They questioned each the other

Time the supreme! — Time is eternity ;
What Brahma's answer meant.

Pregnant with all eternity can give ;
Said Vivochunu, “ Brother,

Pregnant with all that makes archangels smile.
Through Brahma the great Mother Who murders time, he crushes in the birth
Hath spoken her intent:

A power ethereal, only not adored.
Man ends as he began, —

Ah ! how unjust to Nature and himself, The shadow on the water is all there is of man!” Is thoughtless, thankless, inconsistent man!

Like children babbling nonsense in their sports, “ The earth with woe is cumbered,

We censure Nature for a span too short :
And no man understands ;

That span too short, we tax as tedious too;
They see their days are numbered Torture invention, all expedients tire,
By one that never slumbered

To lash the lingering moments into speed,
Nor stayed his dreadful hands. And whirl us (happy riddance !) from ourselves.
I see with Brahma's eyes -

Art, brainless Art ! our furious charioteer The body is the shadow that on the water lies :" | (For Nature's voice, unstified, would recall),

Drives headlong towards the precipice of death ! Thus Indra, looking deeper,

Death, most our dread ; death, thus more dread. With Brahma's self possessed.

ful made : So dry thine eyes, thou weeper !

0, what a riddle of absurdity! And rise again, thou sleeper !

| Leisure is pain ; takes off our chariot wheels : The hand on Brahma's breast

How heavily we drag the load of life!
Is his divine assent,

Blest leisure is our curse : like that of Cain, Covering the soul that dies not. This is what

It makes us wander ; wander earth around
Brahma ineant.

To fly that tyrant, Thought. As Atlas groaned
The world beneath, we groan beneath an hour.
We cry for mercy to the next amusement : ,
| The next amusement mortgages our fields;

Slight inconvenience! prisons hardly frown,
RETRIBUTION.

From hateful Time if prisons set us free. 'Oye Dewy ådéovoi pudot, ádéovo 8è dentá. Yet when Death kindly tenders us relief, ("The mills of the gods grind late, but they grind fine.")

We call him cruel ; years to moments shrink,

GREEK POET. Ages to years. The telescope is turned. Though the mills of God grind slowly, yet they To man's false optics (from his folly false) grind exceeding small;

Time, in advance, behind him hides his wings, Though with patience he stands waiting, with

And seems to creer, decrepit with his age ; exactness grinds he all.

Behold him when past by ; what then is seen From the German of F. VON LOGAU. Trans But his broad pinions, swifter than the winds ? lation of H. W. LONGFELLOW. And all mankind, in contradiction strong,

Rueful, aghast, cry out on his career.

RICHARD HENRY STODDARD.

TIME.

Ye well arrayed ! ye lilies of our land !

Ye lilies male ! who neither toil nor spin
FROM `NIGHT THOUGHTS," NIGHT I.

(As sister-lilies might) if not so wise
The bell strikes one : we take no note of time, As Solonion, more sumptuous to the sight!
But from its loss. To give it, then, a tongue, Ye delicate ! who nothing can support,
Is wise in man. As if an angel spoke,

Yourselves most insupportable ! for whom
I feel the solemn sound. If heard aright, The winter rose must blow, the sun put on
It is the knell of my departed hours :

A brighter beam in Leo ; silky-soft
Where are they? With the years beyond the flood. Favonins, breathe still softer, or be chid ;
It is the signal that demands despatch;

And other worlds send odors, sauce, and song, How much is to be done ! my hopes and fears | And robes, and notions, framed in foreign looms ! Start up alarmed, and o'er life's narrow verge () ye Lorenzos of our age ! who deem Look down - on what ? a fathomless abyss ; One moment unamused a misery A dread eternity ; how surely mine!

Not made for feeble man ! who call aloud And can eternity belong to me,

For every baw ble drivelled o'er by sense ; Poor pensioner on the bounties of an hour ? For rattles, and conceits of every cast,

For change of follies and relays of joy,

prize!”

To drag you patient through the tedious length 1

WHAT IS TIME?
Of a short winter's day, — say, sages ! say,
Wit's oracles ! say, dreamers of gay dreams!

| I ASKED an aged man, with hoary hairs, How will you weather an eternal night,

Wrinkled and curved with worldly cares : Where such expedients fail ?

“ Time is the warp of life,” said he ; “0, tell DR. EDWARD YOUNG. The young, the fair, the gay, to weave it well !"

I asked the ancient, venerable dead,

Sages who wrote, and warriors who bled :
PROCRASTINATION.

From the cold grave a hollow murmur flowed,
FROM "NIGHT THOUGHTS,” NIGHT I.

