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Deep within my inmost breast,
In the secret place of mind,
Like an awful presence shrined,
Doth the dread idea rest!

Hushed and holy dwells it there -
Prompter of the silent prayer,
Lifting up my spirit's eye
And its faint, but earnest cry,
From its dark and cold abode,
Unto Thee, my Guide and God!

THE FEMALE MARTYR.

[MARY G, aged 18, a “SISTER OF CHARITY," died in one of our Atlantic cities, during the prevalence of the Indian Cholera, while in voluntary attendance upon the sick.]

"BRING out your dead!" the midnight street

Heard and gave back the hoarse, low call ;
Harsh fell the tread of hasty feet

Glanced through the dark the coarse white sheet —
Her coffin and her pall.

"What only one!" The brutal hackman said,

As, with an oath, he spurned away the dead.

How sunk the inmost hearts of all,

As rolled that dead-cart slowly by,

With creaking wheel and harsh hoof-fall!

The dying turned him to the wall,

To hear it and to die!

Onward it rolled; while oft its driver stayed,
And hoarsely clamored, "Ho!-bring out your dead."

It paused beside the burial-place;

"Toss in your load!" and it was done.

With quick hand and averted face,
Hastily to the grave's embrace

They cast them, one by one

Stranger and friend—the evil and the just,
Together trodden in the church-yard dust!

And thou, young martyr! - thou wast there

No white-robed sisters round thee trod
Nor holy hymn, nor funeral prayer
Rose through the damp and noisome air,
Giving thee to thy God;

Nor flower, nor cross, nor hallowed taper gave Grace to the dead, and beauty to the grave!

Yet, gentle sufferer!

there shall be,

In every heart of kindly feeling,

A rite as holy paid to thee

As if beneath the convent-tree

Thy sisterhood were kneeling,

At vesper hours, like sorrowing angels, keeping Their tearful watch around thy place of sleeping.

For thou wast one in whom the light

Of Heaven's own love was kindled well,

Enduring with a martyr's might,
Through weary day and wakeful night,

Far more than words may tell :
Gentle, and meek, and lowly, and unknown-
Thy mercies measured by thy God alone!

Where manly hearts were failing, — where

The throngful street grew foul with death, O high souled martyr!-thou wast there, Inhaling from the loathsome air,

Poison with every breath.

Yet shrinking not from offices of dread

For the wrung dying, and the unconscious dead.

And, where the sickly taper shed

Its light through vapors, damp, confined,

Hushed as a seraph's fell thy tread

A new Electra by the bed

Of suffering human-kind!

Pointing the spirit, in its dark dismay,

To that pure hope which fadeth not away.

Innocent teacher of the high

And holy mysteries of Heaven! How turned to thee each glazing eye,

In mute and awful sympathy,

As thy low prayers were given;

And the o'er-hovering Spoiler wore, the while, a deliverer's smile!

An angel's features

A blessed task!—and worthy one

Who, turning from the world, as thou,
Before life's pathway had begun
To leave its spring-time flower and sun,
Had sealed her early vow;

Giving to God her beauty and her youth,
Her pure affections and her guileless truth.

Earth may not claim thee.

Nothing here

Could be for thee a meet reward;
Thine is a treasure far more dear-

Eye hath not seen it, nor the ear
Of living mortal heard,-

The joys prepared the promised bliss aboveThe holy presence of Eternal Love!

Sleep on in peace. The earth has not

A nobler name than thine shall be. The deeds by martial manhood wrought, The lofty energies of thought,

The fire of poesy

These have but frail and fading honors;
Shall Time unto Eternity consign.

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Yea, and when thrones shall crumble down,

And human pride and grandeur fall,

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The pure devotion of thy generous heart
Shall live in Heaven, of which it was a part!

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On the naked woods and the blasted fields and the brown hill's

withered brow.

He has smitten the leaves of the grey old trees where their

pleasant green came forth,

And the winds, which follow wherever he goes, have shaken them down to earth.

He comes - he comes the Frost Spirit comes! from the

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frozen Labrador

From the icy bridge of the Northern seas, which the white bear

wanders o'er

Where the fisherman's sail is stiff with ice, and the luckless forms below

In the sunless cold of the lingering night into marble statues grow!

He comes he comes

the Frost Spirit comes !—on the rushing Northern blast,

And the dark Norwegian pines have bowed as his fearful breath

went past.

With an unscorched wing he has hurried on, where the fires of Hecla glow

On the darkly beautiful sky above and the ancient ice below.

He comes - he comes

lake shall feel

the Frost Spirit comes!—and the quiet

The torpid touch of his glazing breath, and ring to the skater's

heel;

And the streams which danced on the broken rocks, or sang to the leaning grass,

Shall bow again to their winter chain, and in mournful silence

pass.

He comes - he comes the Frost Spirit comes !-let us meet

him as we may,

And turn with the light of the parlor-fire his evil power away; And gather closer the circle round, when that firelight dances

high,

And laugh at the shriek of the baffled Fiend as his sounding wing goes by!

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