THE RESTLESS HEART.

A millstone and the human heart are driven ever round; If they have nothing else to grind, they must themselves be ground.

CHRISTIAN LOVE.

Whilom love was like a fire, and warmth and comfort it bespoke ;

But, alas! it now is quenched, and only bites us, like the smoke.

ART AND TACT.

Intelligence and courtesy not always are combined;
Often in a wooden house a golden room we find.

RETRIBUTION.

Though the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small;

Though with patience he stands waiting, with exactness grinds he all.

TRUTH.

When by night the frogs are croaking, kindle but a torch's fire,

Ha! how soon they all are silent! Thus truth silences the liar.

RHYMES.

If perhaps these rhymes of mine should sound not well in strangers' ears,

They have only to bethink them that it happens so with

theirs ;

For so long as words, like mortals, call a fatherland their

own,

They will be most highly valued where they are best and longest known.

Songs and Sonnets.

SEAWEED.

WHEN descends on the Atlantic

The gigantic

Storm-wind of the equinox,

Landward in his wrath he scourges

The toiling surges,

Laden with seaweed from the rocks:

From Bermuda's reefs; from edges
Of sunken ledges,

In some far-off, bright Azore;
From Bahama, and the dashing,
Silver-flashing

Surges of San Salvador;

From the tumbling surf, that buries
The Orkneyan skerries,

Answering the hoarse Hebrides;

And from wrecks of ships, and drifting

Spars, uplifting
On the desolate, rainy seas ;-

Ever drifting, drifting, drifting

On the shifting

Currents of the restless main;
Till in sheltered coves, and reaches
Of sandy beaches,

All have found repose again.

So when storms of wild emotion
Strike the ocean

Of the poet's soul, ere long

From each cave and rocky fastness,
In its vastness,

Floats some fragment of a song:

From the far-off isles enchanted,
Heaven has planted

With the golden fruit of Truth;
From the flashing surf, whose vision
Gleams elysian

In the tropic clime of Youth;

From the strong Will, and the Endeavour

That for ever

Wrestles with the tides of Fate;
From the wreck of Hopes far-scattered,
Tempest-shattered,

Floating waste and desolate

Ever drifting, drifting, drifting

On the shifting

Currents of the restless heart;

Till at length in books recorded,
They, like hoarded

Household words, no more depart.

THE DAY IS DONE.

THE day is done, and the darkness
Falls from the wings of Night,
As a feather is wafted downward
From an eagle in his flight.

I see the lights of the village

Gleam through the rain and the mist, And a feeling of sadness comes o'er me, That my soul cannot resist :

A feeling of sadness and longing,
That is not akin to pain,
And resembles sorrow only

As the mist resembles the rain.

Come, read to me some poem,
Some simple and heartfelt lay,
That shall soothe this restless feeling,
And banish the thoughts of day.

Not from the grand old masters,
Not from the bards sublime,
Whose distant footsteps echo
Through the corridors of Time.

For, like strains of martial music,
Their mighty thoughts suggest
Life's endless toil and endeavour;
And to-night I long for rest.

Read from some humbler poet,

Whose songs gushed from his heart,

As showers from the clouds of summer Or tears from the eyelids start;

Who, through long days of labour,
And nights devoid of ease,
Still heard in his soul the music
Of wonderful melodies.

Such songs have power to quiet

The restless pulse of care, And come like the benediction

That follows after prayer.

X

Then read from the treasured volume

The poem of thy choice,

And lend to the rhyme of the poet
The beauty of thy voice.

And the night shall be filled with music
And the cares, that infest the day,
Shall fold their tents, like the Arabs,
And as silently steal away.

AFTERNOON IN FEBRUARY.

THE day is ending,

The night is descending;

The marsh is frozen,

The river dead.

Through clouds like ashes
The red sun flashes

On village-windows

That glimmer red.

The snow recommences;

The buried fences

Mark no longer

The road o'er the plain;

While through the meadows,

Like fearful shadows,

Slowly passes

A funeral train.

The bell is pealing,
And every feeling
Within me responds

To the dismal knell ;