THE DISCARDED.

BY FITZ-GREENE HALLECK.

"No doubt she was right in rejecting my suit, But why did she kick me down stairs?"-BALLAD.

I LIVE, as lives a withered bough,
Blossomless, leafless, and alone;
There is none left to love me now,

Or shed one tear when I am gone.

When I am gone-no matter where,
I dread no other world but this,
To leave it is my only prayer,
That hope my only happiness.

For I am weary of it-black

Are sun and stars and sky to me;
And my own thoughts are made the rack
That wrings my nerves in agony.

There's not a wretched one that lives
And loathes like me the light of day;
And I shall bless the hour that gives
My body to its kindred clay.

And yet at times, I know not why,

There comes a foolish, feverish thought, Of where these shrivelled limbs shall lie,

And where this death cold flesh shall rot,

When the quick throbbing of my brain,
That now is maddening me, is o'er,
And the hot fire in each swoln vein,
Is quenched at last to burn no more.

And then I shudder at the tone

Of my heart's hymn, and seem to hear
The shrieking of my dying groan,
The rattling clod upon my bier ;

And feel the pang which he who dies,
Welcomes-the pang which gives me rest-
Ere the lead-weights are on mine eyes,
Or the white shroud is on my breast;

When the death foam is on my lip,
And the death-dews are in my hair,
And my clenched fingers in the grip
Of agony, are clinging there.

And then I feel how sad it is

To know there's none my fate to weep,
Print on my lip the unanswered kiss,
Or close mine eyes in their last sleep.

For all unheard the damp earth flung
Upon my coffin-lid must be ;
By strangers will the bell be rung,
That tolls in mockery for me.

And he who tolls will laugh the while,
And whistle his light song of mirth;
And he who digs my grave will smile
As senseless as its senseless earth.

Some dark-robed priest, perhaps, will pray
Beside my bier-because he must,

And some hoarse voices sing or say

The unfeeling adage, “dust to dust.”

VOL. II.

And if perchance I leave behind
Enough of worldly pelf to raise
A marble tomb-my name enshrined
In prodigality of praise,

May meet the passing stranger's eye,
A sculptor's monument and pride;
Telling that man was born to die,

And I was born and lived and died.

And men will trample on my grave,

And keep the grass from growing there; And not even one poor flower will wave Above me in the summer air.

For there are none to plant it-none
To water it with patient tears;
My cradle-watchers-they are gone-
The monitors of my young years

Are silent now-there was a time-
It is a long, long time ago—
When in a pure and holy clime

I breathed-and if the clouds of woe

Dimmed the blue heaven of my thought,
Like summer storms they flitted by,
And when they vanished they were wrought
Bright rainbows in the twilight sky,

On which my wild gaze lingered till
Their colors faded far away;

Those clouds-I feel their dampness still-
But the bright rainbows-where are they?

And she I loved? I must not think

Of her,

"for that way madness lies !"— Boy, start that champagne cork-I'll drink, And dream no more of Mary's eyes.

4

PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY.

BY NATHANIEL P. WILLIS.

NEW-YORK CITY.-"How it strikes a stranger," is always an amusing, though not always a correct light for looking at the picture of a great city. I occupy a sky parlor in the city hotel, celebrated for its Willard of immortal memory, and its accommodations of inexhaustible capacity-the most convenient and thronged hotel, perhaps, this side the water, though it is a pity it is not a little more visited by one universal guest-the common light of heaven. Hence, over innumerable chimneys and through a medium like a smoked glass, I see the broad mouth of the Hudson, and Hoboken with its industrious ferry-boat plying to and fro, and, nearer to my eye, the flags and long pennants of vessels at the pier, and the black pipes of steamboats smoking and hissing, and more immediately in the foreground scenes of poverty and misery that would have moved the heart of Howard with the deepest yearnings of compassion. I know not how it is, but poverty in New-York seems to me incomparably wretched. In Boston, the poor never im

press you with that sick-hearted sense of their misery that is unavoidable in crossing their unhappy pathways here. They are cleaner elsewhere, or not so closely pinched by necessity, they have more cheerful faces, and move with a less broken and dejected gait, and their children do not acquire "the trick of sorrow" so unchangeably. There is a poor woman, now, hanging clothes upon a line on the top of a building, some three stories below my window level. She is perfectly gray, and her hair is tied together and falling over her back, hardly distinguishable, in its mingled dingy sprinkling of white, from her smoked and wrinkled forehead, and her hands, lean and cramped, stretch up to the line, with a weakness and effort that seem like the struggling of sickness more than the healthy action of labor. The expression of her face is that of the most worn and hopeless anxiety. I never saw one of more wretchedness. But this is enough of such a picture.

The great impression made upon a stranger's mind on leaving his room, is that of general and undistinguishable hurry and confusion. The carmen halloo and lash their horses into a trot almost impossible from the nature of the vehicle, the omnibuses whip and hurry to pass each other, the jarveys, with their handsome coaches and "frames of horses," (perfect miracles of leanness,) outwhip both carmen and omnibuses; every man you meet avoids you by a most adroit instinct, apparently without being aware that you are near him; the