“Time sowed the seed we reap in this abode !" Be wise to-day; 't is madness to defer ; I asked a dying sinner, ere the ide Next day the fatal precedent will plead ; Of life had left his veins : “Time !" he replied ; Thus on, till wisdom is pushed out of life. “I've lost it! ah, the treasure !” and he died. Procrastination is the thief of time ;

I asked the golden sun and silver spheres, Year after year it steals, till all are fled,

Those bright chronometers of days and years : And to the mercies of a moment leaves

They answered, “ Time is but a meteor glare," The vast concerns of an eternal scene.

And bade me for eternity prepare. If not so frequent, would not this be strange ? I asked the Seasons, in their annual round, That 't is so frequent, this is stranger still. Which beautify or desolate the ground;

Of man's miraculous mistakes this bears And they replied (no oracle more wise), The palm, “ That all men are about to live," "'Tis Folly's blank, and Wisdom's highest Forever on the brink of being born. All pay themselves the compliment to think I asked a spirit lost, -- but O the shriek They one day shall not drivel : and their pride 'That pierced my soul ! I shudder while I speak On this reversion takes up realy praise ; It cried, “A particle ! a speck! a mite At least, their own ; their future selves applaud :Of endless years, duration infinite!” How excellent that life they ne'er will lead ! of things inanimate my dial I Time lodged in their own hands is folly's veils ; Consulted, and it made me this reply,That lodged in Fate's, to wisdom they consign; “Time is the season fair of living well, The thing they can't but purpose, they postpone: The path of glory or the path of hell." "T is not in folly not to scorn a fool,

I asked my Bible, and methinks it said, And scarce in human wisdom to do more. “ Time is the present hour, the past has fed ; All promise is poor dilatory man,

Live! live to-day! to-morrow never yet And that through every stage. When young, On any human being rose or set." indeed,

I asked old Father Time himself at last; Iu full content we sometimes nobly rest, But in a moment he flew swiftly past ; Unanxious for ourselves, and only wish,

His chariot was a cloud, the viewless wind As duteous sons, our fathers were more wise. His noiseless steeds, which left no trace behind. At thirty, man suspects himself a fool ;

I asked the mighty angel who shall stand Knows it at forty, and reforms his plan ; One foot on sea and one on solid land : At fifty, chides his infamous delay,

| “Mortal !" he cried, “the mystery now is o'er ; Pushes his prudent purpose to resolve ;

| Time was, Time is, but Time shall be no more !" In all the magnanimity of thought,

WILLIAM MARSDEN. Resolves, and re-resolves; then dies the same. And why? Because he thinks himself immortal.

THE JESTER'S SERMON. All men think all men mortal but themselves; Themselves, when some alarming shock of fate The Jester shook his hood and bells, and leaped Strikes through their wounded hearts the sudden upon a chair; dread ;

The pages laughed, the women screamed, and But their hearts wounded, like the wounded air, tossed their scented hair ; Soon close ; where passed the shaft, no trace is The falcon whistled, staghounds bayed, the lapfound.

dog barked without, As from the wing no scar the sky retains, The scullion dropped the pitcher brown, the cook The parted wave no furrow from the keel,

railed at the lout; So dies in human hearts the thought of death : The steward, counting out his gold, let pouch Even with the tender tears which Nature sheds

and money fall, O'er those we love, we drop it in their grave. And why? because the Jester rose to say grace

DR. EDWARD YOUNG. I in the hall !

GEORGE WALTER THORNBURY

The page played with the heron's plume, the | Then lond they laughed; the fat cook's tears ran steward with his chain ;

down into the pan ; The butler drumined upon the board, and laughed The steward shook, that he was forced to drop with might and main ;

the brimming can ; The grooms beat on their metal cans, and roared | And then again the women screamed, and every till they were red, -

staghound bayed, But still the Jester shut his eyes and rolled his And why? because the motley fool so wise a serwitty head,

mon made. And when they grew a little still, read half a

yard of text, And, waving hand, struck on the desk, then frowned like one perplexed.

ON AN INTAGLIO HEAD OF MINERVA. “Dear singers all," the fool began, “man's life

The cunning hand that carved this face,

A little helmeted Minerva, -is but a jest, A dream, a shadow, bubble, air, a vapor at the

The hand, I say, ere Phidias wrought,

Had lost its subtile skill and fervor. best. In a thousand rounds of law I find not a single, who was he? Was he glad or sad, ounce of love ;

Who knew to carve in such a fashion ? A blind man killed the parson's cow in shooting | Perchance he shaped this dainty head at the dove ;

For some brown girl that scorned his passio n The fool that eats till he is sick must fast till he is well;

But he is dust : we may not know The wooer who can flatter most will bear away! His happy or unhappy story : the belle.

