Be thou a hero! let thy might
Tramp on eternal snows its way,
And through the ebon walls of night
Hew down a passage unto day.

Press on if Fortune play thee false
To-day, to-morrow she'll be true;
Whom now she sinks she now exalts,
Taking old gifts and granting new.
The wisdom of the present hour

Makes up for follies past and gone,-
To weakness strength succeeds, and power
From frailty springs,-press on! press on!

Press on what though upon the ground
Thy love has been pour'd out like rain?
That happiness is always found

The sweetest, which is born of pain.
Oft 'mid the forest's deepest glooms,
A bird sings from some blighted tree,
And, in the dreariest desert, blooms
A never-dying rose for thee.

Therefore, press on! and reach the goal,
And gain the prize, and wear the crown;
Faint not! for to the steadfast soul

Come wealth and honor and renown.
To thine own self be true, and keep

Thy mind from sloth, thy heart from soil; Press on! and thou shalt surely reap A heavenly harvest for thy toil!

THE SEXTON.

Nigh to a grave that was newly made, Lean'd a sexton old on his earth-worn spade. His work was done, and he paused to wait The funeral train through the open gate:

A relic of bygone days was he,

And his locks were white as the foamy sea,And these words came from his lips so thin:

"I gather them in! I gather them in!

"I gather them in! for, man and boy,
Year after year of grief and joy,
I've builded the houses that lie around
In every nook of this burial-ground.
Mother and daughter, father and son,
Come to my solitude one by one,-

But, come they strangers or come they kin,
I gather them in! I gather them in!

"Many are with me, but still I'm alone!

I am king of the dead, and I make my throne
On a monument-slab of marble cold,
And my sceptre of rule is the spade I hold.

Come they from cottage or come they from hall,—
Mankind are my subjects,-all, all, all!

Let them loiter in pleasure or toilfully spin,

I gather them in! I gather them in!

"I gather them in,-and their final rest,

Is here, down here in the earth's dark breast;"-
And the sexton ceased,-for the funeral train
Wound mutely over that solemn plain :
And I said to my heart,-When time is told,
A mightier voice than that sexton's old

Will sound o'er the last trump's dreadful din,-
"I gather them in! I gather them in!"

A LIFE OF LETTERED EASE.

A life of letter'd ease! what joy to lead
A life of intellectual calm and peace:
Such as a poet in a vale of Greece-
Thine, Arcady-might have enjoy'd, indeed,
Where hour on hour, untouch'd by haste or speed,
Might lapse serenely like a summer stream;
Where not a single thought of gain or greed

Could mar the murmurous music of his dream.
Oh that such life were mine!-to hoard, not spend!-
The golden moments would like ingots seem,
Each affluent day with new-found treasure teem,
And my large wealth have neither loss nor end.
Meet in the markets, merchants, as you please,-
Be mine the scholar's life of letter'd ease.

ROBERT T. CONRAD, 1809-1858.

ROBERT T. CONRAD, the son of John Conrad, who was for many years an extensive bookseller and publisher in Philadelphia, was born in that city on the 10th of June, 1809. He studied law with his uncle, Thomas Kittera, an eminent jurist, and was admitted to practice in 1830. While a student, he wrote his first tragedy, Conrad of Naples, which was quite successful, and is regarded by many as the best of his poems. Shortly after he was admitted to the bar, he connected himself with the press, and shared the editorial duties of some of the leading journals of the city; but, the labor proving too much for his health, he resumed the practice of his profession in 1834. On the 15th of July, 1836, he was appointed by Governor Ritner Recorder of the Recorder's Court; and on the 27th of March, 1838, with the unanimous recommendation of the bar, he was commissioned by the same Governor to be a Judge of the Court of Criminal Sessions for the city and county of Philadelphia,-being a higher and more extended jurisdiction. Upon the union of the several municipalities of Philadelphia into one great "consolidated" city in 1854, he was elected Mayor by a large majority. On

the resignation of Judge Kelley in 1856, he was appointed by Governor Pollock, on the 30th of November of that year, to fill the vacancy in the Court of Common Pleas and Quarter Sessions. But he did not live long to discharge the duties of this responsible post, as he died on Sunday, June 27, 1858.

In 1852, Judge Conrad published Aylmere, or the Bondman of Kent; and other Poems. The tragedy of Aylmere is his principal production, and its merits as an acting play are said to be great. The hero, who assumes the name of Aylmere, is Jack Cade, the celebrated leader of the English peasantry in the insurrection of 1450. The other principal poems of our author are,-The Sons of the Wilderness, a meditative poem on the aborigines of our land; and a series of Sonnets on the Lord's Prayer, marked by great vigor as well as beauty and pathos.

THE PRIDE OF WORTH.

There is a joy in worth,

A high, mysterious, soul-pervading charm;
Which, never daunted, ever bright and warm,
Mocks at the idle, shadowy ills of earth;
Amid the gloom is bright, and tranquil in the storm.
It asks, it needs no aid;

It makes the proud and lofty soul its throne:
There, in its self-created heaven, alone,

No fear to shake, no memory to upbraid,
It sits a lesser God;-life, life is all its own!

