the words of the poet, by him perhaps intended but in a kindred

sense:

"Fixed in the rolling flood of endless years,
The pillar of th' eternal plan appears,
The raving storm and dashing wave defies,
Built by that Architect who built the skies."

THE SACRIFICE OF IPHIGENIA.
(From Eschylus.)

THEY little recked, each warlike chief
On battle bent, of woman's grief;
Nor virgin age, nor beauty's bloom,
Nor prayer, nor tear prevaileth,
Nor e'en her father's lineage high
To shield his child availeth.
The tones of prayer in silence sunk,
That father's voice is heard,

He turns him to the chieftains there,
And he speaks the fatal word.

He bade them raise her from the ground,
Where veiled all she lay,

And, like some bleating lamb,

To place her on the altar-mound,
And stern that rising voice to quell
Of strange and boding tone,

That seemed with curses deep to swell,
A daughter's dying malison.

All beautiful, as pictured there, she stood
In speaking silence bound,

Her light robes flowing on the ground

One pity-moving glance around

She darted on the men of blood;

For oft amid her father's halls,

To princes gathered there,

'Mid feast and wine, she poured the song,

In maiden beauty fair;

The thrilling music of her voice,

Tuned to notes of mirth and gladness,

Banished every thought of sadness,

And bid her father's heart rejoice.

G.S.W.

G.S. W

THE CONSTELLATION LYRA.

THOU glorious realm, whose high and solemn space Men here call Heaven! upon whose Lord we call! Whose every star that trembles in its place Revolves with music round its central ball!

If here no more 'tis heard within the hum

That bounds our earth-if in our hearts no more;
It is not that thy oracles are dumb,

Thy music mute, thy inspiration o'er.

'Tis that the listeners are no more:-for thou,
Star-tuned infinitude, art pealing on!

But they that bowed them with unwearied brow
To hear the eternal mistrelsy are gone.

They who, the measure of their souls transcending
Our mortal stature, in their hour could hear,
When seas of space on heavenly shores are ending,
Sounds like eternity exulting near.

They, like the dove, from their own fleshly ark
Far o'er that ocean in their thoughts upborne,
To worlds beyond, where all to us is dark,-
Foreheard the music of a new-found morn;-
With beckoning spirits from afar drew down
Its wandering echoes to these humbler plains;
And rapt in utterance sweeter than their own,
Around the all-hailing world diffused the strains.

They are gone! the secret of their souls has perished,
And silence deepens o'er the space they crossed;
But still we glory in the dreams they cherished;
Some yet go listening as for something lost.
Great minds go stooping, eagle-eyed to soar
When the hour comes and the far off appears,

And inspiration, like a sound of yore,

Starts on their thoughts, unheard by earthlier ears.

The prophets listened,—and it reached from far
Their exiled homes and solitary place;

And poets, wandering in a world at war

With its own light, its glory, and its grace;

Clothed in their bright apostleship with signs
Of that pure mission which they bear to men-
In nightly watchings, and when proudly shines
The Lord of Fire, still catch the sound again.

O Lyre of Heaven, when, on the heights of old,
Chaldea's shepherds called the stars by name,
Heard they that glorious music as it rolled?
And dimly marked the regions whence it came?—
When slept their flocks beneath the spangled skies,
They tracked the sound till to their souls appeared
Thy starry strings among the heavens to rise;
A dream by faith unto their hearts endeared.

A dream? no! nightly o'er their tents descending,
The heavenly harmony confirmed their faith;
And still the Lyre, amidst the planets blending,
Its golden chords was visible till death.
When rose Orion, belted and in splendour,
And heavenly Argo, freighted with her prize,
And bright Arcturus-did the Lyre, with tender
And sweetest music, in its place arise.

Thou, that in wisdom didst ordain the stars
To be thy ministers, and in their place
To keep that fiery battlement which bars
From us thy happier regions and thy face!
What if, in yearning to be wise, the soul
Did, with a bright imagined dream, conspire
To hear thy utterance in the stars that roll
Within the fabled precincts of the Lyre!

