A spade! a rake! a hoe!

A pickaxe, or a bill!

A hook to reap, or a scythe to mow,
A flail, or what ye will;
Whatever the tool to ply,

Here is a willing drudge,

With muscle and limb, and woe to him Who does their pay begrudge!

Who every weekly score

Docks labor's little mite,

Bestows on the poor at the temple-door,
But robb'd them over night.
The very shilling he hop'd to save,
As health and morals fail,
Shall visit me in the New Bastile,
The Spital or the Gaol !

THE BRIDGE OF SIGHS
ONE more unfortunate,
Weary of breath,
Rashly importunate,
Gone to her death!

Take her up tenderly,
Lift her with care;
Fashioned so slenderly,
Young, and so fair!

Look at her garments
Clinging like cerements;
Whilst the wave constantly
Drips from her clothing;
Take her up instantly,
Loving, not loathing.

Touch her not scornfully;
Think of her mournfully,
Gently and humanly;
Not of the stains of her,
All that remains of her
Now is pure womanly.

Make no deep scrutiny
Into her mutiny
Rash and undutiful :
Past all dishonor,
Death has left on her
Only the beautiful.

Still, for all slips of hers,
One of Eve's family-
Wipe those poor lips of hers
Oozing so clammily.

Loop up her tresses
Escaped from the comb,
Her fair auburn tresses;
Whilst wonderment guesses
Where was her home?

Who was her father?
Who was her mother?
Had she a sister?

Had she a brother?
Or was there a dearer one
Still, and a nearer one
Yet, than all other?

Alas! for the rarity
Of Christian charity
Under the sun!
Oh! it was pitiful!

And streams their diamond-mirrors hold
To summer's face returning-
To say we 're thankful that his sleep
Shall never more be lighter,

In whose sweet-tongued companionship
Stream, bower, and beam grew brighter!

But all the more intensely true

His soul gave out each feature Of elemental love each hue And grace of golden nature; The deeper still beneath it all

Lurk'd the keen jags of anguish ; The more the laurels clasp'd his brow Their poison made it languish. Seem'd it that like the nightingale

Of his own mournful singing, The tenderer would his song prevail While most the thorn was stinging.

So never to the desert-worn

Did fount bring freshness deeper, Than that his placid rest this morn

Has brought the shrouded sleeper. That rest may lap his weary head

Where charnels choke the city, Or where, mid woodlands, by his bed The wren shall wake its ditty; But near or far, while evening's star Is dear to hearts regretting, Around that spot admiring thought Shall hover, unforgetting.

And if this sentient, seething world
Is, after all, ideal,

Or in the immaterial furl'd

Alone resides the real,

Freed one! there's a wail for thee this hour

Through thy lov'd elves' dominions ;
Hush'd is each tiny trumpet-flower,

And droopeth Ariel's pinions;
Even Puck, dejected, leaves his swing,
To plan, with fond endeavor,
What pretty buds and dews shall keep
Thy pillow bright for ever.

And higher, if less happy, tribes,
The race of early childhood,

Shall miss thy whims of frolic wit,
That in the summer wild-wood,
Or by the Christmas hearth, were hail'd,
And hoarded as a treasure
Of undecaying merriment

And ever-changing pleasure.
Things from thy lavish humor flung
Profuse as scents, are flying

This kindling morn, when blooms are born
As fast as blooms are dying.

Sublimer art owned thy control:
The minstrel's mightiest magic,
With sadness to subdue the soul,
Or thrill it with the tragic.
Now listening Aram's fearful dream,
We see beneath the willow
That dreadful thing, or watch him steal,
Guilt-lighted, to his pillow.

Now with thee roaming ancient groves,
We watch the woodman felling
The funeral elm, while through its boughs
The ghostly wind comes knelling.

Dear worshipper of Dian's face
In solitary places,

Shalt thou no more steal, as of yore,
To meet her white embraces ?
Is there no purple in the rose

Henceforward to thy senses?

For thee have dawn and daylight's close
Lost their sweet influences?