Слике страница
PDF
ePub

May God forgive my envy-I know not what I said;
My heart is crushed and troubled,-my neighbor's boy is

dead!

I saw the little coffin as they carried it out to-day:

A mother's heart is breaking in the mansion over the way.

The light is fair in my window, the flowers bloom at my door;

My boy is chasing the sunbeams that dance on the cottage floor.

The roses of health are blooming on my darling's cheek today,

But the baby is gone from the window of the mansion over the way.

LIBERTY.-FRANK E. BRUSH.

Among the myriad ideas which bound man's life, are some that have run parallel with him through all the ages, furnishing the motive principle of his action,-a polar star shining far above the tempests of earth, through whose rifted clouds comes to him its cheering beam.

As a typical idea illustrating the power and permanence of the whole class may be mentioned this one thoughtliberty. Born with man, it has followed his devious course through the world, never forsaking him. Protean in character, at times occult in its workings, its direct influence may not always have been clearly perceived in the dark hour of political convulsion, or the sharp agony of national conflict; but to the calm inquirer of the past, on every page of human life, on every leaf of national destiny is disclosed its own handwriting. This idea of liberty is enshrined in the most hallowed chamber of the soul whence the wildest storms of oppression and the fiercest gales of persecution can never eradicate it. Though always present and exercising a potent sway in human affairs, its manifestation has been extremely variable. At first it appeared crude and shapeless, an undefined yearning, a simple innate repugnance to restraint; but as man has slowly risen from out the infolding gloom, and his knowledge has widened, it has enlarged the circle of its comprehension till it embraces all the attributes of human nature.

The ancient conception of liberty was the liberty of com munities and nations as personated by kings, magistrates, aristocracies, or by the ruling classes in whatever form. The freedom of the individual was lost in that of the state. All the energy of the people was exercised to preserve intact their nationality. Men might be deprived of citizenship, chained to the triumphal car of the victor, oppressed with all the atrocities of servitude, and if the government maintained its freedom the cause of liberty was nobly vindicated. The state was paramount-the man only incidental.

This view of liberty, in some degree, tinctured all the nations of antiquity; but reached its highest development in Greece and Rome. Men, trained to believe that the state was supreme and its liberty an inestimable treasure, and that human life was valuable only so far as it should conserve the national interest, eagerly fronted horrid tortures and bloody death. So there have descended to us from that shadowy past echoes of chivalrous feats whose mention is an inspiration. What if iconoclastic reviewers, with the mallet of criticism, shatter our cherished idols of exalted heroism, grand endurance, sublime self-sacrifice; what if they pronounce utopian fancies, Leonidas at Thermopylæ, Horatius at the Bridge, Regulus enduring Carthagenian tortures, and the long catalogue of heroes and their peerless exploits which have shed such a lustre about the names of Greece and Rome for two thousand years? Let them fall, the ideas immortalized in those conceptions have for ages incited humanity to deeds of dauntless daring and undying fame! This notion of liberty led ancient empires to such an eminence in wealth and magnificence as has not since been witnessed. But amid all the gorgeous splendor of rival monarchies; amid all the sublimated achievements of imperial legions, man's personal freedom was unrecognized. The liberty of the individual had its birth with Jesus Christ. The herald angels, that proclaimed a Saviour to the world, at the same time chanted the glad anthem of man's release from the thrall of ages. The crucified Nazarene, with Divine sanction, declared the complete physical, intellectual, aud moral liberty of man. The newness and the tremendous power of this idea waked the slumbering minds of men and

roused their latent energies; shook the scepter from the grasp of diademed monarchs; and rocked to their foundations the proudest empires of time.

Then began the long struggle for human rights, which is waged with no less vigor to-day than ever, whose records constitute our modern history. For eighteen hundred years this new, enlarged impression of liberty has energized the champions of freedom everywhere, and to-day the armies of progress are marshaled under banners emblazoned with the same talismanic word.

