The stranger, slave, or savage; their decay Has dried up realms to deserts:-not so thou, Unchangeable save to thy wild waves' play Time writes no wrinkle on thine azure brow ;- Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty's form Of the Invisible !-Even from out thy slime The monsters of the deep are made! Each zone Obeys thee! Thou go'st forth, dread! fathomless! alone! Ex. XCIII.-THE WORLD FOR SALE. THE world for sale! REV. RALPH HOYT. Hang out the sign; Who'll buy this brave estate of mine, It is a glorious sight to see, But, ah! it has deceived me sore; For sale! it shall be mine no more. I would not have you purchase dear. 'Tis going! going! I must sell! Who bids? who 'll buy the splendid tear? Here's Wealth, in glittering heaps of gold; Who 'll buy the heavy heaps of care? Hall, cottage, tree, field, hill, and plain ;- 'Tis going! Love and I must part! And, Friendship, rarest gem of earth; Who bids for Friendship-as it is? 'Tis going! going! hear the call; Once, twice and thrice, 'tis very low! How much for Fame? how much for Fame? Now purchase, and a world command!— Sweet star of Hope! with ray to shine Who bids for man's last friend, and best? Ah, were not mine a bankrupt life, This treasure should my soul sustain! Ambition, fashion, show and pride, Has taught my haughty heart to bow. Ex. XCIV.-THAT SILENT MOON. THAT silent moon, that silent moon, Have passed beneath her placid eye, How oft has guilt's unhallowed hand, Profaned her pure and holy light! With sights like these, that virgin queen. But dear to her, in summer eve, By rippling wave, or tufted grove, When hand in hand is purely clasped, And heart meets heart in holy love, To smile, in quiet loneliness, To hear each whispered vow, and bless. G. W. DOANE. Dispersed along the world's wide way, How powerful, too, to hearts that mourn, The happy eves of days gone by; And oft she looks, that silent moon, In dungeon dark, or sacred cell, Or couch, whence pain has banished sleep, Oh! softly beams that gentle eye, On those who mourn, and those who die. But beam on whomsoe'er she will, The dewy morn let others love, Or bask them in the noontide ray; Ex. XCV.-THE POET'S THEMES. TALFOURD. THE universe, in its majesty, and man in the plain dignity of his nature, are the poet's favorite themes. And is there no might, no glory, no sanctity in these? Earth has her own venerableness-her awful forests, which have darkened her hills for ages with tremendous gloom; her mysterious springs pouring out everlasting waters from unsearchable recesses; her wrecks of elemental contests; her jagged rocks, monumental of an earlier world. The lowliest of her beauties has an antiquity beyond that of the pyramids. The evening breeze has the old sweetness which it shed over the fields of Canaan, when Isaac went out to meditate. The Nile swells with its rich waters toward the bulrushes of Egypt, as when the infant Moses nestled among them, watched by the sisterly love of Miriam. Zion's hill has not yet passed away with its temple, nor lost its sanctity amidst the tumultuous changes around it, nor even by the accomplishment of that awful religion of types and symbols which once was enthroned on its steeps. The sun to which the poet turns his eye is the same which shone over Thermopyla; and the wind to which he listens swept over Salamis, and scattered the armaments of Xerxes. Is a poet utterly deprived of fitting themes, to whom ocean, earth, and sky are open-who has an eye for the most evanescent of nature's hues, and the most ethereal of her graces-who can "live in the rainbow and play in the plighted clouds," or send into our hearts the awful loveliness of regions" consecrate to eldest time ?" Is there nothing in man, considered abstractedly from the distinctions of this world-nothing in a being who is in the infancy of an immortal life-who is lackeyed by "a thousand liveried angels -who is even "splendid in ashes and pompous in the grave" --to awaken ideas of permanence, solemnity and grandeur? Are there no themes sufficiently exalted for poetry in the midst of death and life--in the desires and hopes which have their resting-place near the throne of the Eternal—in affections, strange and wondrous in their working, and unconquerable by time, or anguish, or destiny? Such objects, though not arrayed in any adventitious pomp, have a real and innate grandeur. Ex. XCVI.-TWO HUNDRED YEARS AGO. GRENVILLE MELLEN. WAKE your harp's music!-louder,-higher, And smite again each quivering wire, Shout like those godlike men of old, Who, daring storm and foe, On this blest storm their anthem rolled, From native shores by tempests driven, And found, beneath a milder heaven, The home of liberty! An altar rose,—and prayers,-—a ray Broke on their night of woe,— The harbinger of freedom's day, They clung around that symbol, too, Their refuge and their all; And swore, while skies and waves were blue, They stood upon the red man's sod, 'Neath heaven's unpillared bow, With home, a country, and a God, |