Life. LIFE! what is life? When the tempest journies through space on strong pinions, it sings to me a song which finds an echo in my soul. When the thunder rolls, when the lightning flames, then I divine something of life in its strength and greatness. But this tame every-day life-little virtues, little faults, little cares, little joys, little endeavors this contracts and stills my spirit. Oh! thou flame which consumest me, what wilt thou? There are moments in which thou illuminest, but eternities, in which thou tormentest and burnest me. Kisses. THE fountain mingles with the river, See the mountains kiss high heaven, SHELLEY. Night and Morning. So, oh dark mystery of the moral world! so, unlike the order of the external universe, glide together, side by side, the shadowy steeds of Night and Morning. Examine life in its own world, the inner one, the practical one, with the more visible, yet airier and less substantial system, doing homage to the sun, to whose throne, afar in the infinite space, the human heart has no wings to flee. In life, the mind and the circumstance, give the two seasons, and regulate the darkness and the light. Of two men standing on the same foot of earth, the one revels in the joyous noon, the other shudders in the solitude of night. For Hope and Fortune the day-star is ever shining. The Anmuth Strathlendes lives ever in the air. For Care and Penury night changes not with the ticking of the clock, or the shadow on the dial. Morning for the heir, night for the houseless, and God's eye in both. BULWER. May Morning. THE bright May-morning's come again And through the wood and in the glen And music floats upon the air Maidens and youths come hail the morn! Come twine ye garlands to adorn Your brows this bright spring day. Blue violets are over all the plain And as ye twine your fragrant wreath Let each young, thrilling bosom breathe A welcome to sweet May. MRS. J. THAYER. Farewell. FAREWELL! that little word has power To wake the thought that none may know ' A cloud to shade the sunniest hour, And steep the brightest scenes in woe. Farewell! farewell! the heart will feel What words may never, never tell; The throbbing brow may not reveal What broods in memory's mystic cell. It withers not, that growing thorn; It passes not, that endless sting; That swelling tide is onward borne, Till death shall drain its bitter spring. But not to Death the power is given To gild a brighter scene than this To twine the wreath by sorrow riven, And wake the angel smile of peace. But there are bright and azure fields, Nor wasted grief her form reveals, Her cypress shades the lonely dead. |