The stoic was not wrong:

There is no evil to the virtuous brave;

Or in the battle's rift, or on the wave,

Worshipp'd or scorn'd, alone or 'mid the throng,
He is himself,-a man! not life's nor fortune's slave.

Power and wealth and fame

Are but as weeds upon life's troubled tide:
Give me but these,- -a spirit tempest-tried,

A brow unshrinking, and a soul of flame,

The joy of conscious worth, its courage and its pride!

SONNET.-THY KINGDOM COME!

Thy kingdom come! Speed, angel wings, that time!
Then, known no more the guile of gain, the leer
Of lewdness, frowning power or pallid fear,
The shriek of suffering or the howl of crime,
All will be Thine,-all blest! Thy kingdom come!
Then in Thy arms the sinless earth will rest,
As smiles the infant on its mother's breast.
The dripping bayonet and the kindling drum
Unknown, for not a foe; the thong unknown,—

For not a slave; the cells o'er which Despair
Flaps his black wing and fans the sigh-swollen air,
Deserted! Night will pass and hear no groan;
Glad Day look down, nor see nor guilt nor guile,
And all that Thou hast made reflect Thy smile.

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES.

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, M.D., the poet-physician, is a son of the Rev. Abiel Holmes, D.D., of Cambridge, Massachusetts, author of the "Annals of America." He was born on the 29th of August, 1809, and was graduated at Harvard University in 1829. He then studied medicine, and in 1833 went to Europe. Returning home in 1835, he commenced the practice of medicine in Boston the following year. In 1838, he was elected Professor of Anatomy and Physiology in the Medical School of Dartmouth College. This professorship he resigned on his marriage in 1840, and, in 1847, he was elected to the chair of Anatomy in Harvard University, vacated by the resignation of Dr. John C. Warren, which he still fills. In 1849, he relinquished practice, and fixed his summer residence in Pittsfield, Berkshire County, Massachusetts. In the winter he resides in Boston. Dr. Holmes has written a number of prize medical essays, and has contributed occasionally to medical journals; but he was earlier and better known to the public by his poems, which, by their genuine, easy, and unaffected wit, are unrivalled in our literature. Within the last year, however, Dr. Holmes has displayed more fully his wonderful powers in the papers commenced in the "Atlantic Monthly," in November, 1857, entitled The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table. This series of papers constitutes, in our estimation, one of the most racy, interesting, and brilliant series of magazine-articles ever published either in this country or in England. For wit, pathos, profound philosophical speculation, nice descriptive powers, keen insight into human nature, aptness and force of illustration, united to great wealth of literary, scientific, and artistic knowledge, and all in a style that is a model for the light essay, these papers have given the author a very high rank in American literature.2

MY AUNT.

My aunt! my dear unmarried aunt!
Long years have o'er her flown;
Yet still she strains the aching clasp
That binds her virgin zone:

I know it hurts her,—though she looks
As cheerful as she can;

Her waist is ampler than her life,
For life is but a span.

My aunt, my poor deluded aunt!
Her hair is almost gray;

Why will she train that winter curl
In such a spring-like way?

A beautiful edition of his poems is published by Ticknor & Fields.

2 He has begun a series of similar papers in the same magazine for 1859, entitled The Professor at the Breakfast-Table. The first papers-The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table-have been published in one vol. by Phillips & Sampson.

How can she lay her glasses down,
And say she reads as well,
When, through a double convex lens,
She just makes out to spell?
Her father-grandpapa! forgive
This erring lip its smiles-

Vow'd she should make the finest girl
Within a hundred miles.

He sent her to a stylish school;
'Twas in her thirteenth June;
And with her, as the rules required,
"Two towels and a spoon."

They braced my aunt against a board,

To make her straight and tall;

They laced her up, they starved her down, To make her light and small;

They pinch'd her feet, they singed her hair, They screw'd it up with pins,

Oh, never mortal suffer'd more

In penance for her sins.

So, when my precious aunt was done,
My grandsire brought her back;
(By daylight, lest some rabid youth
Might follow on the track;)

"Ah!"" said my grandsire, as he shook
Some powder in his pan,

"What could this lovely creature do

Against a desperate man!"

Alas! nor chariot, nor barouche,
Nor bandit cavalcade

Tore from the trembling father's arms
His all-accomplish'd maid.
For her how happy had it been!
And Heaven had spared to me
To see one sad, ungather'd rose
On my ancestral tree.

THE HEIGHT OF THE RIDICULOUS.

I wrote some lines once on a time

In wondrous merry mood,

And thought, as usual, men would say
They were exceeding good.

They were so queer, so very queer,
I laugh'd as I would die;

Albeit, in the general way,

A sober man am I.

I call'd my servant, and he came :
How kind it was of him,

To mind a slender man like me,
He of the mighty limb!