PRIZE POEM.*

Sir John Franklin.

BY ISAAC RILEY, MONTROSE, PA.

LOST! lost! lost!

Where fearful gloom and silence reign
O'er glacier, peak and frozen plain,
O'er snowy waste and billows tossed
By gales that sweep the Arctic main.

Lost! lost! a manly form,

A stalwart arm, a flashing eye,

A forehead, broad and lifted high,

A heart to brave the rising storm,

And wind, and wave, and low'ring sky.

Lost lost! no narrow bed

That loving tears can e'er bedew,--
No sodded mound beneath the yew
Whose "fibres knit the dreamless head,"
Can e'er entomb a heart more true.

The sails are set, the capstan manned,
The anchor lifted from the sand;
The wayward winds the banners toss
That crimson with Saint George's cross;
They curl the waves and lift the spray,
And bear the vessel down the bay:
And shoreward from the billows blue

The cannon sends its last adieu.

From deck, and shroud, and taper mast

The look of fond regret is cast

Toward cliffs and towers, that quickly fall

Beneath the far horizon wall;

While shaded brow and bosoms' swell

Of sad but hopeful partings tell.

With bending yard and tightening chain,
Like steed along the desert plain,
Like feathered shaft, or eagles' flight,
Or meteor hurled athwart the night,
The bark leaps o'er the rolling seas,

And longs to brave the Arctic breeze.

*This Poem, on one of the Subjects proposed to the Class of 1858, received a Prize in June last, but its publication has been unavoidably delayed till the present Number. [EDs.

From out the fog and twilight gloom
The cliffs of frozen Greenland loom,
With granite mail and icy helm,
Grim wardens of the winter's realm.
On, still on! by cape and peak
It rends the wave with iron beak:
Till barred by ice and lost in night,
It folds its wing and rests from flight.
Around the cheerful cabin fire

Brave hearts that scorn the winter's ire,
With song and tale and merry jest
Beguile the flagging hours of rest,-
Bright tales of far off, sunny waves,
Of spicy gales and coral caves,
Of singing palms along the Nile,
Of pyramid and ruined pile,
Of Sphinxes with eternal eyes,

Of Memnons and of cloudless skies,

Of Parian cliffs, 'neath which the Greek
By moonlight guides his light caïque,
Of reef and rock, of calm and gale,
Of corsair fierce and phantom sail.
Thus months roll on, when o'er the gloom

The Summer rears her flaming plume;

She storms each ice embattled hight,

And sunders wide the walls of night
With gleaming mace, and shaft of light.
On still on, the vessel flies

Toward colder seas and darker skies;
Where southward surging o'er the main,
The lordly iceberg leads its train
Of pale fantastic shapes of ice,
O'erwrought with many a quaint device.
White tombs and statues grim and stark,

And arches spanning caverns dark,
Proud domes, and towers, and parapets,
And sheaves of silver minarets,

And pillared fanes, like that which crowned
The rocky hight of classic ground;
And grand cathedral roofs that rise
On airy columns toward the skies,
'Neath which eternal anthems swell
And surges boom with echoing knell.
Along these Polar wastes by day
The low sun hurls his level ray;
At night across the crimson sky
Auroral splendors swiftly fly,

While o'er the starry fields of space
Pale phantoms flit with wavering pace;
Gay dancers wind with streaming hair
Their mazes through the midnight air;
And ranks with silver mail bedight
Hold tourney through the silent night,
With curling flag, and tent, and lance,
Far gleaming o'er the blue expanse.
Lo! in the west the storm cloud looms-
The tempest waves his sable plumes,
The lightnings dart, the thunders roll
Their volleying peals from pole to pole,
The clouds are rent, the billows curled,
The foam-wreaths to the sky are hurled,
While berg and floe with sullen roar
Are dashed upon the icy shore.
With swifter flight than falcon's sweep
The bark, before the howling gale,
Is driven madly o'er the deep

With flying rope and tattered sail,
While spars are snapped and timbers reel
And bend from taper mast to keel.
Yet still it bides the billows' shock,
Safe piloted o'er shoal and rock.

