Contemplation. HE, who, awakened to the inward exercise of thought, delights to build up an inner world in his own spirit, fills the wide horizon of the open sea with the sublime idea of the infinite; his eye dwells especially on the distant line where air and water join, and where stars arise and set in every renewed alteration. In such contemplations there mingles, as in all human joy, a breath of sadness and longing. HUMBOLT'S KOSMOS. Love Token. ОH! only those Whose souls have felt this one idolatry Can tell how precious is the slightest thing L. E. L. Music's Power. (HAVE you not heard in music's sound But when the echo on the air Roused by that simple lay, It leaves a world of feeling there We cannot chase away. Yes, yes, a sound hath power to bid them come Youth's half-forgotten hopes, childhood's remembered home. When sitting in your silent home Or call to those who cannot come, Bring dimly back the fancied tone Of some sweet voice that's fled! Yes, yes, a sound hath power to bid them come Youth's half-forgotten hopes, childhood's remembered home. And when amid the festal throng, You are, or would be gay And seek to wile with dance and song, Your sadder thoughts away, They strike those chords, and smiles depart, The untold feelings of the heart Awake and spurn control! Yes, yes, a sound has power to bid them come Youth's half-forgotten hopes, childhood's remem bered home. MRS. NORTON. Twilight. THE day is done, and the darkness I see the lamps of the village Gleam through the rain and the mist, A feeling of sadness and longing, And resembles sorrow only As the mist resembles the rain LONGFELLOW. The Author. STILL those wild and valueless essays, those soft and secret confessions of his own heart, were a delight to him. He began to taste the transport, the intoxication of an author. And oh! what a luxury is there in that first love of the muse! that process by which we give a palpable form to the long intangible visions which have flitted across us; the beautiful ghost of the ideal within us, which we invoke in the Godara of our still closets, with the wand of the simple pen. BULWER. Memory. YES, memory has honey cells, For in the sweetest of them dwells The dream of early hours. L. E. L. Night. YE stars! which are the poetry of heaven! If in your bright leaves we would read the fate Of men and empires, 't is to be forgiven Our destinies o'erleap their mortal state In us such love and reverence from afar, That fortune, fame, power, life, have named themselves a star. All heaven and earth are still-though not in sleep; But breathless as we grow when feeling most; And silent, as we stand in thoughts too deep; All heaven and earth are still; from the high host Of stars, to the lulled lake and mountain-rest, When not a beam, nor air, nor leaf is lost, BYRON. |