The light that beams from out the sky, A REFLECTIVE RETROSPECT. 'Tis twenty years, and something more, Could wish to hold in recollection,- 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; O'er every passage reckoned stony; 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 the choicest breeds of cattle; 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, And worships now with bell and candle; Tom Knox, who swore in such a tone Or Knox and Erebus together, Has grown a very altered man, And, changing oaths for mild entreaty, Now recommends the Christian plan 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, And, sadder still, the brilliant Hays, " Extremely profligate and vicious; 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," "The time for honest folks to be abed" Thomson, who sung about the "Seasons," said 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; So, let us sleep, and give the Maker praise.— Of vagrant worm by early songster caught, LITTLE JERRY, THE MILLER. A BALLAD. BENEATH the hill you may see the mill, Year after year, early and late, Alike in summer and winter weather, "Little Jerry!"--'twas all the same,— 'Twas "Little Jerry, come grind my rye;" And "Little Jerry" was still the cry, From matron bold and maiden sweet. "Twas "Little Jerry" on every tongue, But what in size he chanced to lack, As thick as the miller and quite as long. Always busy, and always merry, 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- And then 'twas whispered mournfully, They laid him in his earthly bed- And all the people wept aloud. For he had shunned the deadly sin, To weigh upon his parting soul. Beneath the hill there stands the mill, Of wasting wood and crumbling stone; 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 Now in this Abbey of Theleme, |