Shall make a clearer faith and manhood shine

In the untutor'd heart.

He who doth this, in verse or prose,

May be forgotten in his day,

But surely shall be crown'd at last with those
Who live and speak for aye.

JAMES RUSSEll Lowell.

ON A FLY-LEAF OF A BOOK OF OLD PLAYS.

AT Cato's Head in Russel Street
These leaves she sat a-stitching;

I fancy she was trim and neat,
Blue-eyed and quite bewitching.

Before her on the street below,
All powder, ruffs, and laces,
There strutted idle London beaux
To ogle pretty faces;

While, filling many a Sedan chair
With monstrous hoop and feather,
In paint and powder London's fair
Went trooping past together.

Swift, Addison, and Pope, mayhap
They sauntered slowly past her,
Or printer's boy, with gown and cap
For Steele, went trotting faster.

For beau nor wit had she a look ;

Nor lord nor lady minding,

She bent her head above this book,
Attentive to her binding.

And one stray thread of golden hair,
Caught on her nimble fingers,
Was stitched within this volume, where
Until to-day it lingers.

Past and forgotten, beaux and fair,
Wigs, powder, all outdated;
A queer antique, the Sedan chair,
Pope, stiff and antiquated.

Yet as I turn these odd, old plays,
This single stray lock finding,
I'm back in those forgotten days
And watch her at her binding.

WALTER LEARNED.

THEOCRITUS.

DAPHNIS is mute, and hidden nymphs complain,

And mourning mingles with their fountain's song;

Shepherds contend no more, as all day long They watch their sheep on the wide cyprus-plain;

The master-voice is silent, songs are vain;

Blithe Pan is dead, and tales of ancient wrong, Done by the gods when gods and men were

strong,

Chanted to reeded pipes, no prize can gain:
O sweetest singer of the olden days,

In dusty books your idyls rare seem dead;

The gods are gone, but poets never die; Though men may turn their ears to newer lays, Sicilian nightingales enraptured

Caught all your songs, and nightly thrill the sky.

MAURICE FRANCIS EGAN.

IDENTITY.

SOMEWHERE-in desolate wind-swept space-
In Twilight-land-in No-man's-land—
Two hurrying Shapes met face to face,
And bade each other stand.

"And who are you?" cried one, agape,
Shuddering in the gloaming light.
"I know not," said the second Shape,
"I only died last night!"

LIFE.

T. B. ALDRICH.

AN infant on its mother's breast

A bouncing boy at play-
A youth by maiden fair caress'd-

An old man silver gray—

Is all of life we know:

A joy-a fear

A smile-a tear

And all is o'er below!

RICHARD COE, Jr.

STANZAS.

THOUGHT is deeper than all speech;
Feeling deeper than all thought:
Souls to souls can never teach

What unto themselves was taught.

We are spirits clad in veils :

Man by man was never seen: All our deep communing fails

To remove the shadowy screen.

Heart to heart was never known:
Mind with mind did never meet:
We are columns left alone,

Of a temple once complete.

Like the stars that gem the sky,
Far apart, though seeming near,

In our light we scattered lie;

All is thus but starlight here.

What is social company

But a babbling summer-stream?

What our wise philosophy

But the glancing of a dream?

Only when the sun of love

Melts the scatter'd stars of thought,
Only when we live above

What the dim-eyed world hath taught,

Only when our souls are fed

By the Fount that gave them birth,
And by inspiration led

Which they never drew from earth;

We, like parted drops of rain,
Swelling till they meet and run,
Shall be all absorb'd again,

Melting, flowing into one.

CHRISTOPHER P. CRANCH.

A DEAD FRIEND.

THIS dead man, soon to seek oblivious earth, Was loyally my friend, and loved me well. For him no shadow of blame that could repel

His reverence, in my honored life had birth. Like some famed knight, admired for brawn and girth

By the young warrior eager to excel,

Ideal in his fond heart I seemed to dwell, The exemplar and high paragon of worth!

Now sternly, while I linger where he lies,

A burdening shame upon my bosom weighs. .