Did not the morning stars break forth in strains
Of joy o'er earth and its foundations made?
And kindred planets o'er the Syrian plains
Sing o'er the Infant in the manger laid?
Did not men hear them? and if silence now
Seems darkening round the ever-tuneful spheres,
"Tis that the clouds of ages on earth's brow
Bars out the harmonious music from their ears.

For thou, O Lyre, still in the pathless height,
Art ever singing from thy spheres on high;
While sleep the nations in the starry light,
Or hear but rivers, or the wind rush by.

But
one, of many, and of millions, one,
In whom the immortal is less clouded o'er,
From age to age, still as the world rolls on,
Hears and shall hear it till it rolls no more.

Earth's generations rustle and go down,
Like harvest ripened to the reaper's hand;
All Nature's voices, mingling with their own,
Pour forth a plenteous music o'er the land;

But them no instinct lightening through their clay,
Leads where one thought may take a tone from thine ;
Or-wanting utterance-do they steal away,

Die, and of that within them make no sign?

In vain their eyes, even in yon heaven, require
Undimmed thy bright similitude to see;
They read no semblance of a glorious Lyre

In all that now is visible of thee.

Thy strings, which streamed like meteors when they graced

That form the ancients of the world revered,

Yon scattered stars have with their beams displaced,

And all the Lyre they loved has disappeared.

But clouds shall pass; and from all eyes and ears,
When films, obstruction, and the shroud shall fall,
Then, like the listeners of the world's young years,
A perfect vision shall be given to all.
And thou, the fabled image of a clime,
By shepherds peopled, and by prophets trod,
Shalt break thy strings before expiring Time,
And all thy harmony yield back to God.

POLYMETERS.

(From the German of Jean Paul F. Richter.)

Constancy." Oh, I dwell in thine eye," said the little brother, when he saw his own face pictured in his sister's eyes. "And I,

too, live in thine," she replied. "Ay, truly," thought the father, 66 so long as ye look upon each other; for the heart of man is like his eyes."

Old Men.-Verily, long shadows are they, and their setting sun lies cold upon the earth, but they all point towards the morning. Children.-Little children, stand ye near to God; for the smallest carth is nearest to the sun.

TALES OF A SPANISH VETERAN.

HASSAN, THE LION-SLAYER.

(Concluded from Page 146.)

"TIME, in his progress towards eternity, whither his unwearied wings are ever tending, had slowly traversed over that little space we mortals term two years,-to him a speck scarcely marked in his interminable flight, but to us a lengthened period, fraught with many incidents of joy or sorrow, to be therefore remembered and dwelt upon as landmarks in the pilgrimage of life. Hassan recovered-had been summoned to the wars. To Zadie, you may be sure, this period had seemed sufficiently dreary and tedious; there were times when hope gave way to despondency, and all her bright anticipations of future happiness were overcast by doubt and fear, for no tidings of the absent one reached her, and she pictured him stretched a lifeless corse on the battle-plain, or a pining captive in some dungeon of the Christian foe, from whom but little mercy was to be expected. At length a wandering santon, or hermit of the desert, whose pilgrim feet had led him to the seat of war, visited the valley of Fez, on his way to the shrine of the prophet at Mecca. He told her of a youthful warrior, whose shout was like the rattling peal which comes upon the ear when storm-clouds are rent asunder; whose sword was fatal as the flashing levin-bolt, the herald of destruction; whose eyes were bright and terrible as meteors, lighting his followers to the work of death; whose form was stately as the cedar tree which flourishes on Libanus, yet graceful as the bending tamarisk.

"His name? his name?' the maiden cried, 'was it not Hassan?' Even so,' was the expected response; and quickly an cager party gathered round to hear of the young chief's welfare, and of the exploits which were to immortalize his name.

"Well did his followers call him the Lion Slayer,' continued the pilgrim, warming with his subject; the bravest of the Christian host fell before him, and none could withstand the sweep of his death-fraught scimitar. As I beheld him on his fiery barb, bursting through the ranks of his steel-clad adversaries, with the plumes of his jewelled turban streaming wildly in the gale, the rings of his closely fitting hawberk glittering, and the silver shield, on which the blows of hostile weapons fell thickly as the date-blossoms