His friends not false, his wife no shrew,

You've had your three sufficient warnings ; Many his gains, his children few,

So come along, no more we'll part." He passed his hours in peace.

He said, and touched him with his dart. But while he viewed his wealth increase,

And now, Old Dodson, turning pale, While thus along life's dusty road

Yields to his fate, --- so ends my tale. The beaten track content he trod,

HESTER LYNCH THRALE
Old Time, whose haste no mortal spares,
Uncalled, unheeded, unawares,
Brought on his eightieth year.

WITHOUT AND WITHIN.
And now, one night, in musing mood,
As all alone he sate,

If every man's internal care
The unwelcome messenger of Fate

Were written on his brow, Once more before him stood.

How many would our pity share

Who raise our envy now? Half killed with anger and surprise, “So soon returned !” Old Dodson cries.

The fatal secret, when revealed, “So soon, d'ye call it !” Death replies ;

Of every aching breast, “Surely, my friend, you 're but in jest !

Would prove that only while concealed Since I was here before

Their lot appeared the best.

METASTASIO. 'Tis six-and-thirty years at least, And you are now fourscore."

ODE. “So much the worse," the clown rejoined ;

INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY FROM RECOLLECTIONS op “ To spare the aged would be kind :

EARLY CHILDHOOD. However, see your search be legal ;

THERE was a time when meadow, grove, and And your authority, -- is 't regal ! Else you are come on a fool's errand,

stream, With but a secretary's warrant.

The earth, and every common sight,

To me did seem
Beside, you promised me three warnings,
Which I have looked for nights and mornings ;

Apparelled in celestial light, -
But for that loss of time and ease

The glory and the freshness of a dream.

It is not now as it hath been of yore : I can recover damages."

Turn wheresoe'er I may, “I know," cries Death, “that at the best

By night or day, I seldom am a welcome guest;

The things which I have seen I now can see no But don't be captious, friend, at least :

more. I little thought you 'd still be able

The rainbow comes and goes, To stump about your farm and stable :

And lovely is the rose; Your years have run to a great length ;

The moon doth with delight I wish you joy, though, of your strength !” | Look round her when the heavens are bare ;

Waters on a starry night “Hold," says the farmer, “not so fast !

Are beautiful and fair ; I have been lame these four years past."

The sunshine is a glorious birth ; “And no great wonder," Death replies :

But yet I know, where'er I go, “However, you still keep your eyes ;

| That there hath passed away a glory from the And sure, to see one's loves and friends

earth. For legs and arms would make amends."

"Perhaps," says Dodson, “so it might, Now, while the birds thus sing a joyous song, But latterly I've lost my sight.”

And while the young lambs bound “This is a shocking tale, 't is true ;

As tu the tabor's sound, But still there's comfort left for you :

To me alone there came a thought of grief ; Each strives your sadness to amuse ;

A timely utterance gave that thought relief, I warrant you hear all the news."

And I again am strong. "There's none,” cries he ; "and if there were, The cataracts blow their trumpets from the I'm grown so dleaf, I could not hear."

“Nay, then,” the spectre stern rejoined, No more shall grief of mine the season wrong. " These are unjustifiable yearnings :

I hear the echoes through the nountains throng; If you are lame and deaf and blind,

The winds come to me from the fields of sleep.

steep,

And all the earth is gay ;

Forget the glories he hath known,
Land and sea

And that imperial palace whence he came.
Give themselves up to jollity ;
And with the heart of May

Behold the child among his new-born blisses, ---
Doth every beast keep holiday ; --

A six years' darling of a pygmy size!
Thou child of joy,

See, where mid work of his own hand he lies, Shout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou

Fretted by sallies of his mother's kisses, happy shepherd boy !

With light upon him from his father's eyes !

See, at his feet, some little plan or chart, Ye blessed creatures ! I have heard the call Some fragment from his dream of human life, Ye to each other make ; I see

Shaped by himself with newly learned art, — The heavens laugh with you in your jubilee ;

A wedding or a festival,
My heart is at your festival,

A mourning or a funeral ; -
My head hath its coronal, -

And this hath now his heart,
The fulness of your bliss, I feel, I feel it all.

And unto this he frames his song :
O evil day! if I were sullen

Then will he fit his tongue
While Earth herself is adorning,

To dialogues of business, love, or strife ;
This sweet May morning,

But it will not be long
And the children are culling,

Ere this be thrown aside,
On every side,

And with new joy and pride
In a thousand valleys far and wide, The little actor cons another part, -

Fresh flowers; while the sun shines warm, Filling from time to time his "humorous stage "
And the babe leaps up on his mother's arm ; With all the persons, down to palsied age,
I hear, I hear, with joy I hear ! -

That Life brings with her in her equipage ; But there's a tree, of many, one,

As if his whole vocation
A single field which I have looked upon, -

Were endless imitation..
Both of them speak of something that is gone;
The pansy at my feet

| Thou, whose exterior semblance doth belie Doth the same tale repeat.

Thy soul's immensity! Whither is fled the visionary gleam ?

