And all remain'd as all had been before,
I cried, as I was wont, though none did listen,
-'Tis sweet sometimes to speak and be the
hearer;

For he is twice himself who can converse
With his own thoughts,as with a living throng
Of fellow-travellers in solitude;
And mine too long had been my sole com-
panions;

"What is this mystery of human life?
In rude or civilised society,
Alike, a pilgrim's progress through this world
To that which is to come, by the same stages;
With infinite diversity of fortune
To each distinct adventurer by the way!
Life is the transmigration of a soul
Through various bodies, various states of
being;

New manners, passions, tastes, pursuits in each;
In nothing, save in consciousness, the same.
Infancy, adolescence, manhood, age,
Are alway moving onward, alway losing
Themselves in one another, lost at length,
Like undulations, on the strand of death.
The sage of threescore years and ten looks
back,-
With many a pang of lingering tenderness,
And many a shuddering conscience-fit,-on

what

He hath been, is not, cannot be again;
Nor trembles less with fear and hope, to think
What he is now, but cannot long continue,
And what he must be through uncounted

ages.

-The Child;we know no more of happy childhood

Than happy childhood knows of wretched eld; And all our dreams of its felicity

Are incoherent as its own crude visions : We but begin to live from that fine point Which memory dwells on, with the morningstar,

The earliest note we heard the cuckoo sing,
Or the first daisy that we ever pluck'd,
When thoughts themselves were stars, and
birds, and flowers,
Pure brilliance, simplest music, wild perfume.
Thenceforward, mark the metamorphoses!
-The Boy, the Girl;-when all was joy,
hope, promise;

Yet who would be a Boy, a Girl again,
To bear the yoke, to long for liberty,
And dream of what will never come to pass?

-The Youth, the Maiden ;-living but for love,

Yet learning soon that life hath other cares. And joys less rapturous, but more enduring: The Woman;--in her offspring multiplied; A tree of life, whose glory is her branches, Beneath whose shadow, she (both root and stem)

Delights to dwell in meek obscurity, That they may be the pleasure of beholders: -The Man;-as father of a progeny, Whose birth requires his death to make them room,

Yet in whose lives he feels his resurrection. Aud grows immortal in his children's children: Then the gray Elder;-leaning on his staff. And bow'd beneath a weight of years, that steal

Upon him with the secrecy of sleep, (No snow falls lighter than the snow of age. None with such subtilty benumbs the frame) Till he forgets sensation, and lies down Dead in the lap of his primeval mother; She throws a shroud of turf and flower around him,

Then calls the worms, and bids them de their office:

Man giveth up the ghost, and where is He?"

I saw those changes realised before me; Saw them recurring in perpetual line, The line unbroken, while the thread ran on Failing at this extreme, at that renew'd.— Like buds, leaves, blossoms, fruits on herbs and trees;

Like mites, flies, reptiles; birds, and beasts, and fishes, Of every length of period here, all mortal And all resolved into those elements Whence they had emanated, whence they drew

Their sustenance, and which their wrecks recruited

To generate and foster other forms As like themselves as were the lights of heaven,

For ever moving in serene succession,-
Not like those lights unquenchable by time.
But ever changing, like the clouds that come,
Who can tell whence? and go, who can tell
whither?

Thus the swift series of man's race elapsed,
As for no higher destiny created
Than aught beneath them, — from the
elephant

Down to the worm, thence to the zoophyte,
That link which binds Prometheus to his rock,
The living fibre to insensate matter.
They were not, then they were; the unborn
the living!

They were, then were not; they had lived and died.

HYMN TO THE PENATES.

