marchin' in pride down the sthreet;
Troth, you'd open your eyes,
And you'd die with surprise,
To think 'twasn't you was come to it!
And faith Katty Naile,

And her cow, I go bail,
Would jump if I'd say,

"Katty Naile, name the day.”

And tho' you're fair and fresh as a morning in May, While she's short and dark like a cowld winther's day, Yet if you don't repent

Before Easther, when Lent

Is over I'll marry for spite!
Och hone! weirasthru!
And when I die for you,

My ghost will haunt you every night.

SAMUEL LOVER.

THE UNION.

By permission of and arrangement with Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Boston, Mass. AS our love all died out? Have its altars grown cold?

told?

Then nature must teach us the strength of the chain,
That her petulant children would sever in vain.

They may fight till the buzzards are gorged with their spoil,
Till the harvest grows black as it rots in the soil,
Till the wolves and the catamounts troop from their caves,
And the shark tracks the pirate, the lord of the waves.

In vain is the strife! When its fury is past,

Their fortunes must flow in one channel at last;

As the torrents that rush from the mountains of snow,
Roll mingled in peace through the valleys below.

Our Union is river, lake, ocean, and sky,

Man breaks not the medal when God cuts the die!

Though darkened with sulphur, though cloven with steel, The blue arch will brighten, the waters will heal!

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES.

UNDER THE ROD.

SAW the young bride, in her beauty and pride,
Bedeck'd in her snowy array;

And the bright flush of joy mantled high on her cheek,
And the future looked blooming and gay :

And with woman's devotion she laid her fond heart
At the shrine of idolatrous love,

And she anchor'd her hopes to this perishing earth,

By the chain which her tenderness wove,

But I saw when those heart-strings were bleeding and torn, And the chain had been severed in two,

She had changed her white robes for the sables of grief, And her bloom for the paleness of woe.

But the Healer was there, pouring balm on her heart,

And wiping the tears from her eyes,

And He strengthen'd the chain He had broken in twain And fastened it firm to the skies!

There had whispered a voice-'twas the voice of her God, "I love thee-I love thee-pass under the rod !"

I saw the young mother in tenderness bend

O'er the couch of her slumbering boy,

And she kissed the soft lips as they murmur'd her name, While the dreamer lay smiling in joy.