Which o'er the weary, working world With what still hours of calm delight I cannot choose but think thou wert The charms that dwell in songs of thine My inmost spirit moved; And yet I feel as thou hadst been Not half enough beloved. They say that thou wert faint and worn What music must have filled the soul MISS L. E. LANDON. LESSON XXI. THE TWO VOICES. Two solemn voices, in a funeral strain, "Thou art gone hence!" one sang, 66 our light is flown, Our beautiful, that seemed too much our own Ever to die! "Thou art gone hence! our joyous hills among, Never again to pour thy soul in song, When spring-flowers rise; Never the friend's familiar step to meet, Of thy glad eyes." “Thou art gone home, gone home!” then high and clear, Warbled that other voice; "thou hast no tear Again to shed; Never to fold the robe o'er secret pain, Never, weighed down by Memory's clouds, again "Thou art gone home! oh! early crowned and blest' With aught below? Thou must have seen rich dream by dream decay, Yet sighed again that breeze-like voice of grief, Thou tak'st our summer hence; the flower, the tone, Depart with thee! "Fair form, young spirit, morning vision fled ! Yes! to the dwelling where no footsteps fall, “ Home, home!" once more the exulting voice arose; Never to say farewell, to weep in vain, "By the bright waters now thy lot is cast; Now the long yearnings of thy soul are stilled, MRS. HEMANS. LESSON XXII. THE ANGEL'S GREETING. COME to the land of peace! Come where the tempest hath no longer sway, The shadow passes from the soul away, The sounds of weeping cease. Fear hath no dwelling there, Come to the mingling of repose and love, Come to the bright, and blest, And crowned forever! 'mid that shining band, Thou hast been long alone: Come to thy mother! on the Sabbath shore, In silence wert thou left? Come to thy sisters! joyously again All the home-voices, blent in one sweet strain, Over thine orphan head The storm has swept, as o'er a willow's bough: Thy tears have all been shed. In thy divine abode, Change finds no pathway, memory no dark trace, MRS. HEMANS. LESSON XXIII. EVENING PRAYER AT A GIRL'S SCHOOL. HUSH! 'tis a holy hour; the quiet room Seems like a temple, while yon soft lamp sheds A faint and starry radiance, through the gloom And the sweet stillness, down on bright young heads, With all their clustering locks, untouched by care, And bowed, as flowers are bowed with night, in prayer. Gaze on! 'tis lovely! childhood's lip and cheek Mantling beneath its earnest brow of thought; Oh! joyous creatures, that will sink to rest, Though fresh within your breasts the untroubled springs And o'er your sleep, bright shadows, from the wings And patient smiles to wear through suffering's hour, Watching the stars out by the bed of pain, And a true heart of hope, though hope be vain; With its low murmuring sounds and silvery light, MRS. HEMANS. LESSON XXIV. FASHIONABLE FOLLIES. THERE are in the United States one hundred thousand young ladies, as Sir Ralph Abercrombie said of those of Scotland, "the prettiest lassies in a' the world," who know neither to toil nor spin, who are yet clothed like the lilies of the valley; who thrum the piano, and, a few of the more dainty, the harp; who walk, as the Bible says, softly; who have read romances, and some of them seen the interior of theaters; who have been admired at the examination of their high school; who have wrought algebraic solutions on the blackboard; who are, in short, the very roses of the garden, the attar of life; who yet, can never expect to be married, or, if married, to live without shall I speak, or forbear?-putting their own lily hands to domestic drudgery. We go into the interior villages of our recent wooden country. The fair one sits down to clink the wires of the piano. We see the fingers displayed on the keys, which, we are sure, never prepared a dinner, nor made a garment for her robust brothers. We traverse the streets of our own city, and the wires of the piano are thrummed in our ears from every considerable house. In cities and villages, from one extremity of the Union to the other, wherever there is a good house, and the doors and windows betoken the presence of the mild months, the ringing of the piano wires is almost as universal a sound, as the domestic hum of life within. We need not enter in person. Imagination sees the fair one, erect on her music stool, laced, and pinioned, and reduced to a questionable class of entomology, dinging at the wires, as though she could, in some way, hammer out of them music, amusement, and a husband. Look at her taper and creamcolored fingers. Is she a utilitarian? Ask the fair one, when she has beaten all the music out of the keys, "Pretty fair one, canst talk to thy old and sick father, so as to beguile him out of the headache and rheumatism? Canst write a good and straight forward letter of business? Thou art a chemist, I remember, at the examination; canst compound, prepare, and afterward boil, or bake, a good pudding? Canst make one of the hundred subordinate ornaments of thy fair person? In short, tell us thy use in existence, except to be contemplated, as a pretty picture? And how long will any one be amused with the view of a picture, after having surveyed it a dozen times, unless it have a mind, a heart, and, we may emphatically add, the perennial value of utility?" It is a sad and lamentable truth, after all the incessant din we have heard of the march of mind, and the interminable theories, inculcations, and eulogies of education, that the present is an age of unbounded desire of display and notoriety, of exhaustless and unquenchably burning ambition; and not an age of calm, contented, ripe, and useful knowledge, for the sacred privacy of the parlor. Display, notoriety, surface, and splendor, these are the first aims of the mothers; and can we expect that the daughters will drink in a better spirit? To play, sing, dress, glide down the dance, and get a husband, is the lesson; not to be qualified to render his home quiet, wellordered, and happy. |