86. EQUALITY.

WHENCE Cometh the doctrine, that all should be equal and free?

It is the lie that crowded hell, when Seraphs flung away subjection.

No man is his neighbor's equal, for no two minds are similar, And accidents, alike with qualities, have every shade but same

ness:

The lightest atom of difference shall destroy the nice balance of equality,

And all things, from without and from within, make one man to differ from another.

We are equal and free! was the watchword that spirited the legions of Satan,

We are equal and free! is the double lie that entrappeth to him conscripts from earth:

The messengers of that dark despot will pander to thy license and thy pride,

And draw thee from the crowd where thou art safe, to seize thee in the solitary desert.

Woe unto him whose heart the syren song of Liberty hath charmed;

Woe unto him whose mind is bewitched by her treacherous beauty;

In mad zeal flingeth he away the fetters of duty and restraint, And yieldeth up the holocaust of self to that fair idol of the damned.

No man hath freedom in aught save in that from which the wicked would be hindered,

He is free towards God and good; but to all else a bondman.

M. F. TUPPER.

87. BOOKS.

O BOOKS, уe monuments of mind, concrete wisdom of the wisest ; Sweet solaces of daily life; proofs and results of immortality; Trees yielding all fruits, whose leaves are for the healing of the

nations;

Groves of knowledge, where all may eat, nor fear a flaming sword;

Gentle comrades, kind advisers; friends, comforts, treasures: Helps, governments, diversities of tongues; who can weigh your worth ?

To walk no longer with the just; to be driven from the porch of science;

To bid a long adieu to those intimate ones, poets, philosophers, and teachers;

To see no record of the sympathies which bind thee in communion with the good;

To be thrust from the feet of Him, who spake as never man spake;

To have no avenue to heaven but the dim aisle of superstition; To live as an Esquimaux, in lethargy; to die as the Mohawk, in ignorance:

Oh, what were life, but a blank? what were death but a terror? What were man, but a burden to himself? what were mind, but misery?

Yea, let another Omar burn the full library of knowledge, And the broad world may perish in the flames, offered on the ashes of its wisdom!

M. F. TUPPER.

88. BEAUTY.

THERE is a beauty for the body; the superficial polish of a statue,

The symmetry of form and feature, delicately carved and

painted.

There is a beauty of the reason: grandly independent of externals,

It looketh from the windows of the house, shining in the man

triumphant.

I have seen the broad blank face of some misshapen dwarf
Lit on a sudden as with glory-the brilliant light of mind:
Who then imagined him deformed? Intelligence is blazing on

his forehead—

There is empire in his eye, and sweetness on his lip, and his brown cheek glittereth with beauty.

And I have known some Nireus of the camp a varnished paragon of chamberers

Fine, elegant, and shapely, molded as the master-piece of Phidias :

1

Such an one, with intellects abased, have I noted crouching to the dwarf,

Whilst his lovers scorn the fool whose beauty hath departed! And there is a beauty for the spirit; mind in its perfect flowering,

Fragrant, expanded into soul, full of love and blessed.

Go to some squalid couch-some famishing deathbed of the poor:

He is shrunken, cadaverous, diseased;-there is here no beauty of the body.

Never hath he fed on knowledge, nor drank at the streams of

science;

He is of the common herd—illiterate.

beauty of the reason.

There is here no

But, lo! his filming eye is bright with love from heaven;
In every look it beameth praise, as worshipping with seraphs.
What honeycomb is hived upon his lips, eloquent of gratitude
and prayer!

What triumph shrined serene upon that clammy brow!
What glory flickering transparent under those thin cheeks!
What beauty in his face! Is it not the face of an angel?
M. F. TUPPER.

89. CRUELTY.

WILL none befriend that poor dumb brute-
Will no man rescue him?

With weaker effort, gasping, mute,

He strains in every limb.

Spare him, O spare! He feels-he feels!
Big tears roll from his eyes:

Another crushing blow!-he reels,

Staggers, and falls, and dies.

Poor jaded horse, the blood runs cold
Thy guiltless wrongs to see;
To heaven, O starved one, lame and old,
Thy dim eye pleads for thee!

Thou too, O dog, whose faithful zeal
Fawns on some ruffian grim;

He stripes thy skin with many a weal--
And yet thou lovest him!

Shame! that of all the living chain
That links creation's plan,
There is but one delights in pain-
The savage monarch, man!

O cruelty! who could rehearse
Thy million dismal deeds;
Or track the workings of the curse
By which all nature bleeds?

The merciless is doubly curst,
As mercy is "twice blest :"
Vengeance, though slow, shall come,—but first
The vengeance of the breast.

Why add another woe to life?
Man, are there not enough?
Why lay thy weapon to the strife?
Why make the road more rough?

M. F. TUPPER

90. THE CHAMOIS HUNTER.

NIGHT gloomed apace, and dark on high
The thousand banners of the sky
Their awful width unfurled,
Veiling Mont Blanc's majestic brow,
That seemed, among its cloud-wrapt snow,
The ghost of some dead world;

When Pierre the hunter cheerly went
To scale the Catton's battlement

Before the peep of day:

He took his rifle, pole, and rope-
His heart and eyes alight with hope,
He hasted on his way.

He crossed the vale-he hurried on-
He forded the cold Arveron-

The first rough terrace gained;
Threaded the fir wood's gloomy belt,
And trod the snows that never melt,
And to the summit strained.

And now he nears the chasmed ice;
He stoops to leap, and in a trice,

His foot hath slipped!-O heaven!
He hath leapt in, and down he falls
Between those blue tremendous walls,
Standing asunder riven !

But quick his clutching nervous grasp
Contrives a jutting crag to clasp,
And thus he hangs in air ;-

O moment of exulting bliss!
Yet hope so nearly hopeless, is
Twin-brother to despair.

He looked beneath,-a horrible doom!
Some thousand yards of deepening gloom
Where he must drop to die!
He looked above, and many a rood
Upright the frozen ramparts stood,
Around a speck of sky.

Fifteen long dreadful hours he hung,
And often by strong breezes swung,
His fainting body twists;
Scarce can he cling one moment more—
His half-dead hands are ice, and sore
His burning, bursting wrists.

His head grows dizzy-he must drop:
He half resolves ;-but stop, O stop!
Hold on to the last spasm!
Never in life give up your hope:
Behold! behold! a friendly rope

Is dropping down the chasm!

They call thee, Pierre! See, see them here; Thy gathered neighbors far and near:

Be cool, man-hold on fast!

And so from out that terrible place,
With death's pale paint upon his face,
They drew him up at last.

And he came home an altered man,
For many harrowing terrors ran

Through his poor heart that day: