Go, cut down trees in the forest, And trim the straightest boughs; Cut down trees in the forest,

And build me a wooden house.

Call the people together,

The young men and the sires, The digger in the harvest-field, Hireling, and him that hires;

And here in a pine state-house They shall choose men to rule In every needful faculty,

In church and state and school.

Lo, now! if these poor men

Can govern the land and sea, And make just laws below the sun, As planets faithful be.

And ye shall succor men;

'Tis nobleness to serve; Help them who cannot help again; Beware from right to swerve.

I break your bonds and masterships,
And I unchain the slave;

Free be his heart and hand henceforth
As wind and wandering wave.

I cause from every creature His proper good to flow; As much as he is and doeth, So much he shall bestow.

But, laying hands on another, To coin his labor and sweat, He goes in pawn to his victim

For eternal years in debt.

To-day unbind the captive,

So only are ye unbound; Lift up a people from the dust, Trump of their rescue, sound!

Pay ransom to the owner,

And fill the bag to the brim.

Who is the owner? The slave is owner, And ever was. Pay him.

O North! give him beauty for rags,

And honor, O South! for his shame; Nevada! coin thy golden crags

With Freedom's image and name.

Up! and the dusky race

That sat in darkness long,—

Be swift their feet as antelopes, And as behemoth strong.

Come, East and West and North,
By races, as snowflakes,
And carry my purpose forth,
Which neither halts nor shakes.

My will fulfilled shall be,
For in daylight or in dark,
My thunderbolt has eyes to see
His way home to the mark.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson.

TWENTY-EIGHT AND TWENTYNINE.

I heard a sick man's dying sigh,
And an infant's idle laughter:
The Old Year went with mourning by-
The New came dancing after!

Let Sorrow shed her lonely tear

Let Revelry hold her ladle;

Bring boughs of cypress for the bier-
Fling roses on the cradle;

Mutes to wait on the funeral state,
Pages to pour the wine:

A requiem for Twenty-eight,
And a health to Twenty-nine!

Alas for human happiness!

Alas for human sorrow!
Our yesterday is nothingness-

What else will be our morrow?
Still Beauty must be stealing hearts,
And Knavery stealing purses;
Still cooks must live by making tarts,
And wits by making verses;
While sages prate, and courts debate,
The same stars set and shine;
And the world, as it rolled through
Twenty-eight,

Must roll through Twenty-nine.

Some king will come, in heaven's good time,

To the tomb his father came to; Some thief will wade through blood and crime

To a crown he has no claim to; Some suffering land will rend in twain The manacles that bound her, And gather the links of the broken chain To fasten them proudly round her; The grand and great will love and hate

At a mean inn in German Aarau born, To forms from antique Greece and Rome uptorn,

Tricked out with a Parisian speech and face,

Imparting life renewed, old classic grace; Then soothing with thy Christian strain forlorn,

A-Kempis! her departing soul outworn, While by her bedside Hebrew rites have place

Ah, not the radiant spirit of Greece alone

She had-one power, which made her breast its home!

In her, like us, there clashed, contending powers,

Germany, France, Christ, Moses, Athens, Rome.

The strife, the mixture in her soul are

ours;

Her genius and her glory are her own. -Matthew Arnold.

January 4.

TO CHARLES DICKENS.

On his departure for America, Jan. 4, 1842.

Pshaw away with leaf and berry,
And the sober-sided cup!
Bring a goblet and bright sherry,
And a bumper fill me up!
Though a pledge I had to shiver,
And the longest ever was!
Ere his vessel leaves our river,

I would drink a health to Boz!

Here's success to all his antics,

Since it pleases him to roam, And to paddle o'er Atlantics,

After such a sale at home! May he shun all rocks whatever, And each shallow sand that lurks, And his passage be as clever As the best among his works! -Thomas Hood.

Wanders-yet still upon the column's height

The sacred figure of the old man stands.

Now in the unending rain each field be

comes

A lake, and every furrow is a stream. From the monotonous grey sky pour down,

Continuous, the waters obstinate.
Drenched, like a solitary tree aloft
Still on the fatal column dost thou stand,
O King of Saints and Martyrs, Simeon.
Sincor

O Saint, I tremble at the thought of thee. And well I deem the Sun, and all the stars,

And wandering birds who now for forty years

Have contemplated in the fields of air Thy meagre profile pale, and all the winds

Who shook in storms thy venerable beard,

White, hoary like the foam o' the sea, and all

Nature, have trembled as they looked on thee.