With dearer homes than those o'erthrown,
For love shall lay each corner-stone.

Rise, stricken city!-from thee throw
The ashen sackcloth of thy woe;
And build, as to Amphion's strain,
To songs of cheer thy walls again!

How shrivelled in thy hot distress
The primal sin of selfishness!
How instant rose, to take thy part,
The angel in the human heart!

Ah! not in vain the flames that tossed

Above thy dreadful holocaust;

The Christ again has preached through thee

The Gospel of Humanity!

Then lift once more thy towers on high,
And fret with spires the western sky,

To tell that God is yet with us,

And love is still miraculous!

John Greenleaf Whittier.

CHICAGO.

BLACKENED and bleeding, helpless, panting, prone,

On the charred fragments of her shattered throne

Lies she who stood but yesterday alone.

Queen of the West! by some enchanter taught
To lift the glory of Aladdin's court,

Then lose the spell that all that wonder wrought.

Like her own prairies by some chance seed sown,
Like her own prairies in one brief day grown,
Like her own prairies in one fierce night mown.

She lifts her voice, and in her pleading call
We hear the cry of Macedon to Paul,
The cry for help that makes her kin to all.

But haply with wan fingers may she feel
The silver cup hid in the proffered meal,
The gifts her kinship and our loves reveal.

Bret Harte.

CHICAGO.

CHICAGO, OCTOBER 9, 1871.

NAUNT in the midst of the prairie,
She who was once so fair;

Charred and rent are her garments,
Heavy and dark like cerements;
Silent, but round her the air
Plaintively wails, "Miserere!"

Proud like a beautiful maiden,

Art-like from forehead to feet,
Was she till pressed like a leman
Close to the breast of the demon,

Lusting for one so sweet,

So were her shoulders laden.

Friends she had, rich in her treasures :
Shall the old taunt be true, —

Fallen, they turn their cold faces,
Seeking new wealth-gilded places,
Saying we never knew

Aught of her smiles or her pleasures?

Silent she stands on the prairie,

Wrapped in her fire-scathed sheet:
Around her, thank God! is the Nation,
Weeping for her desolation,

Pouring its gold at her feet,

Answering her "Miserere!"

John Boyle O'Reilly.

CITY

Cincinnati, Ohio.

TO CINCINNATI.

YITY of gardens, verdant parks, sweet bowers; Blooming upon thy bosom, bright and fair, Wet with the dews of spring, and summer's showers, And fanned by every breath of wandering air; Rustling the foliage of thy green groves, where The bluebird's matin wakes the smiling morn, And sparkling humming-birds of plumage rare, With tuneful pinions on the zephyrs borne, Disport the flowers among, and glitter and adorn:

Fair is thy seat, in soft recumbent rest

Beneath the grove-clad hills; whence morning wings The gentle breezes of the fragrant west,

That kiss the surface of a thousand springs :
Nature, her many-colored mantle flings
Around thee, and adorns thee as a bride;
While polished Art his gorgeous tribute brings,
And dome and spire ascending far and wide,
Their pointed shadows dip in thy Ohio's tide.

So fair in infancy, -oh, what shall be
Thy blooming prime, expanding like the rose
In fragrant beauty; when a century

Hath passed upon thy birth, and time bestows The largess of a world, that freely throws Her various tribute from remotest shores, To enrich the Western Rome: here shall repose Science and art; and from time's subtile ores Nature's unfolded page-knowledge enrich her stores.

Talent and Genius to thy feet shall bring Their brilliant offerings of immortal birth; Display the secrets of Pieria's spring, Castalia's fount of melody and mirth: Beauty, and grace, and chivalry, and worth, Wait on the Queen of Arts, in her own bowers, Perfumed with all the fragrance of the earth, From blooming shrubbery, and radiant flowers; And hope with rapture wed life's calm and peaceful hours.

Oft as the spring wakes on the verdant year,
And nature glows in fervid beauty dressed,
The loves and graces shall commingle here,
To charm the queenly City of the West;

Her stately youth, with noble warmth impressed,
Her graceful daughters, smiling as the May,-
Apollos these, and Hebes those confessed,
Bloom in her warm and fertilizing ray,

While round their happy sires the cherub infants play.

So sings the Muse, as she, with fancy's eye,
Scans, from imagination's lofty height,

Thy radiant beaming day, where it doth lie
In the deep future; glowing on the night
From whose dark womb empires unveiled to light:
Mantled and diademed, and sceptred there,
Thou waitest but the advent of thy flight,
When, like a royal Queen, stately and fair,
The City of the West ascends the regal chair.
Edward A. M'Laughlin.

L

THE OLD MOUND.

ONELY and sad it stands :

The trace of ruthless hands

Is on its sides and summit, and around

The dwellings of the white man pile the ground; And curling in the air,

The smoke of thrice a thousand hearths is there:

Without, all speaks of life, within,

Deaf to the city's echoing din,

Sleep well the tenants of that silent mound,

Their names forgot, their memories unrenowned.

Upon its top I tread,

And see around me spread