INFANTICIDE IN MADAGASCAR

A LUXURY of summer green
Is on the southern plain,

And water-flags, with dewy screen,

Protect the ripening grain.

Upon the sky is not a cloud
To mar the golden glow,
Only the palm-tree is allowed
To fling its shade below.

And silvery, 'mid its fertile brakes,
The winding river glides,
And every ray in heaven makes

Its mirror of its tides.

And yet it is a place of death—

A place of sacrifice;

Heavy with childhood's parting breath, Weary with childhood's cries.

The mother takes her little child--
Its face is like her own;

The cradle of her choice is wild-
Why is it left alone?

The trampling of the buffalo

Is heard among the reeds,

And sweeps around the carrion crow

That amid carnage feeds.

O! outrage upon mother Earth

To yonder azure sky;

A destined victim from its birth,

The child is left to die.

We shudder that such crimes disgrace

E'en yonder savage strand;

Alas! and hath such crime no trace
Within our English land?

Pause, ere we blame the savage code
That such strange horror keeps ;
Perhaps within her sad abode

The mother sits and weeps,

And thinks how oft those eyelids smiled
Whose close she may not see,
And says, “O, would to God, my child,
I might have died for thee!"

Such law of bloodshed to annul
Should be the Christian's toil;
May not such law be merciful,
To that upon our soil?
Better the infant eyes should close
Upon the first sweet breath,
Than weary for their last repose,
A living life in death!

Look on the children of our poor,
On many an English child:
Better that it had died secure
By yonder river wild.

Flung careless on the waves of life,

From childhood's earliest time, They struggle, one perpetual strife, With hunger and with crime.

Look on the crowded prison-gate-
Instructive love and care

In early life had saved the fate
That waits on many there.
Cold, selfish, shunning care and cost,
The poor are left unknown;

I say, for every soul thus lost,
We answer with our own.

ALEXANDER AND PHILIP.

He stood by the river's side,
A conqueror and a king,
None matched his step of pride

Amid the armed ring.

And a heavy echo rose from the ground,
As a thousand warriors gathered round.

And the morning march had been long,
And the noontide sun was high,
And weariness bowed down the strong,
And heat closed every eye;

And the victor stood by the river's brim,
Whose coolness seemed but made for him.

The cypress spread their gloom

Like a cloak from the noontide beam

He flung back his dusty plume,

And plunged in the silver stream;

He plunged like the young steed fierce and wild, He was borne away like the feeble child.

They took the king to his tent

From the river's fatal banks;
A cry of terror went

Like a storm through the Grecian ranks:
Was this the fruit of their glories won,
Was this the death for Ammon's son ?

Many a leech heard the call,

But each one shrank away;

For heavy upon all

Was the weight of fear that day:

When a thought of treason, a word of death,
Was in each eye and on each breath.

But one with the royal youth

Had been from his earliest hour, And he knew that his heart was truth,

And he knew that his hand was power; He gave what hope his skill might give, And bade him trust to his faith, and live.

Alexander took the cup,

And from beneath his head a scroll, He drank the liquor up,

And bade Philip read the roll;

And Philip looked on the page, where shame, Treason, and poison were named with his name

An angry flush rose on his brow,

And anger darkened his eye

What I have done I would do again now,

If you trust my fidelity.

The king watched his face, he felt he might dare
Trust the faith that was written there.

Next day the conqueror rose

From a greater conqueror free;
And again he stood amid those

Who had died his death to see:

He stood there proud of the lesson he gave
That faith and trust were made for the brave.

THE CASTLE OF CHILLON.

FAIR lake, thy lovely and thy haunted shore
Has only echoes for the poet's lute;
None may tread there save with unsandalled foot,
Submissive to the great that went before,

Filled with the mighty memories of yore.

And yet how mournful are the records there

Captivity, and exile, and despair,

Did they endure who now endure no more.
The patriot, the woman, and the bard,

Whose names thy winds and waters bear along;
What did the world bestow for their reward
But suffering, sorrow, bitterness, and wrong ?—
Genius!—a hard and weary lot is thine-

The heart thy fuel—and the grave thy shrine.