Original.
Forebodings.
Pretty Nan to Flora said,
"Prithee, why so gay?"
Dark-eyed Flora bent her head:
"He is gone away."
"Strange!" quoth Nan. "If 'twere my heart,
None could be more sad.
Absence gives the keenest smart.
Tell me, why art glad?"
Dark-eyed Flora, with a sigh,
'Gan to braid her hair,
Whilst to Nan she made reply:
"Hark! my sister dear.
"Chanced it on a summer morn,
Laughingly I chose
These long tresses to adorn
With a beauteous rose.
"Of the flower he made request,
I in wilfulness
Did refuse, and as a jest
Gave it a caress.
"But I did not long deny.
Said I: Plucked for you,
Take; but care it tenderly,
'Tis my rose-love true.
"Nameless was the pain and dread
Filled my aching heart.
Soon I saw my rose-love dead,
Idly torn apart.
"Thus he would my heart's love fling
Coldly, idly by.
Than to wear his wedding-ring,
Rather would I die.
"Ah! the cruel, ugly smart!
Fear my love did slay.
Pined I sadly in my heart
Till he went away.
"'Gainst the power of his voice
All in vain I strove.
Freed by absence, I rejoice,
Now I dare to love!"
Abridged from The Dublin University Magazine.
The Minor Brethren.
[The ensuing portion of an article from which we have stricken out the remainder on account of its objectionable statements, although not strictly in conformity with the Catholic view of the lives of the saints, furnishes a graphic sketch of the life of St. Francis, and an evidence of the approximation many Protestants are making toward a more candid and reasonable view of Catholic subjects.—ED. C. W.]
The towns of Italy were in advance of those of other countries; many of them were beautifully built, and celebrated for their wealthy and powerful citizens. Such a town was Assisi in Umbria, and such a citizen was Pietro Bernadone when his son Francisco was born—Francisco Bernadone, afterward Pater Minorum, Pater Seraphicus, then St. Francis, with a place among the saints in the hagiology of the church, now high up on stained-glass windows of thousands of churches, in illuminated missals, imperishable in history, and honored by men of all subsequent times and creeds as a great reformer and benefactor to humanity, an ardent, enthusiastic Christian. We shall contemplate the character and work of St. Francis as the "SALT" infused into the world at one of those periods of its corruption, and in order to do this we shall endeavor to delineate the man as clearly as we can from the acts of his life and the emanations of his mind; then examine his great work, and its effect upon the church in general, and upon that of our own country in particular.
We shall endeavor to portray St. Francis, the founder of the Friars Minors, not according to the phantoms of imagination, or the caricatures of prejudice, but from the records of his life, and still more efficiently from his works and sayings. Fortunately the materials are ample. There is a life of St. Francis, written by Thomas of Celano, the probable author of the sublime mediaeval hymn, the "Dies Irae," and, as he was a follower and an intimate friend of the saint, he writes with authority. At the command of Gregory IX., he committed to writing his knowledge of the life of St. Francis, which work was called the "Legenda."
A second life was written by John of Ceperano; a third by an Englishman, being a metrical version of that of Celano; a fourth by three companions of the saint, (a Tribus Sociis,) Leo, Angelus, and Ruffinus, compiled at the command of the minister-general of the order, Father Crescentius; a fifth by the same Thomas of Celano, being a fuller sketch, at the request also of Crescentius; and a sixth, written at the request of nearly the whole order by St. Bonaventura, who, when a child, had seen the saint.