The light that beams from out the sky,
Those heavenly mansions to unfold
Where all are blest, and none may sigh
"Im growing old !"

A REFLECTIVE RETROSPECT.

'Tis twenty years, and something more,
Since, all athirst for useful knowledge,
I took some draughts of classic lore,
Drawn, very mild, at Harvard College;
Yet I remember all that one

Could wish to hold in recollection,-
The boys, the joys, the noise, the fun;
But not a single Conic Section.

I recollect those harsh affairs,

The morning bells that gave us panics; I recollect the formal prayers,

That seemed like lessons in Mechanics;

I recollect the drowsy way

In which the students listened to them,

As clearly, in my wig, to-day,

As when, a boy, I slumbered through them.

I recollect the tutors all

As freshly now, if I may say so,

As any chapter I recall

In Homer or Ovidius Naso.

I recollect, extremely well,

"Old Hugh," the mildest of fanatics; I well remember Matthew Bell, But very faintly, Mathematics.

I recollect the prizes paid

For lessons fathomed to the bottom;
(Alas that pencil-marks should fade !)
I recollect the chaps who got 'em-
The light equestrians who soared

O'er every passage reckoned stony;
And took the chalks,—but never scored
A single honour to the pony.

Ah

me !-what changes Time has wrought, And how predictions have miscarried!A few have reached the goal they sought, And some are dead, and some are married; And some in city journals war ;

And some as politicians bicker; And some are pleading at the bar, For jury-verdicts, or for liquor.

Aud some on Trade and Commerce wait;
And some in schools with dunces battle;
And some the gospel propagate,

And some the choicest breeds of cattle;
And some are living at their ease;

And some were wrecked in "the revulsion;" Some serve the State for handsome fees, And one, I hear, upon compulsion.

Lamont, who in his college days

Thought e'en a cross a moral scandal,
Has left his Puritanic ways,

And worships now with bell and candle;
And Mann, who mourned the negro's fate,
And held the slave as most unlucky,
Now holds him at the market-rate
On a plantation in Kentucky.

Tom Knox, who swore in such a tone
It fairly might be doubted whether
It really was himself alone,

Or Knox and Erebus together,

Has grown a very altered man,

And, changing oaths for mild entreaty,

Now recommends the Christian plan
To savages in Otaheite.

Alas for young ambition's vow,

How envious Fate may overthrow it —

Poor Harvey is in Congress now,

Who struggled long to be a poet;

Smith carves (quite well) memorial stones,
Who tried in vain to make the law go;
Hall deals in hides; and "Pious Jones'
Is dealing faro in Chicago.

And, sadder still, the brilliant Hays,
Once honest, manly, and ambitious,
Has taken latterly to ways

"

Extremely profligate and vicious;
By slow degrees-I can't tell how-
He's reached at last the very groundsel,

And in New York he figures now,

A member of the Common Council!

EARLY RISING.

"GOD bless the man who first invented sleep !" So Sancho Panza said, and so say I : And bless him also that he didn't keep

His great discovery to himself; nor try To make it as the lucky fellow might— A close monopoly by patent right.

Yes-bless the man who first invented sleep (I really can't avoid the iteration);

But blast the man with curses loud and deep, Whate'er the rascal's name, or age, or station, Who first invented, and went round advising, That artificial cut-off-Early Rising!

"Rise with the lark, and with the lark to bed,"
Observes some solemn sentimental owl.
Maxims like these are very cheaply said;
But, ere you make yourself a fool or fowl,
Pray, just inquire about his rise and fall,
And whether larks have any beds at all!

"The time for honest folks to be abed"
Is in the morning, if I reason right;
And he who cannot keep his precious head
Upon his pillow till it's fairly light,
And so enjoy his forty morning winks,
Is up to knavery; or else he drinks.

Thomson, who sung about the "Seasons," said
It was a glorious thing to rise in season;
But then he said it-lying-in his bed,

At ten o'clock A.M.,-the very reason

He wrote so charmingly. The simple fact is, His preaching wasn't sanctioned by his practice.

'Tis, doubtless, well to be sometimes awake,Awake to duty, and awake to truth,

But when, alas! a nice review we take

Of our best deeds and days, we find, in sooth, The hours that leave the slightest cause to weep Are those we passed in childhood or asleep!

'Tis beautiful to leave the world awhile

For the soft visions of the gentle night;
And free, at last, from mortal care or guile,
To live as only in the angels' sight,
In sleep's sweet realm so cosily shut in,
Where, at the worst, we only dream of sin.

So, let us sleep, and give the Maker praise.—
I like the lad who, when his father thought
To clip his morning nap by hackneyed phrase

Of vagrant worm by early songster caught,
Cried, "Served him right! it's not at all surprising;
The worm was punished, sir, for early rising!"

LITTLE JERRY, THE MILLER.

A BALLAD.

BENEATH the hill you may see the mill,
Of wasting wood and crumbling stone;
The wheel is dripping and clattering still,
But Jerry, the miller, is dead and gone.

Year after year, early and late,

Alike in summer and winter weather,
He pecked the stones and calked the gate,
And mill and miller grew old together.

"Little Jerry!"--'twas all the same,—
They loved him well who called him so ;
And whether he'd ever another name
Nobody ever seemed to know.

'Twas "Little Jerry, come grind my rye;"
And "Little Jerry, come grind my wheat;"

And "Little Jerry" was still the cry,

From matron bold and maiden sweet.

"Twas "Little Jerry" on every tongue,
And so the simple truth was told;
For Jerry was little when he was young,
And Jerry was little when he was old.

But what in size he chanced to lack,
That Jerry made up in being strong;
I've seen a sack upon his back

As thick as the miller and quite as long.

Always busy, and always merry,
Always doing his very best,

A notable wag was Little Jerry,

Who uttered well his standing jest.

How Jerry lived is known to fame,

But how he died there's none may know;

One autumn day the rumour came-
"The brook and Jerry are very low."

And then 'twas whispered mournfully,
The leech had come, and he was dead;
And all the neighbours flocked to see ;-
"Poor Little Jerry !' was all they said.

They laid him in his earthly bed-
His miller's coat his only shroud—
"Dust to dust," the parson said,

And all the people wept aloud.

For he had shunned the deadly sin,
And not a grain of over-toll
Had ever dropped into his bin,

To weigh upon his parting soul.

Beneath the hill there stands the mill,

Of wasting wood and crumbling stone;
The wheel is dripping and clattering still,
But Jerry, the miller, is dead and gone.

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.

[Born in Boston in 1819; Professor of Modern Languages in Harvard College. A writer of critical and other prose works, as well as of poetry. His serious poems have secured a large, and deserved a not inconsiderable, measure of admiration: but his humorous Biglow Papers, written in Yankee dialect, seem more likely to live with a genuine life than anything else from his pen].

FESTINA LENTE.

ONCE on a time there was a pool
Fringed all about with flag-leaves cool,
And spotted with cow-lilies garish,
Of frogs and pouts the ancient parish.
Alders the creaking redwings sink on,
Tussocks that house blithe Bob o' Lincoln,
Hedged round the unassailed seclusion,
Where muskrats piled their cells Carthusian;
And many a moss-embroidered log,
The watering-place of summer frog,
Slept and decayed with patient skill,
As watering-places sometimes will.

Now in this Abbey of Theleme,
Which realized the fairest dream
That ever dozing bull-frog had,
Sunned on a half-sunk lily-pad,
There rose a party with a mission
To mend the polliwog's condition,