Count me over the deadliest battles of history, conflicts on whose issue pivoted the destinies of continents, and there I will show you the manifestation of this thought-liberty. Point out to me that country which has the wisest and most beneficent laws, whose institutions are broad and humane, whose inhabitants are peaceful, prosperous, and happy; where the rights of man are venerated, where religion is untrammeled, and I will exhibit a nation where liberty is most thoroughly understood and fully appreciated. Read to me of those noble martyr-spirits, humanity's guardian angels, whose lives were a ceaseless struggle against tyranny, whose deaths were a divine attestation of their sublime faith, and I will point you to the power of this capital thought. In all the grand advance movements of the ages, I see the genius of its generalship; on the shores of every continent I trace its sacred footprints; clear above the din of conflict, I hear its silvery voice animating and guiding. The winds carol its power; the forest aisles echo the strain; hills and vales reverberate the song; till from mountain and meadow, from lake and river, from city and hamlet, from palace and cot swells the one glad chorus-Liberty, LIBERTY!

[blocks in formation]

Each chose his place and went to work-
The light web grew apace;

One on the altar spun his thread,
But shortly came the sexton dread,
And swept him off, and so, half dead,
He sought another place.

"I'll try the pulpit next," said he,
"There surely is a prize;

The desk appears so neat and clean,
I'm sure no spider there has been-
Besides, how often have I seen
The pastor brushing flies."

He tried the pulpit, but alas!

His hopes proved visionary;

With dusting brush the sexton came,
And spoiled his geometric game,
Nor gave him time or space to claim
The right of sanctuary.

At length, half starved, and weak and lean,
He sought his former neighbor,

Who now had grown so sleek and round,
He weighed a fraction of a pound,
And looked as if the art he'd found
Of living without labor.

"How is it, friend," he asked, "that I
Endured such thumps and knocks,
While you have grown so very gross?"
""Tis plain," he answered-" not a loss
I've met, since first I spun across
The contribution box."

MURDER OF KING DUNCAN.-SHAKSPEARE,

Macbeth. Is this a dagger which I see before me, The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee. I have thee not, and yet I see thee still.

Art thon not, fatal vision, sensible

To feeling as to sight? or art thou but

A dagger of the mind; a false creation,
Proceeding from the heat oppressed brain?
I see thee yet, in form as palpable

As this which now I draw.

Thou marshal'st me the way that I was going;
And such an instrument I was to use.

Mine eyes are made the fool o' th' other senses,

Or else worth all the rest. I see thee still;
And on thy blade and dudgeon, gouts of blood,
Which was not so before. There's no such thing:
It is the bloody business, which informs

Thus to mine eyes.

Now o'er the one half world
Nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse
The curtained sleep: now witchcraft celebrates
Pale Hecate's offerings; and withered murder,
Alarumed by his sentinel, the wolf,

Whose howl's his watch, thus with his stealthy pace,
With Tarquin's ravishing strides, toward his design
Moves like a ghost. Thou sure and firm-set earth,
Hear not my steps, which way they walk, for fear
Thy very stones prate of my whereabout,

And take the present horror from the time,

Which now suits with it. While I threat he lives;

Words to the heat of deeds too cold breath gives. [A bell rings.

I go, and it is done; the bell invites me;

Hear it not, Duncan; for it is a knell

That summons thee to heaven, or to hell.

Enter Lady MACBETH.

[Exit.

Lady M. That which hath made them drunk, hath made me bold:

What hath quenched them, hath given me fire. Hark! peace!
It was the owl that shrieked, the fatal bellman,

Which gives the sternest good-night. He is about it-
The doors are open; and the surfeited grooms

Do mock their charge with snores: I have drugged their pos

sets,

That death and nature do contend about them,
Whether they live or die.

Macb. [Within.] Who's there? what, ho!

Lady M. Alack! I am afraid they have awaked, And 'tis not done. The attempt, and not the deed, Confounds us. Hark! I laid their daggers ready; He could not miss them. Had he not resembled My father as he slept, I had don't. My husband!

Enter MACBETH.

Macb. I've done the deed! Didst thou not hear a noise î Lady M. I heard the owl scream, and the cricket's cry. Did not you speak?

Macb.

When?

[blocks in formation]
« ПретходнаНастави »