hear or see,
_Ay, cheray me!_

A Moorish maiden knelt beside
Her dying lover's bed:
She bade him stay to bless his bride;
She called him oft her lord, her pride;
But mortals must their doom abide--
The warrior's spirit fled.
With simple tongue the sad one sung,
When none could hear or see,
_Ay, di me!_

An English matron mourned her son,
The only son she bore:
Afar from her his course was run--
He perished as the fight was done--
He perished when the fight was won--
Upon a foreign shore.
With simple tongue the mother sung,
When none could hear or see,
_Ah, dear me!_

A Highland maiden saw
A brother's body borne
From where, from country, king, and law,
He went his gallant sword to draw;
But swept within destruction's maw,
From her had he been torn.
She sat and sung with simple tongue,
When none could hear or see,
_Oh, hon-a-ree!_

An infant in untimely hour
Died in a Lowland cot:
The parents own'd the hand of power
That bids the storm be still or lour;
They grieved because the cup was sour,
And yet they murmured not.
They only sung with simple tongue,
When none could hear or see,
_Ah, wae's me!_

_July 26, 1851._

'ANNUS MIRABILIS.'

We have now reached the close of the most wonderful year the world
ever saw. None of our readers can be unacquainted with the poem in
which Dryden celebrated the marvels of the year 1666,--certainly an
extraordinary twelvemonth, though the English poet, only partially
acquainted with the events which rendered it so remarkable, restricts
himself, in his long series of vigorous quatrains, to the description
of the two naval battles with the Dutch which its summer witnessed,
and of the great fire of London which rendered its autumn so
remarkable.

He might also have told that it was a year of great fear and
expectation among both Christians and Jews. The Jews held that their
Messiah was to come that year; and, in answer of the expectation, the
impostor Sabbatei Levi appeared to delude and disappoint the hopes of
that unhappy nation. There was an opinion nearly equally general in
the Roman Catholic world, that it would usher in the Antichrist of New
Testament prophecy; while among English Protestants it was very
extensively believed that it was to witness the end of th