Mad are the passions, as a colt untamed!

When Prudence mounts their backs to ride

them mild,

They fling, they snort, they foam, they rise inflamed,

Insisting on their own sole will so wild.

The fatal secret, when revealed,

Of every aching breast, Would prove that only while concealed Their lot appeared the best.

METASTASIO.

thread;

OLLECTIONS OF EARLY CHILDHOOD.

brother,

And kicking, lo, again, thou mov'st another!

And now thy little drunken eyes unclose,
And now thou feelest for thy little nose,

And, finding it, thou rubbest thy two hands, Much as to say, "I'm glad I'm here again." And well mayst thou rejoice, - 't is very plain,

stream, The earth, and every common sight, To me did seem

Appareled in celestial light, The glory and the freshness of a dream. It is not now as it hath been of yore: Turn wheresoe'er I may,

By night or day,

Who gave, perhaps, the wide-resounding scream,
And now sits groaning for thy precious life.
Yes, go and carry comfort to thy friends,
And wisely tell them thy imprudence ends.

Let buns and sugar for the future charm;
These will delight, and feed, and work no harm,-—
While Punch, the grinning, merry imp of sin,
Invites the unwary wanderer to a kiss,
Smiles in his face, as though he meant him bliss,
Then, like an alligator, drags him in.

JOHN WOLCOTT (PETER PINDAR).

WITHOUT AND WITHIN.

IF every man's internal care
Were written on his brow,

How many would our pity share
Who raise our envy now?

Ye blessed creatures! I have heard the call Ye to each other make; I see

The heavens laugh with you in your jubilee ; My heart is at your festival,

My head hath its coronal, —

The fulness of your bliss, I feel, I feel it all.

O evil day! if I were sullen
While earth herself is adorning,

This sweet May morning,

And the children are culling,

On every side,

In a thousand valleys far and wide,
Fresh flowers; while the sun shines warm,
And the babe leaps up on his mother's arm,
I hear, I hear, with joy I hear ! –
But there's a tree, of many one,

A single field which I have looked upon,
Both of them speak of something that is gone;
The pansy at my feet

Doth the same tale repeat.

Whither is fled the visionary gleam?
Where is it now, the glory and the dream?

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting;
The soul that rises with us, our life's star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar.
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,

But trailing clouds of glory, do we come
From God, who is our home.
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing Boy ;

But he beholds the light, and whence it flows, -
He sees it in his joy.

The Youth who daily farther from the east
Must travel, still is nature's priest,
And by the vision splendid

Is on his way attended :

At length the Man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day.

Mighty prophet! Seer blest, On whom those truths do rest Which we are toiling all our lives to find, In darkness lost, the darkness of the grave! Thou over whom thy immortality Broods like the day, a master o'er a slave, A presence which is not to be put by! Thou little child, yet glorious in the might Of heaven-born freedom on thy being's height, Why with such earnest pains dost thou provoke The years to bring the inevitable yoke, Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife? Full soon thy soul shall have her earthly freight, And custom lie upon thee with a weight Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life!

Are yet the fountain-light of all our day, Are yet a master light of all our seeing,

SOLILOQUY: ON IMMORTALITY.

FROM "CATO."

Our noisy years seem moments in the being Of the eternal silence: truths that wake,

To perish never,

Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavor,
Nor man nor boy,

Nor all that is at enmity with joy,
Can utterly abolish or destroy!

Hence, in a season of calm weather,
Though inland far we be,

Our souls have sight of that immortal sea
Which brought us hither,

Can in a moment travel thither,
And see the children sport upon the shore,
And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.

Then sing, ye birds, sing, sing a joyous song!
And let the young lambs bound
As to the tabor's sound!

We in thought will join your throng,
Ye that pipe and ye that play,

Ye that through your hearts to-day
Feel the gladness of the May!

What though the radiance which was once so bright

Be now forever taken from my sight,

Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower,
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind;
In the primal sympathy

Which, having been, must ever be ;
In the soothing thoughts that spring
Out of human suffering;

In the faith that looks through death,
In years that bring the philosophic mind.

book on the Immortality of the Soul in his hand, and a drawn sword on the table by him.

IT must be so. - Plato, thou reasonest well! Else whence this pleasing hope, this fond desire, This longing after immortality?

Or whence this secret dread, and inward horror, Of falling into naught? Why shrinks the soul Back on herself, and startles at destruction? 'Tis the divinity that stirs within us; 'Tis Heaven itself, that points out a hereafter, And intimates eternity to man.

Eternity!-thou pleasing, dreadful thought! Through what variety of untried being, Through what new scenes and changes, must we pass!

The wide, the unbounded prospect lies before me ;
But shadows, clouds, and darkness rest upon it.
Here will I hold. If there's a Power above us
(And that there is, all Nature cries aloud
Through all her works), he must delight in virtue;
And that which he delights in must be happy.
But when? or where? This world was made for
Cæsar.

I'm weary of conjectures,

- this must end them.

[Laying his hand on his sword. Thus am I doubly armed: my death and life, My bane and antidote, are both before me. This in a moment brings me to an end; But this informs me I shall never die. The soul, secured in her existence, smiles At the drawn dagger, and defies its point. The stars shall fade away, the sun himself Grow dim with age, and Nature sink in years; But thou shalt flourish in immortal youth, Unhurt amid the war of elements,

The wreck of matter, and the crush of worlds! JOSEPH ADDISON,

[The MSS. of this poem, which appeared during the first quarter of the present century, was said to have been found in the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons, in London, near a perfect hu

man skeleton, and to have been sent by the curator to the Morning Chronicle for publication. It excited so much attention that every effort was made to discover the author, and a responsible party went so far as to offer a reward of fifty guineas for information that would discover its origin. The author preserved his incognito, and, we believe, has never been discovered.]

BEHOLD this ruin! T was a skull
Once of ethereal spirit full.

THE SKULL.

FROM "CHILDE HAROLD. "

REMOVE yon skull from out the scattered heaps:

Is that a temple where a god may dwell? Why even the worm at last disdains her shattered cell!

Look on its broken arch, its ruined wall,
Its chambers desolate, and portals foul:
Yes, this was once Ambition's airy hall,
The dome of Thought, the palace of the Soul: