tic prayer!

'And then ye took my mother too:
Ye must remember now
The words that lingered on her lip,
The grief upon her brow;
My sister wept in bitter wo--
Her dark and earnest eyes
Asked for the mercy ye will seek
In vain in yonder skies!

'But your hearts were like the flinty rock,
And cold as ocean's foam;
You tore them from my clasping arms,
And bore them from our home:
And now my brothers ye will slay!
But they are proud and high,
And come with spirits brave and true,
Your tortures to defy.

'I will not ask from you their lives,
I will not seek to roll
The clouds of midnight from your hearts;
Ye cannot touch the soul!
But grant my prayer, and I will pray
For you in yonder sky;
Oh, GOD! I ask a little thing--
I ask with them to die!'

But the burning words fell cold and lone,
As the sun's warm rays on a marble stone;
Life was a curse too bitter and wild
For the broken heart of Earth's weary child;
And the stricken one found a self-sought grave
'Neath the crystal light of the foaming wave.

_Shelter-Island._ MARY GARDINER.

THE DEATH BED.

A STRAY LEAF FROM THE PORT-FOLIO OF A 'COUNTRY DOCTOR.'

BY F. W. SHELTON.

'Bury me in the valley, beneath the willows where I have watched the
rippling waves, among the scenes of beauty which I loved so well, oh! my
friend!' exclaimed the dying youth; and as he grasped my hand his lips
moved tremblingly, tears gushed upon his wan cheeks, and an expression of
very sadness stole upon him. His looks were lingering; such as one flings
back upon some paradise of beauty which he leaves forever; some home which
childhood has endeared to him, and affection has filled with the loves and
graces. Pity touched my soul as I regarded silently that beaming
countenance, alas! so shrunken from the swelling, undulating lines of his
hilarious health; a pity such as one feels whose hopes are too
inexplicably bound up with another's, who shares his very being, and who
knows by all the sympathies of a brother's bosom that the other's
heart-strings are snapping. _Animae dimidium meae!_--beautiful expression of
the poet, comprehended less while life unites, than when death severs. It
is only when gazing on the seal which has been set, we inquire 'Where is
the spirit?' and struggle in vain to understand th