Work, work, work! From weary chime to chime; Work, work, work,

As prisoners work for crime:

Band and gusset and seam,

Seam and gusset and band,

When the weather is warm and bright,
While underneath the eaves

The brooding swallows cling,
As if to show me their sunny backs,
And twit me with the spring.

Oh! but to breathe the breath

Of the cowslip and primrose sweet.
With the sky above my head,

And the grass beneath my feet;
For only one short hour

To feel as I used to feel,

Before I knew the woes of want
And the walk that costs a meal!

Oh, but for one short hour,

A respite, however brief!
No blessed leisure for Love or Hope,
But only time for grief;

A little weeping would ease my heart,
But in their briny bed

My tears must stop, for every drop
Hinders needle and thread!"

With fingers weary and worn,

With eyelids heavy and red,
A woman sat in unwomanly rags,
Plying her needle and thread.

Stitch! stitch! stitch!

Till the heart is sick, and the brain benumbed, In poverty, hunger, and dirt,

As well as the weary hand.

Work, work, work,

In the dull December light,

And work, work, work,

And still with a voice of dolorous pitchWould that its tone could reach the Rich:She sang this "Song of the Shirt!"

THOMAS HOOD.

LIFE.
JAREWELL Life! my senses swim,
And the world is growing dim;
Thronging shadows cloud the light
Like the advent of the night;
Colder, colder, colder still,
Upward steals a vapor chill;
Strong the earthy odor grows-
I smell the mould above the rose!
Welcome Life! the Spirit strives!
Strength returns and hope revives;
Cloudy fears and shapes forlorn
Fly like shadows at the morn;
O'er the earth there comes a bloom,
Sunny light for sullen gloom,
Warm perfume for vapor cold—
I smell the rose above the mould!
THOMAS HOOD.

PARTING.

ASS on! and leave me standing here alone. My soul predicts the future holds for thee

Wealth and the fame of men; it hath for me Life's humbler duties. Dear, thy every tone Hath made my pathway brighter. No weak

moan

Shall pass my lips because my eyes may see Thine nevermore on earth; altho' the tree Hang leafless o'er my head that once weighed down

With its abundant harvest. Many a ray

From out the golden past shines on the rain; But for the storm and tears of life, the day

SECRET SORROWS.
(From "Felix Holt.")

HERE is seldom any wrong-doing which does not carry along with it some downfall of blindly climbing hopes, some hard entail of suffering, some quickly satiated desire that survives, with the life-in-death of old paralytic vice, to see itself cursed by its woeful progeny; some tragic mark of kinship in the one brief life to the far-stretching life that went before, and to the life that is to come after, such as has raised the pity and terror of men ever since they began to discern between will and destiny. But these things are often unknown to the world; for there is much pain that is quite noiseless; and vibrations that make human agonies are often a mere whisper in the roar of hurrying existence. There are glances of hatred that stab and raise no cry of murder; robberies that leave man or woman forever beggared of peace and joy, yet kept secret by the sufferer; committed to no sound except that of low moans in the night, seen in no writing except that made on the face by the slow months of suppressed anguish and early morning tears. Many an inherited sorrow that has marred a life has been breathed into no human ear.

MARIAN EVANS CROSS.

(George Eliot.")

And slept there since. ground

His old right hand lay nerveless, listless, dead, Unsceptred; and his realmless eyes were closed;

While his bowed head seemed listening to the earth,

Upon the sodden Thy thunder, conscious of the new command,
Rumbles reluctant o'er our fallen house,
And thy sharp lightning in unpracticed hands
Scorches and burns our once serene domain.
O aching time! O moments big as years!
All, as ye pass, swell out the monstrous truth,
And press it so upon our weary griefs
That unbelief has not a space to breathe.
Saturn, sleep on! Oh, thoughtless, why did I
Thus violate thy slumbrous solitude?
Why should I ope my melancholy eyes?
Saturn, sleep on! while at thy feet I weep."
As when, upon a tranced summer night,
Those green-robed senators of mighty woods,
Tall oaks, branched-charmed by the earnest
stars,

His ancient mother, for some comfort yet.
It seemed no force could wake him from his
place;

But there came one, who with a kindred
hand

Touched his wide shoulders, after bending low

With reverence, though to one who knew it

not.

She was a goddess of the infant world;
By her in stature the tall Amazon

Had stood a pigmy's height: she would have
ta'en

Achilles by the hair, and bent his neck;
Or with a finger stayed Ixion's wheel.
Her face was large as that of Memphian
sphinx,

Pedestaled haply in a palace court,
When sages looked to Egypt for their lore.
But oh! how unlike marble was that face!
How beautiful, if sorrow had not made
Sorrow more beautiful than Beauty's self!
There was a listening fear in her regard,
As if calamity had but begun;
As if the vanward clouds of evil days
Had spent their malice, and the sullen rear
Was, with its stored thunder, laboring up.
One hand she pressed upon that aching spot
Where beats the human heart, as if just there,
Though an immortal, she felt cruel pain;
The other upon Saturn's bended neck
She laid, and to the level of his ear

SING the hymn of the conquered who fell
in the battle of life,-

The hymn of the wounded, the beaten, who
died overwhelmed in the strife;
Not the jubilant song of the victors, for
whom the resounding acclaim
Of nations was lifted in chorus, whose brows
wore the chaplet of fame,

But the hymn of the low and the humble, the
weary, the broken in heart,

Who strove and who failed, acting bravely a silent and desperate part;

Whose youth bore no flower on its branches, whose hope burned in ashes away,

Leaning with parted lips, some words she From whose hands slipped the prize they had

grasped at, who stood at the dying of day

With the wreck of their life all around them unpitied, unheeded, alone,

With death sweeping down o'er their failure, and all but their faith overthrown, While the voice of the world shouts the chorus, its pæan for those who have

won:

While the trumpet is sounding triumphant, and high to the breeze and the sun Glad banners are waving, hands clapping, and hurrying feet

Thronging after the laurel-crowned victors, J stand on the field of defeat,