With fingers weary and worn,
With eyelids heavy and red,
A woman sat, in unwomanly rags,
Plying her needle and thread,-

Stitch! stitch! stitch!

In poverty, hunger, and dirt;
And still with a voice of dolorous pitch
Would that its tone could reach the rich!
She sang this "Song of the Shirt!"

FROM "THE WATER-BABIES"

BY CHARLES KINGSLEY

"When all the world is young, lad, and all the trees are green,

And ev'ry goose a swan, lad, and ev'ry lass a queen; Then hey for boot and horse, lad, and round the

world away,

Young blood must have its course, lad, and ev'ry dog his day.

"When all the world is old, lad, and all the trees are brown,

And all the sport is stale, lad, and all the wheels run down;

Creep home, and take your place there, the spent

and maimed among,

God grant you find one face there, you loved when

all was young."

BATTLE-HYMN OF THE REPUBLIC

BY JULIA WARD HOWE

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord:

He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;

He hath loosed the fateful lightning of his terrible swift sword.

His truth is marching on.

I have seen him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps;

They have builded him an altar in the evening dews and damps;

I can read his righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps.

His day is marching on.

I have read a fiery gospel, writ in burnished rows of steel:

"As ye deal with my contemners, so with you my grace shall deal;

Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with his heel,

Since God is marching on."

He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never

call retreat;

He is sifting out the hearts of men before his judgment

seat:

O, be swift, my soul, to answer him! be jubilant my feet!

Our God is marching on.

In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the

sea,

With a glory in his bosom that transfigures you and

me;

As he died to make men holy, let us die to make men

free,

While God is marching on.

ABOU BEN ADHEM

BY LEIGH HUNT

Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase!)
Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace,
And saw within the moonlight in his room,
Making it rich and like a lily in bloom,
An angel writing in a book of gold:
Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold,
And to the presence in the room he said,

"What writest thou?" The vision raised its head, And, with a look made of all sweet accord,

Answered, "The names of those who love the Lord." "And is mine one?" said Abou. "Nay, not so,"

Replied the angel. Abou spoke more low,
But cheerly still; and said, "I pray thee, then,
Write me as one that loves his fellow-men."

The angel wrote, and vanished. The next night
It came again, with a great wakening light,

And showed the names whom love of God had blessed,-
And, lo! Ben Adhem's name led all the rest!

OUR FAME

BY JOHN A. JOYCE

A thousand years of glory

Shall immortalize our fame

With a tale in song and story

To keep green the hallowed name,
Of the victor and the vanquished
On the land and on the sea,

A band of noble brothers

Led by gallant Grant and Lee.
And the tears of beaming beauty
Shall freshen flower
every

In the May-time of our duty,

Through the sunlit, fleeting hour.
Then we'll strew the rarest roses

O'er the graves we bless to-day,

And we'll pluck the purest posies

To enwreath the "Blue" and " Gray."

And down the circling ages,

From the father to the son,

We'll tell on golden pages

How the field was lost and won;

And how a band of brothers

Fought each other hard and true

To bind the Union arches

O'er the "Gray" and o'er the " Blue," And rearing a lasting temple

So complete in every plan, To justice, truth, and mercy And the liberty of man!

FANCY

BY JOHN KEATS

Ever let the Fancy roam,
Pleasure never is at home:

At a touch sweet Pleasure melteth,
Like to bubbles when rain pelteth;

Then let wingèd Fancy wander

Through the thought still spread beyond her

Open wide the mind's cage-door,

She'll dart forth, and cloudward soar.

O sweet Fancy! let her loose;
Summer's joys are spoilt by use,
And the enjoying of the Spring
Fades as does its blossoming.
Autumn's red-lipped fruitage too,
Blushing through the mist and dew,
Cloys with tasting. What do then?
Sit thee by the ingle, when
The sear fagot blazes bright,
Spirit of a winter's night;

When the soundless earth is muffled,

And the caked snow is shuffled
From the ploughboy's heavy shoon;