THE FIFTIETH BIRTHDAY OF

AGASSIZ.

MAY 28, 1857.

It was fifty years ago,

In the pleasant month of May,
In the beautiful Pays de Vaud,
A child in its cradle lay.

And Nature, the old nurse, took
The child upon her knee,
Saying, "Here is a story-book
Thy Father has written for thee."
"Come, wander with me," she said,
"Into regions yet untrod,
And read what is still unread

In the manuscripts of God." And he wandered away and away, With Nature, the dear old nurse, Who sang to him night and day The rhymes of the universe.

And whenever the way seemed long, Or his heart began to fail,

She would sing a more wonderful song,

Or tell a more marvellous tale.

A KING lived long ago,

In the morning of the world, When Earth was nigher Heaven than now:

And the King's locks curled Disparting o'er a forehead full As the milk-white space 'twixt horn and horn

Of some sacrificial bull.

Only calm as a babe new-born: For he was got to a sleepy mood,

So safe from all decrepitude, Age with its bane so sure gone by, (The gods so loved him while he dreamed,}

That, having lived thus long, there seemed

No need the King should ever die.

Among the rocks his city was; Before his palace, in the sun, He sat to see his people pass, And judge them every one From its threshold of smooth stone.

ROBERT BROWNING.

THE DESTRUCTION OF SENNACHERIB.

THE Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold,

And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold;

And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea,

When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.

Like the leaves of the forest when summer is green,

That host with their banners at sunset were seen:

Like the leaves of the forest when autumn hath blown,

That host on the morrow lay withered and strewn.

For the Angel of Death spread his wing on the blast,

And breathed in the face of the foe as he passed;

And the eyes of the sleepers waxed deadly and chill,

And their hearts but once heaved, and forever grew still.

And there lay the steed with his nostril all wide,

But through it there rolled not the breath of his pride;

And the foam of his gasping lay white on the turf,

And cold as the spray of the rockbeating surf.

And there lay the rider distorted and pale,

With the dew on his brow, and the rust on his mail;

And the tents were all silent, the banners alone,

The lances unlifted, the trumpet unblown.

And the widows of Ashur are loud in their wail,

And the idols are broke in the temple of Baal;

And the might of the Gentie, unsmote by the sword, Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord!

BYRON.