So was he sick at heart, and my pity strove to cheer him, But a deep and dismal gulf lay between comfort and his

soul.

Then I said, Surely, O Life, thy name is vanity and sorrow, Thy storms at noon are many, and thine eventide is clouded by remorse.

Now, when I thought upon these things, my heart was grieved within me:

I wept with bitterness of speech, and these were the words of my complaining:

"Wherefore then must happiness and love wither into care and vanity,

Wherefore is the bud so beautiful, but flower and fruit so blighted?

Hard is the lot of man; to be lured by the meteor of romance, Only to he snared, and to sink, in the turbid mudpool of reality."

SUDDENLY, a light, and a rushing presence, and a consciousness of something near me,—

I trembled, and listened, and prayed: then I knew the Angel of Life:

Vague, and dimly visible, mine eye could not behold him, As, calmly unimpassioned, he looked upon an erring crea

ture:

Unseen, my spirit apprehended him; though he spake not, yet I heard ;

For a sympathetic communing with him flashed upon my mind electric.

PENSIONER of God, be grateful; the gift of Life is good. The life of heart, and life of soul, mingled with life for the body.

Gladness and beauty are its just inheritance,-the beauty thou hast counted for romance:

And guardian spirits weep that selfishness and sorrow should

destroy it.

Thou hast seen the natural blessing marred into a curse by

man;

Come then, in favor will I show thee the proper excellence

of life.

Keep thou purity, and watch against suspicion,—love shall never perish;

Guard thine innocency spotless, and the buoyancy of childhood shall remain.

Sweet ideals feed the soul, thoughts of loveliness delight it, The chivalrous affection of uncalculating youth lacketh not honorable wisdom.

Charge not folly on invisibles, that render thee happier and

purer,

The fair frail visions of Romance have a use beyond the maxims of the Real.

BEHOLD, a patriarch of years, who leaneth on the staff of religion;

His heart is fresh, quick to feel, a bursting fount of generosity; He, playful in his wisdom, is gladdened in his children's

gladness,

He, pure in his experience, loveth in his son's first love: Lofty aspirations, deep affections, holy hopes are his delight; His abhorrence is to strip from Life its charitable garment of

Ideal.

The cold and callous sneerer, who heedeth of the merely practical,

And mocketh at good uses in imaginary things, that inan is his scorn:

The hard unsympathizing modern, filled with facts and figures,

Cautious, and coarse, and materialized in mind, that man is

his pity.

Passionate thirst for gain never hath burnt within his bosom,

The leaden chains of that dull lust have not bound him

prisoner:

The shrewd world laughed at him for honesty, the vain world mouthed at him for honor,

The false world hated him for truth, the cold world despised him for affection:

Still, he kept his treasure, the warm and noble heart,

And in that happy wise old man survive the child and lover. For human life is as Chian wine, flavored unto him who drinketh it,

Delicate fragrance comforting the soul, as needful substance for the body:

Therefore, see thou art pure and guileless; so shall thy Realities of Life

Be s'veetened, and tempered, and gladdened by the wholesome spirit of Romance.

Dost thou live, man, dost thou live,-or only breathe and labor?

Art thou free, or enslaved to a routine, the daily machinery of habit?

For one man is quickened into Life, where thousands exist as in a torpor,

Feeding, toiling, sleeping, an insensate weary round:

The plough, or the ledger, or the trade, with animal cares and indolence,

Make the mass of vital years a heavy lump unleavened, Drowsily lie down in thy dullness, fettered with the irons of

circumstance,

Thou wilt not wake to think and feel a minute in a month. The epitome of common life is seen in the common epitaph, Born on such a day, and dead on such another, with an

interval of threescore years.

For tine hath been wasted on the senses, to the hourly diminishing of spirit;

Lean is the soul and pineth, in the midst of ab indance for

the body:

He forgat the worlds to which he tended, and a creature's true

nobility,

Nor wished that hope and wholesome fear should stir him from his hardened satisfaction.

And this is death in life; to be sunk beneath the waters of the Actual,

Without one feebly-struggling sense of an airier spiritual realm:

Affection, fancy, feeling-dead; in agination, conscience,

faith,

All wilfully expunged, till they leave he man mere carcase. See thou livest, whiles thou art: for heart must live, and

soul,

But care and sloth and sin and self, combine to kill that life. A man will grow to an automaton, an appendage to the counter or the desk,

If mind and spirit be not roused to raise the plodding gro

veller.

The praise God for sabbaths, for books, and dreams, and

pains,

For the recreative face of nature, and the kindling charities

of home:

And remember, thou that laborest,-thy leisure is not loss, If it help to expose and undermine that solid falsehood, the Material.

LIFE is a strange avenue of various trees and flowers; Lightsome at commencement, but darkening to its end in a distant massy portal.

It beginneth as a little path, edged with the violet and prim

rose,

A little path of lawny grass, and soft to tiny feet:

Soon, spring thistles in the way, those early griefs of school, And fruit-trees ranged on either hand show holiday delights:

Anon, the rose and the mimosa hint at sensitive affection, And vipers hide among the grass, and briars are woven in the hedges:

Shortly, staked along in order, stand the slender saplings, While hollow hemlock and tall ferns fill the frequent interval:

So advancing, quaintly mixed, majestic line the way

Sturdy oaks, and vigorous elms, the beech and forest-pine : And here the road is rough with rocks, wide, and scant of

herbage,

The sun is hot in heaven, and the ground is cleft and parched :

And many-times a holl w-trunk, decayed or lightning scathed,
Or in its deadly solitu e, the melancholy upas :

But soon, with closer ranks, are set the sentinel trees,
And darker shadows hover amongst Autumn's mellow tints:
Ever and anon, a holly,-junipers, and cypresses, and yews;
The soil is damp: the air is chill; night cometh on apace:
Speed to the portal, traveller,-lo, there is a moon,
With smiling light to guide thee safely through the dreadful
shade:

Hark, that hollow knock,-behold, the warder openeth,
The gate is gaping, and for thee;-those are the jaws of
Death!

OF DEATH.

KEEP silence, daughter of frivolity,-for Death is in that chamber!

Startle not with echoing sound the strangely solemn peace, Death is here in spirit, watcher of a marble corpse,

That eye is fixed, that heart is still,-how dreadful in its

stillness!

Death, new tenant of the house, pervadeth all the fabric;