11 Oh, wedded lòve! how beaùtiful,

How pùre a thing thou art:

Whose influence even in dèath can rule,
And triumph o'er the heart;

Can cheer life's roughest walk, and shed
A holy light around the dead.

12 There was a solemn, sacred feeling
Kindled in every breast;

And softly from the cabin stealing,
They left them to their rèst—
The fair, the yoúng, the constant pair,
They left them with a blessing there;

13 And to their boat returning, each

With thoughtful brows and haste,
And o'ercharged hearts, too full for speech,
Left 'midst the frozen waste,

That Charnel Ship, which years before,
Had sail'd from distant Albion's shore.

14 They left her in the icebergs, where
Few venture to intrude;

A monument of death and fear,
'Mid Ocean's solitude!

And, grateful for their own release,
Thanked God, and sought their homes in peace

EXERCISE 49.

Life.-A Spanish Poem.-EDINburgh Review.

1 Oh! while we eye the rolling tide,
Down which our flowing minutes glide
Away so fast;

Let us the present hour employ,
And deem each future dream a joy
Already past.

2 Let no vain hope deceive the mind-
No happier let us hope to find,
To-morrow than to-day;

Our golden dreams of yore were bright,.
Like them the present shall delight—
Like them decay.

3 Our lives like hasting streams must be, That into one ingulfing sea,

Are doomed to fall

The sea of death, whose waves roll on,
O'er king and kingdom, crown and throne,
And swallow all.

4 Alike the river's lordly tide,
Alike the humble riv'let's glide
To that sad waye;

Death levels poverty and pride,
And rich and poor sleep side by side

Within the

grave.

5 Our birth is but a starting place;
Life is the running of the race:
And death the goal;

There all those glittering toys are bought,
That path alone, of all unsought,
Is found of all.

6 Say then how poor and little worth
Are all those glittering toys of earth,
That lure us here?

Dreams of a sleep that death must break,
Alas! before it bids us wake,
Ye disappear!

EXERCISE 50.

Death and the Drunkard.-ANONYMOUS.

1 His form was fair, his cheek was health;
His word a bond, his purse was wealth;
With wheat his field was covered o'er,
Plenty sat smiling at his door.

His wife the fount of ceaseless joy;

How laughed his daughter, played his boy;
His library, though large, was read,

Till half its contents decked his head.
At morn 'twas health, wealth, pure delight,
'Twas health, wealth, peace and bliss at night;
I wished not to disturb his bliss-

'Tis gone! but all the fault was his.

2 The social glass I saw him seize,
The more with festive wit to please,
Daily increase his love of cheer-
Ah, little thought he I was near!
Gradual indulgence on him stole,
Frequent became the midnight bowl.
I in that bowl the headache placed,
Which, with the juice, his lips embraced.
Shame next I mingled with the draught;
Indignantly he drank and laughed.

3 In the bowl's bottom Bankruptcy
I placed he drank with tears and glee.
Remorse did I into it pour;

He only sought the bowl the more.
I mingled next joint torturing pain;
Little the less did he refrain.

The dropsy in the cup I mixed;
Still to his mouth the cup was fixed.
My emissaries thus in vain

I sent the mad wretch to restrain.

4 On the bowl's bottom then myself..
I threw; the most abhorrent elf
Of all that mortals hate or dread;
And thus in horrid whispers said-
"Successless ministers I've sent,
Thy hastening ruin to prevent:
Their lessons nought-then here am I;
Think not my threatenings to defy.
Swallow this, this thy last ''twill be,
For with it thou must swallow me."

5 Haggard his eyes, upright his hair,
Remorse his lips, his cheeks despair;
With shaking hand the bowl he clasp'd,
My meetless limbs his carcass grasp'd
And bore it to the churchyard-where
Thousands, ere I would call, repair.

6 Death speaks ah, reader, dost thou hear? Hast thou no lurking cause to fear? Has not o'er thee the sparkling bowl

The Plague in London.-ROTHELAN.

In its malignancy, it engrossed the ill of all other maladies, and made doctors despicable. Of a potency equal to death, it possessed itself of all his armouries, and was itself the death of every other mortal distemper. The 5 touch, yea, the very sight of the infected, was deadly; and its signs were so sudden, that families seated in happiness at their meals have seen the plague spot begin to redden, and have wildly scattered themselves forever. The cement of society was dissolved by it. Mothers, 10 when they saw the sign of the infection on the babes at their bosom, cast them from them with abhorrence. Wild places were sought for shelter;- -some went intc ships and anchored themselves afar off on the waters. But the angel that was pouring the vial had a foot on the 15 sea, as well as on the dry land. No place was so wild, that the plague did not visit-none so secret that the quick-sighted pestilence did not discover, none could fly that it did not overtake.

It was as if Heaven had repented the making of man20 kind, and was shovelling them all into the sepulchre. Justice was forgotten, and her courts deserted. The terrified jailers fled from the felons that were in fettersthe innocent and the guilty leagued themselves together, and kept within their prisons for safety;-the grass grew 25 in the market-places;-the cattle went moaning up and down the fields, wondering what had become of their keepers; the rooks and the ravens came into the towns, and built their nests in the mute belfries;-silence was universal, save when some infected wretch was seen 30 clamouring at a window.

For a time all commerce was in coffins and shrouds;

but even that ended. Shrift there was none; churches and chapels were open, but neither priests nor penitent entered; all went to the charnel-house. The sex35 ton and the physician were cast into the same deep and wide grave: the testator and his heirs and executors were hurled from the same cart into the same hole together. Fire became extinguished, as if its element too had expired: the seams of the sailorless ships yawn40 ed to the sun. Though doors were open, and coffers unwatched, there was no theft; all offences ceased, and no calamity but the universal wo of the pestilence was heard among men. The wells overflowed, and the conduits ran to waste; the dogs banded themselves together, 45 having lost their masters, and ran howling over all the land; horses perished of famine in their stalls; old friends but looked at one another when they met, keeping themselves far aloof; creditors claimed no debts, and courtiers performed their promises; little children went wander50 ing up and down, and numbers were seen dead in all corners. Nor was it only in England that the plague so raged: it travelled over a third part of the whole earth, like the shadow of an eclipse, as if some dreadful thing had been interposed between the world and the sun55 source of life.

* * * At that epoch, for a short time, there was a silence, and every person in the street, for a moment stood still; London was as dumb as a churchyard. Again the sound of a bell was heard; for it was that sound, so 60 long unheard, which arrested the fugitive multitude, and caused their silence. At the third toll a universal shout arose, as when the herald proclaims the tidings of a great battle won, and then there was a second silence.

The people fell on their knees, and with anthems of 65 thankfulness rejoiced in the dismal sound of that tolling death-bell; for it was a signal of the plague being so abated that men might again mourn for their friends, and hallow. their remains with the solemnities of burial.