"Be kind to the poor! when the cold winds are blowing,
When the comforts of life are wanted to warm ;
While thy hearthstone at home is cheerfully glowing,
And thou heedst not the fury of tempest and storm.
"Be kind to the poor! for the great day is nigh

When all grades shall meet at the just bar of God!
When rewards shall be given to low and to high!
Alike be their glory who trust in His Word.

"Be kind to the poor! 'tis a duty you owe

To God and to man; and just Heaven is sure
To smile on the act; while blessings will flow,
If thou in all seasons art kind to the poor."

The following verses appeared in one of the Manchester newspapers (I forget which) during their writer's residence at Newton Heath :

Alone in the Forest.

"Alone in the forest! 'twas the midnight hour,
And the owlet's cry struck on the ear;
And the darkness came with a solemn power,
That fill'd the heart with childish fear.

"Alone in the forest! that weary night,
Where crawled the loathsome toad;
And the wild-cat, creeping with keener sight,
To it's victim's dark abode.

"Alone in the forest! the carrion crow
Was hovering over my head,

And snuffing the gases that upward go,
From the dust of the tainted dead.

"Alone in the forest! where the wily fox
Is wandering from his lair,

And seizes, and slays, and savagely mocks
The shrieks of the dying hare.

"Alone in the forest! where each creeping thing
Knew that night's grim hour was come;
Many noiseless as bat on her silent wing,
And others with insect hum.

"Alone in the forest! I found a place

Where the worn-out body might rest;
But the lizards came and crept o'er my face,
And they made my bosom their nest.

"Alone in the forest! I felt as one

Seized with a terrible fear,

And moan'd as the wretch who dies alone,
Without a kind heart to cheer.

"Alone in the forest! I sank to repose,
And slumber'd away my care;

And when the bright orb of the morning arose,
Not a living thing was there.

"Alone in the forest! I felt so sad,

So tortured in heart and mind;

But one thing I wanted to make me glad-
'T was the voices of human kind.

"Alone in the forest! oh, let us take heed

That we smile on and love one another,
So that when we want help in the hour of need,
We may find in some warm heart-a brother!"

One of the pieces written after his return to Cleveland is entitled

The Poet's Grabe.

"I paced the church yard where my forefathers slept,
And gazed on the graves where so many had wept
For the lost one which death had so ruthlessly torn
From the bosoms of friends now remaining to mourn.

"And I came to a grave so green and so fair,

And found from the stone that a Poet lay there;
I linger'd awhile, and perhaps dropp'd a tear,
O'er the grave of the Poet whose spirit was near.

"I felt that he saw me from regions above,
As I stood by his grave with feelings of love;
I felt that, though gone from earth evermore,
The Poet yet lived on a happier shore.

"I remember'd the words-the lays he had sung,
Which lived in the memory and came to the tongue;
I remember'd the lessons he taught us of yore,
And grieved that his presence would cheer us no more.

"For the Poet sang well ere he fled from this earth,
To meet with his peers in a happier berth;
The world may not know of the songs he has given,
But the angels rejoice to receive him in heaven.

"The Poet's lone grave, though silent, is dear,
The sad and the beautiful ever is there;

'Tis the grave of a being whose lofty soul riven
From earth, is gone to a mansion in heaven.

"Oh! 'tis sweet to be here and to fancy his voice,
In heaven above, where the angels rejoice;
To fancy the smiles of HIM who can save,

Brings a joy to the heart at the dead Poet's grave.”

The true Freemason who has carefully perused the numerous (so called) masonic songs, must have been painfully struck with the low conception of the venerable craft which many of the rhyming members of the wide-spread fraternity have had. I have heard of one "Reed shaken by the wind," who, on the initiation of a man infinitely his superior in every way, on learning that he happened to be a teetotaller and a vegetarian, remarked- Then he'll never make a mason!"-his notion being that freemasonry and revelry were identical; and some of the miserable scribblers of songs, miscalled masonic, have evidently been no wiser. Save poor Burns's ever-famous "Farewell to the Brethren of the St. James's Lodge, Tarbolton," written when he contemplated becoming an exile from the land of which he was one of the brightest ornaments it has ever produced, and with a few other glorious exceptions, the things miscalled masonic songs are mere bombast, doggerel, or drunken staves, scribbled by men who have been totally unable to comprehend the beautiful system of morality, "veiled in allegory and illustrated by symbols," which they profanely profess to defend and illustrate. Whilst such trumpery effusions continue to be palmed upon us, I need make no apology for giving the following verses, even though they may fall short of that sublimity which masonic poetry ought to possess:

To Masonry.

"I would not be as many are,
Without the grip and sign
Which give to me a pleasure far
Surpassing aught of time.

"Give me the Mason's mystic grip
When meeting north or south,
Likewise the word which cannot slip

But from a brother's mouth.

"It tells of truth, of holy truth,
In ages past and gone;
Soothing age, refreshing youth,
And blessing every one.

"Oh, happy art! that gives to all
Who tread in thy fair ways
A rock from which they cannot fall,
That stands through endless days.
"The brother who believes in thee,
Maintaining all thy laws,

A truly good man he must be,
For thine 's a sacred cause.

"A cause of love, whose every plan
In depths of goodness lies;
Approved by all-e'en Solomon,
The wisest of the wise.

"Then, Masonry! thou science dear, That teacheth naught but love,

Keep, oh, keep us in thy sphere,
Till we reach the Lodge above.

"Guide us (as thou ere hast thy sons From the early days of time)

To cling to Him unto the last,
The Architect Divine."

JOSEPH REED.

"Of all the amusements that the world e'er saw,
The Theatre is chief; yea, worth them all."

PETER PROLETARIUS.

"The author is certainly a man of genius: his farce of The Register Office contains a variety of characters aptly drawn, and it has accordingly met with great and deserved approbation."-DAVIES' Life of Garrick.

Joseph Reed, one of the few dramatists our district has produced, was born at Stockton-on-Tees in 1722, was brought up to the trade of a rope-maker, and afterwards succeeded his father there in that business, which he carried on until about the year 1754, when he removed to London, and shortly afterwards settled at King David's Fort, Ratcliffe Highway, where he was residing in 1782, according to DAVID ERSKINE BAKER, and "conducting his manufactory in a very extensive manner." Before leaving Stockton, he had published, in 1746, a farce entitled The Superannuated Gallant, which does not appear ever to have been acted. In 1758, his mock-tragedy of Madrigal and Trulletta was performed at the Theatre Royal in Covent Garden for one night only, under the direction of the imprudent Theophilus Cibber,* and was printed the same year. BREWSTER, in his History of Stockton-upon-Tees, and SURTEES, in his History of the County of Durham, are both in error in terming this mock-tragedy as "his first production." "It is," says BAKER, "intended as a ridicule upon some of the later performances of the buskin, and is executed with much humour." The same year, he put his celebrated two-act farce

*Theophilus Cibber, "whose life," as BAKER quaintly observes, “begun, pursued, and ended in a storm," was son of the well-known poet-laureate, Colley Cibber, and grandson of the celebrated sculptor, Caius Gabriel Cibber. Like his father, Theophilus Cibber was vain enough to fancy that he could improve the plays of Shakspere,—a weakness from which even John Dryden had not been exempt.