Dry thy tears, my poor Ximena; lay thy dear one down to rest;
Let his hands be meekly folded; lay the Cross upon his breast;
Let his dirge be sung hereafter, and his funeral masses said;
To-day, thou poor, bereaved one, the living ask thy aid.

Close beside her, faintly moaning, fair and young, a soldier lay, Torn with shot and pierced with lances, bleeding slow his life

away;

But, as tenderly before him then the lorn Ximena knelt,
She saw the northern hostile eagle shining on his pistol-belt.

With a stifled cry of horror, straight she turned away her head;
With a sad and bitter feeling looked she back upon her dead;
But she heard the youth's low moaning, and his struggling
breath of pain,

And she raised the cooling water to his parching lips again.

"A bitter curse upon them, boy, who to battle led thee forth, From some gentle, saddened mother, weeping lonely in the

North!"

Spake the mournful Mexic woman, as she laid him with her

dead,

And turned to soothe the living still, and bind the wounds which bled.

Look forth once more, Ximena! "Like a cloud before the wind Rolls the battle down the mountains, leaving blood and death behind:

Ah! they plead in vain for mercy; in the dust the wounded strive;

Hide your faces, holy angels! Oh, thou Christ of God, forgive!"

Sink, O night, among thy mountains! let the cool, gray shadows fall;

Dying brothers, fighting demons-drop thy curtain over all! Through the thickening winter twilight, wide apart the battle

rolled,

In its sheath the sabre rested, and the cannon's lips grew cold.

But the noble Mexic women still their holy task pursued, Through that long, dark night of sorrow, worn and faint, and lacking food;

Over weak and suffering brothers with a tender care they hung, And the dying foeman blessed them in a strange and northern tongue.

Not wholly lost, O Father! is this evil world of ours;

Upward, through its blood and ashes, spring afresh its Eden flowers;

From its smoking hell of battle, Love and Pity send their prayer, And still Thy white-winged angels hover dimly in our air.

W

TRUE ELOQUENCE.

HEN public bodies are to be addressed on momentous occasions, when great interests are at stake, and strong passions excited, nothing is valuable in speech further than it is connected with high intellectual and moral endowments. Clearness, force, and earnestness, are the qualities which produce conviction.

True eloquence, indeed, does not consist in speech. It cannot be brought from far. Labor and learning may toil for it, but they will toil in vain. Words and phrases may be marshalled in every way, but they cannot compass it. It must exist in the man, in the subject, and in the occasion.

Affected passion, intense expression, the pomp of declamation, all may aspire after it; they cannot reach it. It comes, if it come at all, like the outbreaking of a fountain from the earth, or the bursting forth of volcanic fires, with spontaneous, original, native force.

The graces taught in the schools, the costly ornaments and studied contrivances of speech, shock and disgust men, when their own lives, and the fate of their wives, their children, and their country, hang on the decision of the hour. Then, words have lost their power, rhetoric is vain, and all elaborate oratory contemptible. Even genius itself then feels rebuked and subdued, as in the presence of higher qualities.

Then, patriotism is eloquent; then, self-devotion is eloquent. The clear conception, outrunning the deductions of logic, the high purpose, the firm resolve, the dauntless spirit, speaking on the tongue, beaming from the eye, informing every feature, and

urging the whole man onward, right onward to his object—this, this is eloquence; or, rather, it is something greater and higher than.all eloquence- it is action, noble, sublime, godlike action.

EUGENE ARAM'S DREAM.

'TWA

WAS in the prime of summer-time,
An evening calm and cool,

And four-and-twenty happy boys

Came bounding out of school:

There were some that ran, and. some that leapt,

Like troutlets in a pool.

Away they sped, with gamesome minds,

And souls untouch'd by sin;

To a level mead they came, and there
They drave the wickets in:
Pleasantly shone the setting sun
Over the town of Lynn.

Like sportive deer they coursed about,
And shouted as they ran

Turning to mirth all things of earth,
As only boyhood can;

But the usher sat remote from all,
A melancholy man!

His hat was off, his vest apart,

To catch heaven's blessed breeze;

For a burning thought was in his brow,

And his bosom ill at ease:

So he lean'd his head on his hands, and read

The book between his knees.

Leaf after leaf he turn'd it o'er,

Nor ever glanced aside,

For the peace of his soul he read that book

In the golden eventide:

Much study had made him very lean,

And pale, and leaden-eyed.

At last he shut the ponderous tome,
With a fast and fervent grasp
He strain'd the dusky covers close,
And fix'd the brazen hasp:
"O God! could I so close my mind,
And clasp it with a clasp!"

Then leaping on his feet upright,
Some moody turns he took-

Now up the mead, then down the mead,
And past a shady nook –

And, lo! he saw a little boy
That pored upon a book.

"My gentle lad, what is 't you readRomance or fairy fable?

Or is it some historic page,

Of kings and crowns unstable?"

The young boy gave an upward glance"It is "The Death of Abel?'"

The usher took six hasty strides,
As smit with sudden pain-
Six hasty strides beyond the place,
Then slowly back again;

And down he sat beside the lad,
And talk'd with him of Cain;

And, long since then, of bloody men
Whose deeds tradition saves;

Of lonely folk cut off unseen,

And hid in sudden graves;
Of horrid stabs, in groves forlorn,
And murders done in caves;

And how the sprites of injured men
Shriek upward from the sod-
Ay, how the ghostly hand will point
To show the burial clod;
And unknown facts of guilty acts

Are seen in dreams from God;

He told how murderers walked the earth
Beneath the curse of Cain

With crimson clouds before their eyes,
And flames about their brain:
For blood has left upon their souls
Its everlasting stain.

"And well," quoth he, "I know, for truth, Their pangs must be extreme

Woe, woe, unutterable woe

Who spill life's sacred stream!

For why? Methought, last night, I wrought A murder in a dream!

"One that had never done me wrong

A feeble man, and old;

I led him to a lonely field

The moon shone clear and cold: 'Now here,' said I, 'this man shall die, And I will have his gold!'

"Two sudden blows with ragged stick,
And one with a heavy stone,

One hurried gash with a hasty knife-
And then the deed was done:
There was nothing lying at my foot
But lifeless flesh and bone!

"Nothing but lifeless flesh and bone,
That could not do me ill;

And yet I fear'd him all the more,
For lying there so still:

There was a manhood in his look,
That murder could not kill!

"And, lo! the universal air

Seem'd lit with ghastly flame:
Ten thousand thousand dreadful eyes
Were looking down in blame:
I took the dead man by his hand,

And call'd upon his name.