In the workhouse, food, fuel, and raiment they say;
The home of the Pauper, they shrink from its
gloom:
So, weekly they club their scant halfpence to pay
With the Saturday's shilling, the rent of " a room."

There, childless, and friendless, and joyless, alas!——
They "huddle together," regarded of few;
"Last resort," a garret whose one square of glass
No sunbeam has ever stray'd pitying through:

And each looks on the face of his neighbour in woe,
And silent each quails at that visage of care,
And they think of the eyes that were bright long
ago,
And they scan the blank wall with a dolorous air.

Yea; they think of the days when you crippled and
dim
Were stalwart, and blooming, and jocund, and
young;
With hope in each bosom, and health in each limb,
And a brow that no sorrow had shaded or wrung.

"Yea, He was once comely; and She was once fair;
"And courtings, and weddings, and christ'nings
they'd seen."
"Ay, the streets and blind alleys 'twere hard to
compare
With the fields, and the highways, and hedgerows
of green."

There were music, and sunshine, and sights that
rejoice;
Bright uplands, broad waters, and blue skies above;
And the wood-pigeon's coo, and the mother's soft
voice,
As she sang to the babe on her bosom, in love.

They had friends; they had kindred——of home the
sweet ties——
Their cradle's companions: their playmates from
school:
Blithe greetings, blithe faces, and blithe beaming
eyes:
Strong hands and stout hearts, of which Love was
the rule.

Long ago! Long ago! And they gaze round their
room——
Grime, cobwebs, and mildew——dry-rot and decay;
The air thick with dust, and the light sick with
gloom,
And the throb of the engine by night and by day:

For the lark's gush of song in the dew-spangled
corn,
The whirr of the spindle they wearily greet;
For the breath of the apple-trees where they were
born,
The reek of the chimneys and stench of the street.

For the holly-decked kitchen, a garret dim, drear;
No dresser bright garnished; no cosy fire-side;
No casement to open; no sunlight to cheer;
Sad, sad the last home, where the " old people"
bide!

For the winning young faces, the frolic and glee,
For the cheeks like the cherry, the eyes like the
sloe;
For the locks like the raven, the step springing
free;
Wither'd Eld, nipt with hunger and crazy with woe.

Never more shall they wander through forest and
glade;
Never more by the banks of the bright rivers roam;
Never more hear the cuckoo's voice in the dim shade;
Nor cross once again the sweet threshold of home.

There are graves in a churchyard that lies far
away,
Amid the lone hills that the clouds rest upon,
Green mounds and grey stones o'er the perishing
clay
Of the dear ones for ever lamented and gone.

O might they but lie where their darlings are laid,
One turf at their feet, and one text at their head!
O might they but sleep their last sleep in the shade
Of the elms that wave over their long-buried dead!

O might they!——But never——no never——'tis vain!
And they moan in their anguish and clutch the thin
air——
Their lot 'midst the scowl of the city, to 'plain,
And lay down the burden of life in despair:

And they turn to the wall, their sad faces death-
white,
And heart-broken cross their cold hands on their
breast:
Down sinks the red sun; and the shades of the
night
Gather o'er the wan traits of the pilgrim at rest.

* * * *

O apples, red apples, so golden and green,
On the gnarl'd mossy boughs 'mid bright emerald
leaves,
In clusters ripe swaying, and tempting of mien,
By the di'mond-paned lattice and thatch'd cottage
eaves!

O apples, red, apples! Of childhood ye tell,
And the eyes of young urchins that gaz'd with
delight;
But the old man is drooping; they're ringing his
knell,
And the scenes of his boyhood fade out of his sight.

* * * *

"Where the apple-tree blossoms in spring they were
born;"
Where the green-linnet sings, and " the yellow corn
waves;"
But they die far away in a garret, forlorn,
And the stithe of the town stunts the grass on their
graves.

SLAVES OF THE RING.

OUR acquaintance, Mr. Bloxham, is forty-eight
years old, and a steady drinker. He has not done
a stroke of honest work, he has not performed a
single useful action, for more than half his life.
To eat and drink well, to wear fine clothes, to
swagger in what he called good company, and
to eschew anything so ungenteel as labour, were
the lofty ambitions of his early manhood. Educated
at a public school, and in training for the
bar, his father's allowance obtained him a few
of these requisites, and his own credit did the
rest. A handsome, well-built, rollicking fellow,
with a merry eye and a rich, full voice, he soon
gained considerable surface-popularity, and had
the honour of being dubbed "Jolly Bloxham"
in more than one convivial coterie. Just, however,
when his acquaintance had become most
numerous, and his social engagements and his
debts had multiplied in equal proportion,
Bloxharn succumbed to a phase of human
weakness from which the jolliest mortals are not
exempt——he fell in love. The pretty, shy-faced,