All time is lost in littleness!

All time, alas! if rightly shown, Is but a shadow, more or less,

Upon life's lowly dial thrown.

The greatest pleasures, greatest grief,
Can never bear the test of years:

The pleasures vanish, leaf by leaf;
The sorrow wastes away in tears.

Then, though it seems a trifling space, Since youth, and love, and hope were ours, Yet those who love us most may trace

The hand of age amid our flowers.

Thus, day by day life's ages grow:

The sands which hourly fall and climb,

Make centuries, in their ceaseless flow,

And cast the destinies of Time.

C. SWAIN.

THE SABBATH.

FRESH glides the brook, and blows the gale,
But yonder halts the quiet mill;

The whirring wheel, the rushing sail,
How motionless and still!

Six days stern Labor shuts the poor
From Nature's careless banquet-hall;
The seventh, an angel opes the door,
And, smiling, welcomes all!

A Father's tender mercy gave

This holy respite to the breast,

To breathe the gale, to watch the wave,

-

And know, the wheel may rest!

Six days of toil, poor child of Cain,

Thy strength thy master's slave must be; The seventh, thy limbs escape the chain, And God hath made thee free.

The fields, that yester morning knew

Thy footsteps as their serf, survey;

On thee, as them, descends the dew,

The baptism of the day.

Fresh glides the brook, and blows the gale,
But yonder halts the quiet mill;

The whirring wheel, the rushing sail,
How motionless and still!

So rest, oh, weary heart!-but, lo!
The church-spire glistening up to Heaven,
To warn thee where thy thoughts should go
The day thy God hath given!

Lone through the landscape's solemn rest
The spire its moral points on high;
Oh, Soul, at peace within thy breast,
Rise, mingling with the sky!

They tell thee, in their dreaming school,
Of power from old Dominion hurled;
When rich and poor, with juster rule,

Shall share the altered world.

Alas! since time itself began,

That fable hath but fooled the hour;

Each age that ripens power in man,

But subjects man to power.

Yet every day in seven, at least,

One bright republic shall be known; Man's world awhile hath surely ceased, When God proclaims his own!

Six days may rank divide the poor,

Oh, Dives! from thy banquet-hall;

The seventh, the Father opes the door,

And holds his feast for all!

E. L. BULWER.

THE MINIATURE.

DEAR image of her lovely face,

Who was my bosom's life and light, 'Tis agony thy looks to trace,

'Tis more, to have thee out of sight!

To see thee, and remember where

The fair original is laid,

But brings the torture of despair

From those sad ruins death has made.

To know how this kind angel eye

Once beamed on me; and then to feel

How dark the shades that on it lie,

'Tis to my heart like barbéd steel!

I have a lock of silken hair,

That once adorned this cloudless brow:

Its lustre is not dimmed; but where,

Oh! where's the forehead's beauty now?