"Tell him that his very longing is itself an answering cry;

That his prayer, 'Come, gracious Allah!' is my answer, Here am I.'”

Every inmost aspiration is God's angel undefiled;

Down they go, the brave young riders; horse and foot together fall;

Like a ploughshare in the fallow, through them ploughs the Northern ball.”

Nearer came the storm and nearer, rolling fast and frightful on!

DSCHELADEDDIN. THOLUCK's version. Translated by DR. J. F. CLARKE.

THE ANGELS OF BUENA VISTA.

The battle of Buena Vista was fought by the army of the United States, under General Taylor, and the Mexicans, under General Santa Anna, Feb. 22, 1847, and resulted in the defeat of the Mexicans, the Christian charity of whose women is celebrated in the following verses.

SPEAK and tell us, our Ximena, looking northward far away,

O'er the camp of the invaders, o'er the Mexi

can array,

lost, and who has won?

"Alas! alas! I know not; friend and foe together fall,

O'er the dying rush the living: pray, my sisters, for them all!

Down the hills of Angostura still the storm of battle rolls;

Blood is flowing, men are dying; God have mercy on their souls!"

poor head on my knee:

Dost thou know the lips that kiss thee? Canst thou hear me? canst thou see?

O my husband, brave and gentle! O my Bernal, look once more

On the blessed cross before thee! Mercy! mercy! all is o'er!"

hill and over plain,

I see but smoke of cannon clouding through the mountain rain."

Holy Mother! keep our brothers! Look, Ximena, look once more.

"Still I see the fearful whirlwind rolling darkly as before,

Bearing on, in strange confusion, friend and

foeman, foot and horse,

Like some wild and troubled torrent sweeping down its mountain course."

Look forth once more, Ximena! "Ah! the smoke has rolled away;

And I see the Northern rifles gleaming down the ranks of gray.

Hark! that sudden blast of bugles! there the troop of Minon wheels;

There the Northern horses thunder, with the cannon at their heels.

"Jesu, pity! how it thickens! now retreat and now advance! Right against the blazing cannon shivers Puebla's charging lance!

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 the lorn Ximena knelt,

She saw the Northern 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.

Whispered low the dying soldier, pressed her

hand and faintly smiled:

Was that pitying face his mother's? did she watch beside her child?

All his stranger words with meaning her woman's heart supplied;

With her kiss upon his forehead, "Mother!" murmured he, and died!

"A bitter curse upon them, poor boy, who led thee forth,

From some gentle, sad-eyed mother, weeping, lonely, in the North!"

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

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

Look forth once more, Ximena! "Like a cloud before the wind

89

THE HEROINE MARTYR OF MONTEREY.

When the American forces under General Taylor stormed Monterey, on the 21st, 22d, and 23d of September, 1846, a Mexican woman was seen going about among the disabled of both armies, binding up their wounds, and supplying them with food and water. While thus employed she fell. She was on the following day buried by the Americans, who had even then to bear an incessant discharge of shot from the Mexican batteries.

THE strife was stern at Monterey,
When those high towers were lost and won;
And, pealing through that mortal fray,
Flashed the strong battery's vengeful gun;
Yet, heedless of its deadly rain,
She stood in toil and danger first,
To bind the bleeding soldier's vein,
And slake the dying soldier's thirst.

She found a pale and stricken foe
Sinking in nature's last eclipse,
And, on the red earth kneeling low,

blood and death behind;

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

Hide your faces, holy angels! O 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 the 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!

JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER.

They laid her in her narrow bed,
The foemen of her land and race;
And sighs were breathed, and tears were shed,
Above her lowly resting-place.
Ay! glory's crimson worshippers
Wept over her untimely fall,
For deeds of mercy such as hers
Subdue the hearts and eyes of all.

To sound her worth were guilt and shame
In us, who love but gold and ease;
They heed alike our praise or blame,
Who live and die in works like these.
Far greater than the wise or brave,
Far happier than the fair and gay,
Was she who found a martyr's grave
On that red field of Monterey.

"What-only one!" the brutal hackman said, As, with an oath, he spurned away the dead.

How sunk the inmost hearts of all,

As rolled that dead-cart slowly by, With creaking wheel and harsh hoof-fall! The dying turned him to the wall,

To hear it and to die!

Onward it rolled; while oft its driver stayed, And hoarsely clamored, "Ho! - bring out your dead."

It paused beside the burial-place;

"Toss in your load!"- and it was done.With quick hand and averted face, Hastily to the grave's embrace

They cast them, one by one, Stranger and friend, - the evil and the just, Together trodden in the churchyard dust! And thou, young martyr!- thou wast there,— No white-robed sisters round thee trod, Nor holy hymn, nor funeral prayer Rose through the damp and noisome air, Giving thee to thy God;

Nor flower, nor cross, nor hallowed taper gave Grace to the dead, and beauty to the grave!

Yet, gentle sufferer! there shall be,

In every heart of kindly feeling,
A rite as holy paid to thee
As if beneath the convent-tree

Thy sisterhood were kneeling,

At vesper hours, like sorrowing angels, keeping Their tearful watch around thy place of sleeping.

For thou wast one in whom the light

Of Heaven's own love was kindled well.
Enduring with a martyr's might,
Through weary day and wakeful night,

Far more than words may tell :
Gentle, and meek, and lowly, and unknown,—
Thy mercies measured by thy God alone!

Where manly hearts were failing, — where

The throngful street grew foul with death, O high-souled martyr!- thou wast there, Inhaling, from the loathsome air,

Poison with every breath, Yet shrinking not from offices of dread For the wrung dying, and the unconscious dead.

