She listened to the tale divine,

And closer still the babe she pressed; And while she cried, The babe is mine!

The milk rushed faster to her breast;

Joy rose within her, like a summer's morn:

Peace, peace on earth! the Prince of Peace is born. Thou Mother of the Prince of Peace,

Poor, simple, and of low estate; That strife should vanish, battle cease,

Oh! why should this thy soul elate?

Sweet music's loudest note, the poet's story,
Didst thou ne'er love to hear of fame and glory?

And is not war a youthful king,

A stately hero clad in mail?

Beneath his footsteps laurels spring;

Him earth's majestic monarchs hail!

Their friend, their playmate! and his bold bright eye Compels the maiden's love-confessing sigh.

"Tell this in some more courtly scene,

To maids and youths in robes of state!
and mean,

I am a woman poor

And therefore is my soul elate.

War is a ruffian, all with guilt defiled,
That from the aged father tears his child!

"A murderous fiend, by fiends adored,

He kills the sire and starves the son, The husband kills, and from her board

Steals all his widow's toil had won;

Plunders God's world of beauty; rends away
All safety from the night, all comfort from the day.

Then wisely is my soul elate,

That strife should vanish, battle cease;

I'm poor, and of a low estate,

The Mother of the Prince of Peace!

Joy rises in me, like a summer's morn;

Peace, peace on earth! the Prince of Peace is born!"

ROBERT SOUTHEY.

ROBERT SOUTHEY, LL. D., was born in Bristol on the 12th of August, 1774, and was educated at Baliol College, with the design of his entering the church. His career at Oxford was a brief one; his tendency towards Socinianism made the plan marked out for him disagreeable; and he returned to Bristol, where, in 1794, in conjunction with a friend, he published his first collection of poems. His heterodox notions in religion and politics disappeared in a few years, and applying his great abilities to literature, he gradually rose to the first rank of the authors of his country. He died at Keswick on the 21st of March, 1843, in the sixty-eighth year of his age. The best edition of the Poetical Works of Southey is that published in New York by Messrs. Appleton, in one very large octavo volume, with all his latest revisions, and his posthumous pieces.

LOVE.

THEY sin who tell us love can die;
With life all other passions fly,

All others are but vanity.

In heaven ambition cannot dwell,

Nor avarice in the vaults of hell:

Earthly these passions, as of earth,

They perish where they have their birth.
But love is indestructible;

Its holy flame forever burneth,

From heaven it came, to heaven returneth;
Too oft on earth a troubled guest,

At times deceived, at times oppressed,

It here is tried and purified,

And hath in heaven its perfect rest :
It soweth here with toil and care,
But the harvest-time of love is there.
Oh! when a mother meets on high
The babe, the lost in infancy,
Hath she not then, for pains and fears,

The day of wo, the anxious night,

For all her sorrow, all her tears,

An over-payment of delight?

AFFLICTION.

METHINKS if ye would know

How visitations of calamity

Affect the pious soul, 'tis shown you here.

Look yonder at that cloud, which, through the sky Sailing along, doth cross in her career

The rolling moon. I watched it as it came,

And deemed the deep opaque would blot her beams;
But melting like a wreath of snow, it hangs
In folds of wavy silver round, and clothes
The orb with richer beauties than her own;
Then, passing, leaves her in her light serene.

REMEMBRANCE.

MAN hath a weary pilgrimage,

As through the world he wends;
On every stage from youth to age
Still discontent attends;

With heaviness he casts his eye
Upon the road before,

And still remembers with a sigh

The days that are no more.
To school the little exile goes,

Torn from his mother's arms:

What then shall soothe his earliest woes?
What novelty hath lost its charms?
Condemned to suffer through the day
Restraints which no rewards repay,

And cares where love has no concern,
Hope lightens, as she counts the hours
That hasten his return.

From hard control and tyrant rules,
The unfeeling discipline of schools,

The child's sad thoughts will roam,
And tears will struggle in his eye
While he remembers, with a sigh,
The comforts of his home.

Youth comes: the toils and cares of life Torment the restless mind;

Where shall the tired and harassed heart
Its consolation find?

Then is not Youth, as Fancy tells,
Life's summer prime of joy?
Ah! no; for hopes too long delayed,
And feelings blasted or betrayed,
The fabled bliss destroy;
And he remembers, with a sigh,
The careless days of infancy.

Maturer Manhood now arrives,

And other thoughts come on;

But, with the baseless hopes of Youth,
Its generous warmth is gone;
Cold, calculating cares succeed,
The timid thought, the wary deed,
The dull realities of truth;
Back on the past he turns his eye,
Remembering, with an envious sigh,
The happy dreams of Youth.

So reaches he the latter stage
Of this our Mortal Pilgrimage,

With feeble step and slow;
New ills that latter stage await,
And old Experience learns too late,
That all is vanity below.
Life's vain delusions are gone by,
Its idle hopes are o'er;
Yet Age remembers, with a sigh,

The days that are no more.

WILLIAM HERBERT.

THE Hon. and Rev. William Herbert, the late Dean of Manchester, was the third son of Henry Earl of Caernarvon, and father of Mr. Henry William Herbert, of Newark in New Jersey. He was one of the most thoroughly accomplished men of his time, and his numerous works illustrate large abilities, fine taste, and an honorable character. His most celebrated poem is "Attila," which with his other original ind translated poems has recently been published in three volumes, octavo. Mr. Herbert was born in 1778, and died in 1846.

HYMN то DEATH.

WHAT art thou, O relentless visitant,
Who with an earlier or later call,
Dost summon every spirit that abides
In this our fleshly tabernacle? Death!
The end of worldly sorrowing and joy,
That breakest short the fantasies of youth,
The proud man's glory, and the lingering chain
Of hopeless destitution! The dark gate
And entrance into that untrodden realm,
Where we must all hereafter pass! Art thou
An evil or a boon? that some shrink back

With shuddering horror from the dreaded range
Of thine unmeasured empire, others plunge
Unbidden, goaded by the sense of ill,

Or weariness of being, into the abyss!

And should we call those blest who journey on
Upon this motley theatre, through life

Successful, unto the allotted term

Of threescore years and ten, even so strong,

That they exceed it? or those, who are brought down
Before their prime, and like the winged tribes,

Ephemeral, children of the vernal beam,

Just flutter round the sweets of life and die ?—

An awful term thou art; and still must be,
To all who journey to that bourne, from whence
Return is none, and from whose distant shore