Hark!

Ye have swords and shields, and armor, Ye!
No mail defends the Cymrian Child of Song;
But, where the warrior, there the bard should be!
All fields of glory to the bard belong.
His realm extends wherever godless strife
Spurns the base death, and wins immortal life.

Unarmed, he goes, his guard, the shield of all:

Where he bounds, foremost, on the Saxon spear.
Unarmed, he goes, that falling, e'en his fall

Shall bring no shame, and shall bequeath no fear!
Does the song cease? Avenge it by the deed,
And make the sepulchre, a Nation freed.

EDWARD GEORGE LYTTON BULWER.

10.

BOADICEA.

PRASUTAGUS, king of the Icenians, who occupied what now constitutes the counties of Norfolk, Suffolk, Cambridgeshire, and Huntingdonshire, England, having faith in Roman honor, made the emperor of Rome joint heir with Boadicea, his wife. The queen's heroism after being scourged, and the violation of her daughters by Roman officials, is vividly depicted by Tacitus, as, "seated in her chariot, with her daughters, she traverses the battle field, not to recover her throne and treasures, but for vengeance." After a terrible defeat, near London, A. D. 61, she put an end to her life. "Annals." Book XIV.

WHEN the British warrior queen,
Bleeding from the Roman rods,
Sought, with an indignant mien,
Counsel of her country's gods,
Sage, beneath a spreading oak,
Sat the Druid, hoary chief;
Every burning word he spoke
Full of rage, and full of grief.

"Princess, if our aged eyes

Weep upon thy matchless wrongs, 'Tis, because resentment ties

All the terror of our tongues.

Rome shall perish! Write that word

In the blood that she has spilt;
Perish, hopeless and abhorred,
Deep in ruin as in guilt.
Rome, for empire far renowned,
Tramples on a thousand States;
Soon her pride shall kiss the ground-
Hark! the Gaul is at her gates!
Other Romans shall arise,

Heedless of a soldier's name;

Sounds, not arms, shall win the prize,
Harmony the path to fame.
Then the progeny that springs

From the forests of our land,
Armed with thunder, clad with wings,

Shall a wider world command.
Regions Cæsar never knew

Thy posterity shall sway; Where his eagles never flew, None invincible as they."

Such the bard's prophetic words,
Pregnant with celestial fire,
Bending, as he swept the chords
Of his sweet but awful lyre.

She, with all a monarch's pride,
Felt them in her bosom glow;
Rushed to battle, fought and died;
Dying, hurled them at the foe.

"Ruffians, pitiless as proud,

Heav'n awards the vengeance due;

Empire is on us bestowed,

Shame and ruin wait for you."

COWPER.

11. LET THERE BE LIGHT.

THE Greek rhetorician Longinus quotes from the Mosaic account of the Creation what he calls the sublimest passage ever uttered: "God said, 'Let there be light' and there was light."

From the centre of black immensity, effulgence shone forth. Above, beneath, on every side, its radiance streamed out, silent, yet making each spot in the vast concave brighter than the line which the lightning pencils upon the midnight cloud. Darkness fled as the swift beams spread onward and outward, in unending circumfusion of splendor. Onward and outward still they move to this day, glorifying, through wider and wider regions of space, the Infinite Author from whose power and beneficence they sprang.

But not only in the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth, did He say, "Let there be light:" whenever a soul is born into the world, its Creator stands over it, and again pronounces the same sublime words, "Let there be light."

Magnificent, indeed, was the material creation, when, suddenly blazing forth in mid-space, the new-born sun dispelled the darkness of the ancient night. But infinitely more magnificent is it when the human soul rays forth its subtler and swifter beams; when the light of the senses irradiates all outward things, revealing the beauty of their colors, and the exquisite symmetry of their proportions and forms; when the light of reason penetrates to their invisible properties and laws, and displays all those hidden relations that make up the sciences; when the light of conscience illuminates the moral world, separating truth from error, and virtue from vice.

The light of the newly-kindled sun was glorious. It struck upon all the planets and wakened into existence their myriad capacities of life and joy. That light sped on beyond Sirius, beyond the pole-star, beyond Orion and the Pleiades, and is still spreading onward into the abysses of space. But the light of the human soul flies faster than the light of the sun, and outshines its meridian blaze. It can embrace not only the sun of our system, but all suns, and galaxies of suns; ay, the soul is capable of knowing and enjoying Him who created the suns themselves; and when these starry lustres that now glorify the firmament shall wax dim, and fade away like a wasted taper, the light of the soul shall still remain. Nor time, nor cloud, nor any power but its own perversity, shall ever quench its brightness.

Again I would say that whenever a human soul is born into the world, God stands over it and pronounces the sublime fiat, "Let there be light!"

May the time soon come when all human governments shall co-operate with the divine government in carrying this benediction and baptism into fulfilment !

HORACE MANN.

12. GUSTAVUS, KING OF SWEDEN,
TO HIS SOLDIERS.

From an epic poem illustrating the ability, patriotism, and military prowess of Gustavus Vasa, grandfather of Gustavus Adolphus.

SWEDES! countrymen! behold at last,
After a thousand dangers past,

Your chief, Gustavus, here!

Long have I sighed 'mid foreign bands;
Long have I roamed in foreign lands;
At length, 'mid Swedish hearts and hands,
I grasp a Swedish spear!

Yet, looking forth, although I see

None but the fearless and the free,
Sad thoughts the sight inspires;
For where, I think, on Swedish ground,
Save where these mountains frown around,
Can that best heritage be found,

The freedom of your sires?

Ay, Sweden pines beneath the yoke;
The galling chain our fathers broke
Is round our country now.

On perjured craft and ruthless guilt
His power a tyrant Dane hath built;
And Sweden's crown, all blood-bespilt,
Rests on a foreign brow.

On

you your country turns her eyes,On you, on you, for aid relies,

Scions of noblest stem!

The foremost place in rolls of fame
By right your fearless fathers claim;
Yours is the glory of their name,-
"T is yours to equal them.

As rushing down, when winter reigns,
Resistless, to the shaking plains,

The torrent tears its way,

And all that bars its onward course
Sweeps to the sea with headlong force,
So swept your sires the Dane and Norse:
Can ye do less than they?

But no! your kindling hearts gainsay

The thought! Hark! I hear the bloodhounds bay! Yon blazing village see!

Rise, countrymen! awake! defy

The haughty Dane! your battle-cry

Be Freedom!" We will do or die!

On! Death or victory!

PIERRE FRANÇOIS LEFEVRE.