He, who feeds the wand'ring raven,
Robes the lily of the field,

His compassion is thy haven,

His omnipotence thy shield.

Dews and rains of night may wet thee; Churlish man may prove unkind;

Providence will ne'er forget thee,

Tempering to thy strength the wind.

Take an alms-'tis freely given,

Which is donor, who can tell?

"Tis perchance the voice of heaven Pleads, lone boy! in thee so well.

Mortals, in the days departed,

Angels, unawares, have fed;

Nor in vain upon the waters
Cast their charitable bread.

Holy Writ proclaims it better

To bestow than to receive.

Homeless Boy! I'm twice thy debtor, For I both accept and give!

BYRON'S HEART.

'Lord Byron's remains, with the exception of his Heart, left in Greece, to be placed in a mausoleum, were brought to England, and interred in the family-vault at Hucknall, about eight miles west of Nottingham.'

'Twas meet that gifted Heart should lie Where long it sadly strove for peace, Beneath a glowing Grecian sky,

Near to the glorious 'Isles of Greece.'

There did it wake the Delphic lyre

To more than Delphi's highest strain.

The sightless Bard, with all his fire,

Must seek to match those notes in vain.

Recall thy glories, fallen land!

Thy Homer's birth, thy Solon's bier :
No nobler boast canst thou command

6

Than Byron sung and slumbers here!'

Degenerate, classic Greece! art thou.
Thy heroes, poets, all are fled!

Say! who could make thy Leuctra now?
Inspire thy living? hymn thy dead?

Yet, 'twas thy latest, purest pride

To weave for him the holiest ties,

Who loved thee more than worlds beside; Whose heart, long thine, is still thy prize!

We grudge thee not thy precious trust,
Nor murmur at the Poet's will;

Long hath that Heart returned to dust;
Its light illumines mankind still.

ODE TO THE PEACE OF EIGHTEEN

HUNDRED AND FIFTY-SIX.

HARK! a hundred bells are pealing

On the genial summer morn,

And the voice of human jubilee
On every breeze is borne.

The city-tower and hamlet-spire
Ring out a merry note.

There is triumph in the Castle;

There is gladness in the Cot.

Ring on! ring on! ye happy bells!

Nor let your music cease;

For ye breathe a blessed word to-day,

The holy word of 'Peace.'

'Tis the word that rang o'er Bethel,
In the midnight watches still,
When Angel-choristers proclaimed
The tidings' of 'goodwill.'

A stormy night hath vanished
From the Tartar's grassy plain,
And o'er Crimean hills a morn

Of beauty breaks again.

The trader now in safety

May plough the inland deep,

And the peasant trim his vineyard

Along the sunny steep.

On the ruins of his home-stead

Another home may rise;

For a scene of quiet sleeps at last

Beneath the quiet skies.

G

No more the heavens are startled

By the cannon's fiery breath; No more the earth is cumbered

With a ghastly load of death.

No more the waves of Alma
Run crimson to the main,

And wail around the bodies

Of the wounded and the slain.

No more upon the Euxine

Drifts on the smoking wreck,

With the mangled forms that lately stood In pride upon her deck.

Amid the rocks of Inkerman,
Where rang the iron hail,

And along the verdant bosom
Of Baidar's peaceful vale,

And down to Balaclava,

That beetles o'er the steep,

Float the softly-plaintive bleatings

Of the gently-feeding sheep.