Nameless, and dead these thousand years,

His work outlives him, – there's his glory! “Let no man halloo lie is safe till he is through

Both man and jewel lay in earth the wood ;

Beneath a lava-buried city; He who will not when he may, must tarry when

The thousand summers came and went, he should ;

With neither haste nor hate nor pity. He who laughs at crooked men should need walk very straight ;

The years wiped out the man, but left
0, he who once has won a name may lie abed] The jewel fresh as any blossom,
till eight;

Till some Visconti dug it up, -
Make haste to purchase house and land, be very To rise and fall on Mabel's bosom!

slow to wed;
True coral needs no painter's brush, nor need be O Roman brother! see how Time
daubed with red.

Your gracious hanıliwork has guarded,
See how your loving, patient art

Has come, at last, to be rewarded !
“ The friar, preaching, cursed the thief (the
pudding in his sleevel;

Who would not suffer slights of men, To fish for sprats with golden hooks is foolish, And pangs of hopeless passion also, by your leave;

| To have his carven agate-stone
To travel well, — an ass's ears, hog's month, and On such a bosom rise and fall so!

Ostrich legs;
He does not care a pin for thieves who limps

about and begs;
Be always first man at a feast and last man at a
fray ;

ON A FAN The short way round, in spite of all, is still the

THAT BELONGED TO THE MARQUISE DE POMMOUR. iongest way ; When the hungry curate licks the knife, there's

(BALLADE.) not much for the clerk ;

CHICKEN-SKIN, delicate, white, When the pilot, turning pale and sick, looks up

Painted by Carlo Vanloo, the storm grow's dark."

Loves in a riot of light,

THOMAS BAILBY ALDRICH

Roses and vaporous blue ;

Slayer and slain, in heaps of bloody foam.
Hark to the dainty frou.frou!

Down go the steed and rider ; the plumed chief Picture above, if you can,

Sinks with his followers ; the head that wears
Eyes that could melt as the dew, --- The imperial diadem goes down beside
This was the Poinpadour's fan !

The felon's with cropped ear and branded cheek.

A funeral train – the torrent sweeps away See how they rise at the sight,

Bearers and bier and mourners. By the bed Thronging the Eil de Bauf through, Of one who dies men gather sorrowing, Courtiers as butterflies bright,

And women weep aloud ; the flood rolls on ;
Beauties that Fragonard drew,

The wail is stifled, and the sobbing group
Talon-rouge, falaba, queue,

Borne under. Hark to that shrill sudden shout Cardinal, duke, -- to a man,

The cry of an applauding multitude
Eager to sigh or to suie, —

Swayed by some loud-tongued orator who wields This was the Pompadour's fan !

The living mass, as if he were its soul.

The waters choke the shout and all is still. Ah, but things more than polite

Lo, next, a kneeling crowd and one who spreads Hung on this toy, voyez-vous !

The hands in prayer ; the engulfing wave o'erMatters of state and of might,

takes Things that great ministers do ;

And swallows them and him. A sculptor wields Things that, maybe, overthrew

The chisel, and the stricken marble grows
Those in whose brains they began ; -

To beauty ; at his easel, eager-eyed,
Here was the sign and the cue, -

A painter stands, and sunshine, at bis touch, This was the Pompadour's fan!

Gathers upon the canvas, and life glows;
ENVOY.

A poet, as he paces to and fro,

Murmurs his sounding line. Awhile they ride Where are the secrets it knew?

The advancing billow, till its tossing crest
Weavings of plot and of plan?

Strikes them and flings them under while their - But where is the Pompadour, too?

tasks
This was the Pompadour's fan!

Are yet unfinished. See a mother smile
On her young babe that smiles to her again -
The torrent wrests it from her arms; she shrieks,

And weeps, and midst her tears is carried down.
THE FLOOD OF YEARS.

A beam like that of moonlight turns the spray A MIGHTY Hand, from an exhaustless urn, To glistening pearls ; two lovers, hand in hand, Pours forth the never-ending Flood of Years Rise on the billowy swell and fondly look Among the nations. How the rushing waves Into each other's eyes. The rushing flood Bear all before them! On their foremost edge, Flings them apart; the youth goes down; the And there alone, is Life ; the Present there

maid, Tosses and foams and fills the air with roar With hands outstretched in vain and streaming Of mingled noises. There are they who toil,

eyes, And they who strive, and they who feast, and they waits for the next high wave to follow him. Who hurry to and fro. The sturdy hind - An aged man succeeds ; his bending form Woodman and delver with the spade—are there, Sinks slowly ; mingling with the sullen stream And busy artisan beside his bench,

Gleam the white locks and they are seen no more. And pallid student with his written roll.

