THE CHERUBIC PILGRIM. 13 Wild timid hares were drawn from woods to share his home-caresses, Yea, once, Immanuel's orphaned cry his universe hath shaken Uplooking to his human eyes with sylvan It went up single, echoless, "My God, I am How far from here to Heaven? How far from here to heaven? Not very far, my friend, What tears have washed them from the soul, A single hearty step will all thy journey end. THE DYING POET'S HOPE. 15 AROUSE THEE, SOUL! The North British Review of November, 1851, said that ROBERT NICOLL was the pupil and successor of Burns, and, though a lesser poet, was a greater man, for he kept his purity of heart and wholeness of head to the last. After his death, Ebenezer Elliott, the "Corn-Law Rhymer," said that Burns at the same age had done" nothing like him." The same writer said also, "Unstained and pure, at the age of twenty three, died Scotland's second Burns; happy in this, that without having been a 'blasphemer, a persecutor, and injurious,' he chose, like Paul, the right path; and when the terrible angel said to his youth, Where is the wise? where is the scribe? where is the disputer? hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?' he could and did answer, By the grace of God I am what I am,' Robert Nicoll is another victim added to the hundreds of thousands who are not dead, but gone before,' to bear true witness against the merciless." Nicoll was born January 7, 1814, of God-fearing parents, in Auchtergaven, Perthshire. He attended the parish school at the age of six, and paid the fee for his winter tuition by "herding" in summer. He was a voracious reader, and an early admirer of the Waverley Novels. At the age of thirteen he began to put his thoughts into verse, and he had always a definite purpose, namely, to "raise the many." In 1835 he was enabled to open a circulating library in Dundee, but was not successful in the enterprise He wrote much for the press, and in 1836 became editor of the Leeds Times, at a salary of one hundred pounds a year. The circulation of the journal rapidly increased. He, however, tasked his strength too severely, and died from the effects of his public labors in 1837. He was a friend of William and Mary Howitt, and of other persons capable of appreciating genius. It is well known that the messenger who brought the intelligence that the laureate crown had been decreed to Tasso found him dying in a convent. COLD on Torquato's silence fell The shadow of the tomb, When sounds of triumph reached his cell, "Haste where the peerless capitol Two thousand years hath shone ; Thee to their ancient throne; How long, great God, how long must I Immured in this dark prison lie: My soul must watch to have intelligence Here at the grates and avenues of sense, Where but faint gleams of thee salute my sight, Like doubtful moonshine in a cloudy night? When shall I leave this magic sphere, And be all mind, all eye, all ear? How cold this clime! And yet my sense Perceives even here thy influence. Even here thy strong magnetic charms I feel, And pant and tremble like the amorous steel. To lower good, and beauties less divine, Sometimes my erroneous needle does decline, But yet, so strong the sympathy, It turns, and points again to thee. I long to see this excellence Which at such distance strikes my sense. My impatient soul struggles to disengage Her wings from the confinement of her cage. THE EVERLASTING MEMORIAL UP and away like the dew of the morning, That soars from the earth to its home in the sun, So let me steal away, gently and lovingly, My name and my place and my tomb all forgotten, The brief race of time well and patiently run, So let me pass away, peacefully, silently, Only remembered by what I have done. Gladly away from this toil would I hasten, Up to the crown that for me has been won, Unthought of by man in rewards or in praises, Only remembered by what I have done. Up and away, like the odors of sunset, That sweeten the twilight as evening comes on; So be my life, - a thing felt but not noticed, And I but remembered by what I have done. Yes, like the fragrance that wanders in freshness When the flowers that it came from are closed up and gone, So would I be to this world's weary dwellers Only remembered by what I have done. I need not be missed, if my life has been bearing (As its summer and autumn move silently on) The bloom, and the fruit, and the seed of its season; I shall still be remembered by what I have done. Needs there the praise of love-written record, The name, and the epitaph graved on the stone? The things we have lived for, - let them be our story; We ourselves but remembered by what we have done. I need not be missed if another succeed me, To reap down the fields which in spring I have sown; He who ploughed and sowed is not missed by the reaper, He is only remembered by what he has done. Not myself, but the truth that in life I have | Divinely human, raising worship so MARIAN EVANS CROSS, the well-known author, "George Eliot," was born in Warwickshire, England, about 1820. She was in early life adopted by a wealthy clergyman. Her education was carefully attended to, and she was a pupil of Herbert Spencer. She is well informed in literature, languages, music, art, metaphysics, and in other subjects that have sometimes not been considered studies of women. Her writings are among the most widely read of the century. She married, in 1880, John Walter Cross, of London. OH, may I join the choir invisible In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like To make undying music in the world, Breathing a beauteous order, that controls With growing sway the growing life of man. So we inherit that sweet purity For which we struggled, failed, and agonized With widening retrospect that bred despair. Rebellious flesh that would not be subdued, A vicious parent shaming still its child, Poor anxious penitence, is quick dissolved: Its discords, quenched by meeting harmonies, Die in the large and charitable air. And all our rarer, better, truer self, That sobbed religiously in yearning song, That watched to ease the burden of the world, Laboriously tracing what must be, And what may yet be better, saw within Shall fold its eyelids, and the human sky Be gathered like a scroll within the tomb, Unread forever. This is life to come, Which martyred men have made more glorious For us, who strive to follow. May I reach That purest heaven, be to other souls The cup of strength in some great agony, Enkindle generous ardor, feed pure love, Beget the smiles that have no cruelty, Be the sweet presence of a good diffused, And in diffusion ever more intense ! So shall I join the choir invisible, Whose music is the gladness of the world. MARIAN EVANS CROSS. ADEQUACY. Now by the verdure on thy thousand hills, As if ourselves were better certainly I ask thee not my joys to multiply, - ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING. OVER THE RIVER. NANCY AMELIA WOODBURY PRIEST WAKEFIELD, daughter of Francis D. Priest and Hannah Woodbury, was born at Royalston, Vt., Dec. 7, 1836. The family removed to Winchendon, Mass., which was thereafter considered the family home, though there were several removals to and from Hinsdale, N. H. At about the age of nineteen, when she was an operative in a factory at Hinsdale, Miss Priest wrote the following well-known lines. At the age of twenty-two she returned to Winchendon, and seven years later, in 1865, married Lieutenant A. C. Wakefield, an officer in a Vermont regiment during the war. She died September 20, 1870. A worthier image for the sanctuary, The gleam of their snowy robes I see, |