Thou best philosopher, who yet dost keep Where is it now, the glory and the dream Thy heritage ! thou eye among the blind,

That, deaf and silent, read'st the eternal deep,
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting ; Haunted forever by the eternal mind ! —
The soul that rises with us, our life's star,

Mighty prophet ! Seer blest !
Hath had elsewhere its setting,

On whom those truths do rest
And cometh from afar :

Which we are toiling all our lives to find,
Not in entire forgetfulness,

In darkness lost, the darkness of the grave;
And not in utter nakedness,

Thou over whom thy immortality
But trailing clouds of glory, do we come Broods like the day, a master o'er a slave,
From God, who is our home :

A presence which is not to be put by ;
Heaven lies about us in our infancy !

Thou little child, yet glorious in the might Shades of the prison-house begin to close Of heaven-born freedom on thy being's height, Upon the growing Boy ;

Why with such earnest pains dost thou provoke But he beholds the light, and whence it flows, - The years to bring the inevitable yoke, He sees it in his joy ;

Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife ?
The Youth, who daily farther from the east Full soon thy soul shall have her earthly freight,

Must travel, still is nature's priest And custom lie upon thee with a weight
And by the vision splendid

Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life !
Is on his way attended :
At length the Man perceives it die away,

O joy! that in our embers
And fade into the light of common day.

Is something that doth live ;

That Nature yet remembers Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own ;

What was so fugitive! Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind, The thought of our past years in me doth breed And even with something of a mother's mind, Perpetual benediction : not, indeed, And no unworthy aim,

For that which is most worthy to be blest, — The homely nurse doth all she can | Delight and liberty, the simple creed To make her foster-child, her inmate man, Of childhood, whether busy or at rest,

With new-fledgod hope still Auttering in his To live beneath your more habitual sway. breast :

I love the brooks which down their channels fret, Not for these I raise

Even more than when I tripped lightly as they ; The song of thanks and praise ;

The innocent brightness of a new-born day But for those obstinate questionings

Is lovely yet ; Of sense and outward things,

The clouds that gather round the setting sun Fallings from us, vanishings ;

Do take a sober coloring from an eye Blank misgivings of a creature

That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality; Moving about in worlds not realized,

Another race hath been, and other palms are won. High instincts, before which our mortal nature Thanks to the human heart by which we live, Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised : Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears, But for those first affections,

To me the meanest flower that blows can give Those shadowy recollections,

Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears. Which, be they what they may,

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. Are yet the fountain-light of all our day, Are yet a master light of all our seeing;

Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make SOLILOQUY: ON IMMORTALITY. Our noisy years seem moments in the being

FROM "CATO," ACT V. SC. 1. Of the eternal silence : truths that wake,

SCENE. - CATO, sitting in a thoughtfud posture, with Plato's To perish never ;

book on the Immortality of the Soul in his hand, and a drawn Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavor, sword on the table by him. Nor man nor boy,

It must be so --- Plato, thou reasonest well! Nor all that is at enmity with joy,

Else whence this pleasing hope, this fond desire, Can utterly abolish or destroy!

This longing after immortality! Hence, in a season of calm weather,

Or whence this secret dread, and inward horror, Though inland far we be,

Of falling into naught? Why shrinks the soul Our souls have sight of that immortal sea

Back on herself, and startles at destruction ? Which brought us hither,

’T is the divinity that stirs within us ; Can in a moment travel thither,

'Tis Heaven itself, that points out a hereafter, And see the children sport upon the shore,

And intimates eternity to man. And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.

Eternity ! - thou pleasing, dreadful thought !

Through what variety of untried being, Then sing, ye birds, sing, sing a joyous song ! Through what new scenes and changes, must we And let the young lambs bound

pass! As to the tabor's sound !

The wide, the unbounded prospect lies before me; We in thought will join your throng,

But shadows, clouds, and darkness rest upon it.
Ye that pipe and ye that play,

Here will I hold. If there's a Power above us
Ye that through your hearts to-day (And that there is, all Nature cries aloud
Feel the gladness of the May !

Through all her works), he must delight in What though the radiance which was once so virtue ; bright

And that which he delights in must be happy. Be now forever taken from my sight,

But when ? or where? This world was made for Though nothing can bring back the hour 1 Cæsar. Of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower ; I'm weary of conjectures, — this must end 'em. We will grieve not, rather find

(Laying his hand on his sword.) Strength in what remains behind ;

Thus am I doubly armed : my death and life,
In the primal sympathy

My bane and antidote, are both before me :
Which, having been, must ever be ;
In the soothing thoughts that spring

This in a moment brings me to an end ;
Out of human suffering ;

But this informs me I shall never die.
In the faith that looks through death,

| The soul, secured in her existence, smiles In years that bring the philosophic mind.

At the drawn dagger, and defies its point.
The stars snail faile away, the sun himself

Grow dim with age, and Nature sink in years ;
And 0 ye fountains, meadows, hills, and groves, But thou shait nourish in immortal youth,
Forebode not any severing of our loves ! Unhurt amid the war of elements,
Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might;

The wrecks of matter, and the crush of worlds ! I only have relinquished one delight

JOSEPH ADDISON.