Lo, wider grows the stream ; a sea-like flood A mornent on the mounting billow seen - Saps earth's walled cities ; massive palaces The flood sweeps over them and they are gone. Crumble before it ; fortresses and towers There groups of revellers, whose brows are twined Dissolve in the swift waters ; populous realms, With roses, ride the topmost swell awhile, Swept by the torrent, see their ancient tribes And as they raise their flowing cups to touch Engulfed and lost, their very languages The clinking brim to brim, are whirled beneath Stifled and never to be uttered more. The waves and disappear. I hear the jar

I pause and turn my eyes, and, looking back, Of beaten drums, and thunders that break forth Where that tumultuous flood has passed, I see From canuon, where the advancing billow sends The silent Ocean of the Past, a waste Up to the sight long files of armed men,

of waters weltering over graves, its shores That hurry to the charge through flame and smoke. Strewn with the wreck of fleets, where mast and The torrent bears them under, whelmed and hid, hull

AUSTIN DOBSON,

Drop away piecemeal ; battlemented walls | Their households happy -- all are raised and borne Frown idly, green with moss, and temples stand By that great current on its onward sweep, Unroofed, forsaken by the worshippers.

Wandering and rippling with caressing waves There lie memorial stones, whence time has Around green islands, fragrant with the breath gnawed

Of flowers that never wither. So they pass, The graven legends, thrones of kings o'erturned, From stage to stage, along the shining course The broken altars of forgotten gods,

Of that fair river broadening like a sea. Foundations of old cities and long streets | As its smooth eddies curl along their way, Where never fall of human foot is heard

They bring old friends together ; hands are Upon the desolate pavement. I behold

clasped Dim glimmerings of lost jewels far within In joy unspeakable ; the mother's arms The sleeping waters, diamond, sardonyx, Again are folded round the child she loved Ruby and topaz, pearl and chrysolite,

And lost. Old sorrows are forgotten now, Once glittering at the banquet on fair brows Or but remembered to make sweet the hour That long ago were dust; and all around, | That overpays them ; wounded hearts that bled Strewn on the waters of that silent sea,

Or broke are healed forever. In the room Are withering bridal wreaths, and glossy locks of this grief-shadowed Present there shall be Shorn from fair brows by loving hands, and scrolls A Present in whose reign no grief shall gnaw O'erwritten – haply with fond words of love The heart, and never shall a tender tie And vows of friendship --- and fair pages flung Be broken — in whose reign the eternal Change Fresh from the printer's engine. There they lie That waits on growth and action shall proceed A moment and then sink away from sight. With everlasting Concord hand in hand. I look, and the quick tears are in my eyes,

WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.
For I behold, in every one of these,
A blighted hope, a separate history
Of human sorrow, telling of dear ties

THREE DAYS.
Suddenly broken, dreams of happiness
Dissolved in air, and happy days, too brief,

So much to do : so little done!
That sorrowfully ended, and I think

Ah ! yesternight I saw the sun How painfully must the poor heart have beat

Sink beamless down the vaulted gray, — In bosoms without number, as the blow

The ghastly ghost of YESTERDAY. Was struck that slew their hope or broke their

peace. Sadly I turn, and look before, where yet

So little done : so much to do! The Flood must pass, and I behold a mist

Each morning breaks on conflicts new ; Where swarm dissolving forms, the brood of Hope,

But eager, brave, I'll join the fray,
Divinely fair, that rest on banks of Howers

And fight the battle of TO-DAY.
Or wander among rainbows, fading soon
And reappearing, haply giving place

So much to do : so little done!
To shapes of grisly aspect, such as Fear

But when it's o'er, -- the victory won, Moulds from the idle air ; where serpents lift

Oh! then, my soul, this strife and sorrow The head to strike, and skeletons stretch forth

Will end in that great, glad To-MORROW.
The bony arm in menace. Further on
A belt of darkness seems to bar the way,
Long, low and distant, where the Life that Is
Touches the Life to come. The Flood of Years

INSIGNIFICANT EXISTENCE.
Rolls toward it, nearer and nearer. It must pass
That dismal barrier. What is there beyond ? There are a number of us creep
Hear what the wise and good have said. Beyond Into this world, to eat and sleep;
That belt of darkness still the years roll on

And know no reason why we're born,
More gently, but with not less mighty sweep. But only to consume the corn,
They gather up again and softly bear

Devour the cattle, fowl, and fish,
All the sweet lives that late were overwhelmed And leave behind an empty dish.
And lost to sight -- all that in them was good, The crows and ravens do the same,
Noble, and truly great and worthy of love --

Unlucky birds of hateful name ; The lives of infants and ingenuous youths,

Ravens or crow's might fill their places, Sages and saintly women who have made

And swallow corn and carcasses,

JAMES R. GILMORE