And, where the sickly taper shed

Its light through vapors, damp, confined, Hushed as a seraph's fell thy tread, A new Electra by the bed

Of suffering human-kind!

Pointing the spirit, in its dark dismay,

To that pure hope which fadeth not away.

Innocent teacher of the high

And holy mysteries of Heaven! How turned to thee each glazing eye, In mute and awful sympathy,

As thy low prayers were given;
And the o'er-hovering Spoiler wore, the while,
An angel's features, - a deliverer's smile!
A blessed task! and worthy one

Who, turning from the world, as thou,
Before life's pathway had begun
To leave its spring-time flower and sun,
Had sealed her early vow;

Giving to God her beauty and her youth,
Her pure affections and her guileless truth.

Earth may not claim thee. Nothing here
Could be for thee a meet reward;
Thine is a treasure far more dear,
Eye hath not seen it, nor the ear
Of living mortal heard, —
The joys prepared,
above,

- the promised bliss

The holy presence of Eternal Love!
Sleep on in peace. The earth has not
A nobler name than thine shall be.
The deeds by martial manhood wrought,
The lofty energies of thought,

The fire of poesy,

In the autumn of the year 1856 Miss Florence Nightingale returned from the Crimea, where she had spent nearly three years in arduous labors among the wounded and suffering soldiers of the British army. The magnitude of the work did not appall her when she gave her consent to the Secretary at War before setting out, and like an angel of mercy she ministered with patient love to the thousands who came under her beneficent care in the army hospitals. She was almost idolized by the soldiers, and, on her return home, was made the recipient of the most positive tokens of the gratitude of her nation, as well as of the entire Christian world.

WHENE'ER a noble deed is wrought,
Whene'er is spoken a noble thought,
Our hearts, in glad surprise,
To higher levels rise.

91

With crown of flowers he dowered her, and all the wealth of May,

And she was his dream-angel by night and his fairy-queen by day.

All day she was his fairy-queen, her realms of fairy light

Were the wild-woods beautiful with flowers and the sun-kissed mountain height,

And the heather on the upland and the shingle by the sea,

And wherever she went was fairy-land, and her own true knight was he.

All night she was his dream-angel; no crown of flowers was there,

But a crown of starry glory beamed round her golden hair,

And not the sunny smile of day beneath that cross of light,

But a dreamy starry smile, like the smile of dewy night.

And often when in boyish glee he prattled fast and wild,

A strange, weird awe would mingle with his love for that fair child;

And he ceased his childish talk, and a shadow on him lay,

For she seemed as though she heard him not, and her heart was far away.

He saw her once at eventide: the glorious sun went down,

He kissed her golden tresses as with an angel's crown,

And it lay upon her pale white face and radiant brow upraised,

And he saw his own dream-angel, and trembled as he gazed.

He knew his own dream-angel: those eyes of heavenly love,

That dreamy starry smile beneath, the kindling skies above;

And it burst upon his heart, like a flash of awful light,

And she was his fairy-queen no more, but his dream-angel of night.

II.

She knelt before the altar in bridal robes of white; The church was beautiful with flowers and blazed with starry light;

There were flowers above the altar and flowers wreathed in her hair,

And angels gazed upon her brow and saw a star-crown there.

on high,

They swelled the wedding hymn of joy up to

the listening sky,

And angels' harps caught up the strain and pealed it far away,

For God himself comes down to claim a fair young bride to-day.

He saw his own dream-angel: the glorious sunlight came

And kissed her virgin forehead with a crown of gold and flame;

And it lay upon her snowy flowers and on her golden hair,

But she was kneeling far away in sorrow and despair.

Strange strength arose within his soul: he let no tear-drop start,

He checked each wild rebellious sob that trembled at his heart;

And said: "O God, I loved her more than all the world beside,

But now thy will, thy will be done, I covet not thy bride.

"I was not worthy of her love, this sinful heart of mine,

Of that pure virgin heart of hers, where every throb was thine;

I was not worthy of her love; and give her up to thee,

And thou wilt hear her, if perchance she pray one prayer for me."

The last sweet hymn has died away, the awful rite is o'er,

And she is now a bride of Christ, his love for

evermore.

And he bore his sorrow meekly, but his life had lost its light,

And she was his fairy-queen no more, but his dream-angel of night.

III.

He lay upon the battle-field . . . with faint and gasping breath,

Among the dying and the dead on that grim field of death:

And no sweet hymn went up to God to soothe his aching head,

But the moaning of the dying and the wailing of the dead.

He lay upon the battle-field, and on his fevered brain

A thousand memories of the past came rushing back again;

the lea,

And the chair where first he said his prayers beside his mother's knee :

And then his mother smiled on him and tears were in his eye,

But he knew not why he wept for her, nor what it was to die;

And the dance of his young life went on with all its joy and pain,

But he never saw his mother's smile, nor felt her kiss again.

The wild woods and the leaping brooks and a little child at play,

A little blue-eyed, fair-haired child, with a crown of early May;

And her crown became a crown of stars, and her star-crossed brow grew bright, And she smiled a dreamy starry smile, like the smile of dewy night.

WRITTEN IN AID OF A CHIME OF BELLS FOR CHRIST CHURCH, CAMBRIDGE.

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL, lately United States Minister at Madrid, and now occupying the corresponding post in London, was born in Cambridge, Feb. 22, 1819, and was educated at Harvard College, in which institution he became the successor of Mr. Longfellow as Professor of Belles Lettres. He excels as a literary critic, and as a writer of odes and sonnets for special occasions He was the first editor of the Atlantic Monthly, the foremost literary periodical of New England. GODMINSTER? Is it fancy's play?

I know not, but the word Sings in my heart, nor can I say

Whether 't was dreamed or heard ;