At last the fleeting days that twined
New garlands for all conquering mind,
And gathered trophies from the night,
Have spread their golden wings for flight.
While southward glimmering faint and far
The fleeing Summer wheels her car.
Again o'er Polar seas and plains
The cheerless gloom of midnight reigns,

And silence, save of billows' blow,

Of wailing wind and crashing floe.
The slumbering waves by mystic hands
Are bound with crystal bars and bands,
And icy arms the vessel clasp
Uplifting it with giant grasp:
There safe it lies till wandering tides
With circling ice beset its sides,
And pierce the oak, with fearful crash
That long has braved the billows' dash.
With sinking heart and quivering lip

The crew desert the sinking ship,

And trace across the heaving pack

With sledge and boat their cheerless track. One lingering hope alone remains,

It hovers near on radiant wings,
It beckons on toward southern plains,
And songs of far off Albion sings.
Through wind and storm, o'er many a league,
By famine pressed and sore fatigue,
O'er hill and plain and frozen bay,
For life they urge their weary way.
Soon manly hearts begin to fail
And ruddy cheeks grow thin and pale,
Unwonted lustre fires each eye,
And tells of wasting famine nigh.
Strange visions fill each wildered brain
Of cottage hours, and loving smiles,
Of cliffs, high towering o'er the main
Whose waves encircle sunny isles.
Then dumb despair and tearless woe
With bitter waves each heart o'erflow,
And whistling winds and driving storms,
Chant solemn requiems o'er their forms;
And glimmering auroras wave

Funereal torches o'er their grave.

The Political Economy of a College.

It is not that a Valedictorian has a stand of 3.50 quadrennially, but that fifty lower-appointment men have each a stand of 2.50, that is true college wealth and well-being.—Bowen on Laing altered.

WHAT in the world does that mean! Can it be a proposition to reconstruct the College system of finance, to remodel the plan of endowment, to push forward the University scheme? Or is it designed to retrench a student's expenses and show him how-like the Irishman with two rotary stoves-he can save all his fuel and even lay up money in his "course"? Or is there lurking in that word political, a cabalistic meaning bearing upon First Presidencies and Junior Coalitions? No, gentle Reader, nothing of the sort. But Dr. Chalmers wrote the "Political Economy of a famine," (we never read it,) and why shouldn't we attempt the Political Economy of a College, particularly as a philosophical title, like a philosophical oration, gives a man an air, a stand, so to speak, without entailing the necessity in either case of being philosophical; only serving in both cases like the Judges' stand at a horserace, as a good place to start from. If then, kind Reader, you are in

clined to mount with us on condition of getting down whenever you are tired, you shall see what you shall see, and we shall be glad of your company.

Our country has been stigmatized by foreigners (in effect if not in words) as a dollar hunting-ground. But sharp sentences must always be taken like round numbers, as only an approximation to the truth. In this case, to be sure, we cannot deny that there is some justice in the charge; we cannot deny that money-making and moneyworshiping are prominent features in our national character. We do not, however, propose to reproduce the ordinary commonplaces on this topic, but to inquire why it is that this deference to wealth, so prevalent in the nation, apparently finds no place in College? Why it is that, though we have here men of every variety of fortune, from the gentleman, flashing with jewelry and patent leather, to the ploughboy, all whose flashing is in his eye,-why it is that no one takes the trouble to ask whether his classmate's father is a millionaire or a mendicant; whether he is a member of the senate or a woodsawyer! Why it is that if the property-question is raised at all, it is not to do homage to the property holder, but to know where to borrow in case of need a case, by the way, that like the "ablative of means,"* cannot be regarded as an unusual occurrence in one's college experience. We have intimated that deference to wealth apparently finds no lodgment in college, and we hope in the sequel to make the pertinency of the adverb appear.

Wealth, say Political Economists, is of two kinds, material and immaterial; and we intend no play upon the word where we affirm that the wealth of College is eminently of the latter kind. The College world is an exceedingly complex idea, but we shall try to analyze it, and by (a metaphysical, of course, not an actual) abstraction, get at its wealth. Setting the real and personal estate of College, its funds, stocks, investments, its good will and the Faculty, out of the account, as not coming into the question, and looking only at the students, we may define the wealth of College to consist, 1st, in the scholarship, 2d, the social qualities, and 3d, the official position of its undergraduates. These are the elements of its wealth and they are genuine and legitimate. The world outside may not be able to estimate them all. Neither can a savage correctly apprehend the advantages of civilization. What then? The

It is perhaps a fair question for grammarians, whether the existing finan. cial condition of students does not demand a vocative of "means."