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The day may come, when, dead alike
To human joy or pain,

Those crimson lips shall meet thy kiss,
Yet not caress again;

And thou shalt shroud the fairy limbs,

So perfect in thine eye,

And in the cold and quiet grave

Thy little one shall lie.

The day may come, when shame shall creep
That merry heart within,

And thou perforce must share the shame,
Who only wept the sin;

When, scorned, and crushed, and left alone
Without a name or home,

The broken heart shall breathe a prayer
For death, which will not come.

The day may come (oh! strange that such
Should be a mother's fate!)

When those, so tenderly beloved,
Thy heart shall learn to hate ;
When, baffled in thy fondest dreams,
That heart, with slow decay,

Shall wither at its very core,
And eat itself away ;—

When, cold in feeling, cold in speech,
And brooding o'er thy wrongs,
Thou shalt forget the days of old-
Forget thy cradle songs;

And they who nestled at thy breast,

And laughed upon thy knee,
More strange unto thy home and heart
Than strangers' selves shall be.

Oh! therefore, gentle mother! pray,
And God shall hear thy prayer,
And shield thee from that heavy day
Of sorrow and despair.

Pray, while their light feet dance around.

With an unwearied joy;

Pray, while their careless hearts are full

But of some favorite toy.

Pray, when their young eyes open to
Another morning's light;

And when thou stealest to their couch,
To bless them, in the night.
Pray! for the shrouded future brings
A different fate for all;

And who shall tell what theirs may be!
Pray-and God hear thy call!

LESSON CXLV.

Colloquial Powers of Dr. Franklin.-WILLIAM WIRT.

NEVER have I known such a fire-side companion as Dr. Franklin. Great as he was, both as a statesman and a philosopher, he never shone in a light more winning than when he was seen in a domestic circle. It was once my good fortune to pass two or three weeks with him, at the house of a private gentleman, in the back part of Pennsylvania; and we were confined to the house, during the whole of that time, by the unintermitting constancy and depth of the snows. But confinement could never be felt where Franklin was an inmate. His cheerfulness and his colloquial powers spread around him a perpetual spring. When I speak, however, of his collo

quial powers, I do not mean to awaken any notion analogous to that which Boswell has given us when he so frequently mentions the colloquial powers of Dr. Johnson. The conversation of the latter reminds one of "the pomp and circumstance of glorious war." It was, indeed, a perpetual contest for victory, or an arbitrary and despotic exaction of homage to his superior talents. It was strong, acute, prompt, splendid and vociferous; as loud, stormy and sublime as those winds which he represents as shaking the Hebrides, and rocking the old castles that frowned upon the dark rolling sea beneath. But one gets tired of storms, however sublime thay may be, and longs for the more orderly current of nature. Of Franklin no one ever became tired. There was no ambition of eloquence, no effort to shine, in any thing which came from him. There was nothing which made any demand either upon your allegiance or your admiration.

His manner was as unaffected as infancy. It was nature's self. He talked like an old patriarch; and his plainness and simplicity put you at once at your ease, and gave you the full and free possession and use of all your faculties.

His thoughts were of a character to shine by their own light, without any adventitious aid. They required only a medium of vision, like his pure and simple style, to exhibit, to the highest advantage, their native radiance and beauty. His cheerfulness was unintermitting. It seemed to be as much the effect of the systematic and salutary exercise of the mind as of its superior organization. His wit was of the first order; it did not show itself merely in occasional coruscations; but, without any effort or force on his part, it shed a constant stream of the purest light over the whole of his discourses.

Whether in company of the common people or nobles, he was always the same plain man; always most perfectly at his ease; his faculties in full play, and the full orbit of his genius forever clear and unclouded. And then the

stores of his mind were inexhaustible. He had commenced life with an attention so vigilant, that nothing had escaped his observation; and a judgment so solid, that every incident was turned to advantage. His youth had not been wasted in idleness, nor overcast by intemperance. He had been all his life a close and deep reader, as well as thinker; and, by the force of his own powers, had wrought up the raw materials, which he had gathered from books, with such exquisite skill and felicity, that he had added a hundred fold to their original value, and justly made them his own.

LESSON CXLVI.

The Captive of Camalu.-THOMAS Pringle.

[The following verses express the supposed feelings of an Amakoşa (South African) exile, whose kindred had perished in some of the devastating wars waged between the colonists and the native tribes. Camalu is the name of a Caffre kraal or hamlet, near the sources of the Kat river; and the youthful captive is supposed not to have been altogether uninstructed in the religion of the gospel, or uninfluenced by its pure, elevating and forgiving spirit.]

O CAMALU, green Camalu!

'Twas there I fed my father's flock,
Beside the mount where cedars threw,
At dawn, their shadows from the rock;
There tended I my father's flock,

Along the grassy-margined rills,
Or chased the bounding bontébok,*
With hound and spear, among the hills.

Green Camalu! methinks I view

The lilies in thy meadows growing;
I see thy waters, bright and blue,
Beneath the pale-leafed willows flowing;

*The antelope.

I hear, along thy valleys, lowing
The heifers wending to the fold,
And jocund herd-boys loudly blowing
The horn-to mimic hunters bold.

Methinks I see the geelhout tree*
That shades the village chieftain's cot;
The evening smoke curls lovingly
Above that calm and pleasant spot.
I see my sire!--I had forgot—

The old man rests in slumber deep!
My mother dear !—she answers not—
Her heart is hushed in dreamless sleep!

My brothers too!-green Camalu,
Repose they by thy quiet tide?

Ay! there they sleep-where white men slew,
And left them lying side by side!
No pity had those men of pride;

They fired the huts above the dying!
White bones bestrew that valley wide-
I wish that mine were with them lying!

I

envy you, by Camalu,

Ye wild harts, on the woody hills;
Though tigers there their prey pursue,

And vultures slake in blood their bills:
The heart may strive with nature's ills,
To nature's common doom resigned;
Death only once the body kills—
But thraldom brutifies the mind.

Oh, wretched fate! heart-desolate,
A captive in the spoiler's hand,

* The yellow-wood tree (podocarpus elongata), in appearance resembling the cedar.

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