0, MAY I JOIN THE CHOIR INVISIBLE ! | Lost in a gay and festal throng,

I tremble at some tender song, —
O, MAY I join the choir invisible
Of those immortal dead who live again

Set to an air whose golden bars
In minds made better by their presence ; live I must have heard in other stars.
In pulses stirred to generosity,

lu sacred aisles I pause to share In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn

The blessings of a priestly prayer, Of miserable aims that end with self, In thoughts sublime that pierve the night like: When the whole scene which greets mine eyes stars,

In some strange mode I recognize
And with their mild persistence urge men's minds

As one whose every mystic part
To vaster issues.
So to live is heaven :

| I feel prefigured in my heart. To make undying music in the world,

| At sunset, as I calmly stand, Breathing a beauteous order, that controls A stranger on an alien strand, With growing sway the growing life of man.

Familiar as my childhood's home
So we inherit that sweet purity
For which we struggled, failed, and agonized

Seems the long stretch of wave and foam.
With widening retrospect that bred despair. One sails toward me o'er the bay,
Rebellious flesh that would not be subdued, | And what he comes to do and say
A vicious parent shaming still its child,
Poor anxious penitence, is quick dissolved ;

I can foretell. A prescient lore Its discords quenched by meeting harmonies,

Springs from some life outlived of yore. Die in the large and charitable air.

O swift, instinctive, startling gleams
And all our rarer, better, truer self,

| 01 deep soul-knowledge ! not as dreams
That sobbed religiously in yearning song,
That watched to ease the burden of the world, For aye ye vaguely dawn and die,
Laboriously tracing what must be,

| But oft with lightning certainty And what may yet be better, — saw within

Pierce through the dark, oblivious brain, A worthier image for the sanctuary,

To make old thoughts and memories plain, And shaped it forth before the multitude, Divinely human, raising worship so

Thoughts which perchance must travel back To higher reverence more mixed with love, | Across the wild, bewildering track That better self shall live till human Time

Of countless wons ; memories far,
Shall fold its eyelids, and the human sky

High-reaching as yon pallid star,
Pie gathered like a scroll within the tomb,
Unread forever.

Unknown, scarce seen, whose flickering grace
This is life to come,

Faints on the outmost rings of space! Which martyred men have niade more glorious

PAUL HAMILTON HAYAE For us, who strive to follow.

May I reach That purest heaven, — be to other souls The cup of strength in some great agony,

A LOST CHORD. Enkindle generous ardor, feed pure love,

SEATED one day at the organ, Beget the smiles that have no cruelty,

I was weary and ill at ease, Be the sweet presence of a good diffused,

And my fingers wandered idly
And in diffusion ever more intense !

Over the noisy keys.
So shall I join the choir invisible,
Whose music is the gladness of the world.
MARIAN EVANS LEWES CROSS (George Eliol).

I do not know what I was playing,

Or what I was dreaming then,

But I struck one chord of music,
PRE-EXISTENCE.

• Like the sound of a great Amen. WHILE sauntering through the crowded street,

It flooded the crimson twilight, Some half-remembered face I meet,

Like the close of an angel's psalu, Albeit upon no mortal shore

And it lay on my fevered spirit, That face, methinks, has smiled before.

With a touch of infinite calm.

It quieted pain and sorrow,

Say, did these fingers delve the mine,
Like love overcoming strife ;

Or with the envied rubies shine ?
It seemed the harmonious echo

To hew the rock, or wear a gem,
From our discordant life.

Can little now avail to them ;

But if the page of Truth they sought,
It linked all perplexed meanings

Or comfort to the mourner brought,
Into one perfect peace,

These hands a richer meed shall claim
And trembled away into silence,

Than all that wait on Wealth and Fame.
As if it were loath to cease.

Avails it whether bare or shod
I have sought, but I seek it vainly,

These feet the paths of duty trod ?
That one lost chord divine,

If from the bowers of Ease they fled,
That came from the soul of the organ,

To seek Affliction's humble shed ;
And entered into mine.

If Grandeur's guilty bribe they spurned,

And home to Virtue's cot returned, —
It may be that Death's bright angel

These feet with angel wings shall vie,
Will speak in that chord again;

And tread the palace of the sky!
It may be that only in heaven

ANONYMOUS.
I shall hear that grand Amen.
ADELAIDE ANNE PROCTER.

THE BROTHERS.
SLUMBER, Sleep, — they were two brothers, ser-

vants to the gods above ;
TO A SKELETON.

Kind Prometheus lured them downwards, ever (The MS. of this poem, which appeared during the first quarter

filled with earthly love ; of the present century, was said to have been found in the Museum

d too of the Royal College of Surgeons, in London, near a perfect human skeleton, and to have been sent by the curator to the Morning

hard on men beneath ; Chronicle for publication. It excited so much attention that every Slumber did his brother's duty, - Sleep was effort was made to discover the author, and a responsible party went so far as to offer a reward of fifty guineas for inforination that

deepened into Death. would discover its origin. The author preserved his incognito, and,

From the German of GOETHE, we believe, has never been discovered.)