Love's spring was fair, love's summer brave and bland,
But through love's autumn mist I view the land,
The land of deathless summers yet to be;

There, I behold thee, young again and bright,
In a great flood of rare transfiguring light,
But there as here, thou smilest, Love! on me!

FATE, OR GOD?

BEYOND the record of all eldest things,

Beyond the rule and regions of past time,

From out Antiquity's hoary-headed rime,
Looms the dread phantom of a King of kings:
Round His vast brows the glittering circlet clings
Of a thrice royal crown; behind Him climb,
O'er Atlantean limbs and breast sublime,
The sombre splendors of mysterious wings;
Deep calms of measureless power, in awful state,
Gird and uphold Him; a miraculous rod,
To heal or smite, arms His infallible hands:

Known in all ages, worshipped in all lands,

Doubt names this half-embodied mystery-Fate,

While Faith, with lowliest reverence, whispers-God!

A LITTLE WHILE I FAIN WOULD LINGER YET.

A

LITTLE while (my life is almost set!)

I fain would pause along the downward way, Musing an hour in this sad sunset-ray,

While, Sweet! our eyes with tender tears are wet:

A little hour I fain would linger yet.

A little while I fain would linger yet,

All for love's sake, for love that cannot tire; Though fervid youth be dead, with youth's desire, And hope has faded to a vague regret,

A little while I fain would linger yet.

A little while I fain would linger there:

Behold! who knows what strange, mysterious bars 'Twixt souls that love, may rise in other stars? Nor can love deem the face of death is fair;

A little while I still would linger here.

A little while I yearn to hold thee fast,

Hand locked in hand, and loyal heart to heart,

mm

(O pitying Christ! those woeful words, "We part!")

So ere the darkness fall, the light be past,
A little while I fain would hold thee fast.

I feel it is over! over!

For the winds and the waters surcease;
Ah, few were the days of the rover

That smiled in the beauty of peace,
And distant and dim was the omen
That hinted redress or release!
From the ravage of life, and its riot,
What marvel I yearn for the quiet

Which bides in the harbor at last,-
For the lights, with their welcoming quiver
That throbs through the sanctified river,
Which girdle the harbor at last,
This heavenly harbor at last?

VOL. VIII.-30

I know it is over, over,

I know it is over at last!

Down sail! the sheathed anchor uncover,
For the stress of the voyage has passed:
Life, like a tempest of ocean,

Hath outbreathed its ultimate blast:
There's but a faint sobbing seaward,
While the calm of the tide deepens leeward;
And behold! like the welcoming quiver
Of heart-pulses throbbed through the river,
Those lights in the harbor at last,
The heavenly harbor at last!

David Swing.

BORN in Cincinnati, Ohio, 1830.

LIFE IMMORTAL.

[Truths for To-Day. 1874.]

F it is lawful for the naturalist to give his affections to material forms

IF

and thus, in his prejudice for his world, reach the conclusion, at last, that mind is only the effervescence of a chemical caldron, it is equally lawful for you and me to be prepossessed with the charms of spirit and to reach the feeling that flesh is only the chariot in which this angel of life rides in these and upon other shores. It is well known that the mind shapes its material form. The face of a Webster is nobler, the forehead higher, the eye brighter, and the brain larger than are those features or faculties in a Sioux Indian, and it must be so, because in Webster there is a mind and soul which have for two thousand years been busy shaping the tabernacle of dust. In order to believe well in a future beyond, it seems essential that one make the assumption of spirit a starting-point, and then the whole material world becomes its servant, or its arena, or decoration; but if, with Huxley and Darwin, we begin with the assumption of matter, there seems nothing to throw us over across the dividing ocean, and we must remain on the shore of dust, and hence death; for move to and fro as material does from wild rose to full-leafed rose, from ape to man, it always brings us at last only to dust. There is no immortal rose, however full-leafed it may become. Death is its destiny. To get over this tomb of roses and of man it is essential that a spirit be assumed, a God, an essence differing from the

vital action of the heart or of the roots of the wild flowers.

In this study of man, after we assume that he possesses a spirit, the text enters with its single thought that God is not a God of dead souls, but of living ones. There is no manifest reason for supposing a soul made in such a divine image to be only an ephemeral creature, going quickly to nothingness, thus making God the father of the dead rather than of the living. All the reasons for creating such a being as man remain for continuing his existence. If when the Creator had formed such a universe as lies around us here, of which our system is as a grain of sand upon an infinite shore, He finally concluded to make man a race to inhabit one or more stars of the universe, a race in the divine image, a human life of a few years would seem wholly unworthy of such a boundless material realm; for we cannot master its truths nor taste its happiness in any threescore year career. Your children have shown their divine nature, have revealed their intelligence, have spoken a few words, have rejoiced in a few springtimes, and have gone hence, leaving you heartbroken over a speechless form. A brief career is thus not in harmony with the immense universe in which this life begins and of which man is unquestionably the highest order of beings.

Florus Beardsley Plimpton.

BORN in Palmyra, Ohio, 1830. DIED in Cincinnati, Ohio, 1886.

WHA

Charles Nordhoff.

BORN in Erwitte, Westphalia, Prussia, 1830.

KILAUEA.

[Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands. 1874.]

HAT we saw there on the 3d of March, 1873, was two huge pits, caldrons, or lakes, filled with a red, molten, fiery, sulphurous, raging, roaring, restless mass of matter, to watch whose unceasing tumult was one of the most fascinating experiences of my life.

What, therefore, Madame Pele will show you hereafter is uncertain. What we saw was this: two large lakes or caldrons, each nearly circular, with the lower shelf or bank red-hot, from which the molten lava was repelled toward the centre without cessation. The surface of these lakes. was of a lustrous and beautiful gray, and this, which was a cooling and tolerably solid scum, was broken by jagged circles of fire, which appeared of a vivid rose-color in contrast with the gray. These circles, starting at the red-hot bank or shore, moved more or less rapidly toward the centre, where, at intervals of perhaps a minute, the whole mass of lava suddenly but slowly bulged up, burst the thin crust, and flung aloft a huge, fiery wave, which sometimes shot as high as thirty feet in the air. Then ensued a turmoil, accompanied with hissing, and occasionally with a dull roar as the gases sought to escape, and spray was flung in every direc tion; and presently the agitation subsided, to begin again in the same place, or perhaps in another.

Meantime the fiery rings moved forward perpetually toward the centre, a new one reappearing at the shore before the old was engulfed; and not unfrequently the mass of lava was so fiercely driven by some force from the bank near which we stood, that it was ten or fifteen feet higher near the centre than at the circumference. Thus somewhat of the depth was revealed to us, and there seemed something peculiarly awful to me in the fierce glowing red heat of the shores themselves, which never cooled with exposure to the air and light.

Thus acted the first of the two lakes. But when, favored by a strong breeze, we ventured farther, to the side of the furthermost one, a still more terrible spectacle greeted us. The mass in this lake was in yet more violent agitation; but it spent its fury upon the precipitous southern bank, against which it dashed with a vehemence equal to a heavy surf breaking against cliffs. It had undermined this lava cliff, and for a space of perhaps one hundred and fifty feet the lava beat and surged into glaring, red-hot, cavernous depths, and was repelled with