YET one Song more! one high and solemn strain,

Ere, Phoebus! on thy temple's ruin'd wall
I hang the silent harp: there may its strings,
When the rude tempest shakes the aged pile,
Make melancholy music. One Song more!
PENATES! hear me! for to you I hymn
The votive lay; whether, as sages deem,
Ye dwell in the inmost Heaven, the Coun-

SELLORS

Of Jove; or if, SUPREME of Deities,
All things are yours, and in your holy train
Jove proudly ranks, and JUNO, white-arm'd
Queen,

And, wisest of Immortals, the dread Maid
ATHENIAN PALLAS. Venerable Powers,
Hearken your hymn of praise! Though from
your rites

Estranged, and exiled from your altars long,
I have not ceased to love you, HOUSEHOLD
GODS!

In many a long and melancholy hour
Of solitude and sorrow, hath my heart
With earnest longings pray'd to rest at length
Beside your hallow'd hearth-for PEACE is
there!

Yes, I have loved you long! I call on you Yourselves to witness with what holy joy, Shunning the common herd of human kind, I have retired to watch your lonely fires And commune with myself. Delightful hours, That gave mysterious pleasure, made me know

Mine inmost heart, its weakness and its strength,

Taught me to cherish with devoutest care
Its strange unworldly feelings, taught me too
The best of lessons-To RESPECT MYSELF.
Nor have I ever ceased to reverence you,
DOMESTIC DEITIES! from the first dawn
Of reason, through the adventurous paths
of youth
Even to this better day, when on mine ear
The uproar of contending nations sounds
But like the passing wind, and wakes no
pulsc

To tumult. When a child—(and still I love
To dwell with fondness on my childish years)
When first a little one, I left my home,
I can remember the first grief I felt,
And the first painful smile that clothed my
front

With feelings not its own: sadly at night
I sat me down beside a stranger's hearth;
And when the lingering hour of rest was
come,

First wet with tears my pillow. As I grew
In years and knowledge, and the course of
Time

Develop'd the young feelings of my heart,
When most I loved in solitude to rove
Amid the woodland-gloom; or where the
rocks

Darken'd old Avon's stream, in the ivied cave
Recluse to sit and brood the future song,-
Yet not then less, PENATES, loved I then
Your altars; not the less at evening-hour
Delighted by the well-trimm'd fire to sit,
Absorb'd in many a dear deceitful dream
Of visionary joys; deceitful dreams,-
And yet not vain; for, painting purest bliss,
They form'd to Fancy's mould her votary's
heart.

To mingle with the crowd, your calm abodes. Where by the evening-hearth CONTENTRENT sits

And hears the cricket chirp; where Low
delights
To dwell, and on your altars lays his torch
That burns with no extinguishable flame.

Hear me, ye POWERS benignant! there i

one

Must be mine inmate, for I may not choos But love him. He is one whom many wroRES Have sicken'd of the world. There was i time

When he would weep to hear of wickedness. And wonder at the tale; when for the p prest

He felt a brother's pity, to the oppressor A good man's honest anger. His quick eye Betray'd each rising feeling; every though Leapt to his tongue. When first amen mankind

He mingled, by himself he judged of then And loved and trusted them, to Wisden deaf,

And took them to his bosom. Falsehood m Her unsuspecting victim, fair of front, And lovely as Apega's sculptured form, Like that false image caught his warm en brace,

And gored his open breast. The reptile rac Clung round his bosom, and, with viper-fals Encircling, stung the fool who foster'd them His mother was SIMPLICITY, his sire BENEVOLENCE; in earlier days he bore His father's name; the world who injur him

Call him MISANTHROPY. I may not choo But love him, HOUSEHOLD GODs! for we wen nurst

In the same school.-PENATES ! some there Who say, that not in the inmost heaven? dwell,

Gazing with eye remote on all the ways Of man, his GUARDIAN GODS; wiselier the deem

A dearer interest to the human race Links you, yourselves the SPIRITS OF TH DEAD.

No mortal eye may pierce the invisi world,

No light of human reason penetrate
The depth where Truth lies hid. Yet"
this faith
My heart with instant sympathy assents:
And I would judge all systems and all far
By that best touchstone, from whose un
DECEIT

Shrinks like the Arch-Fiend at Ithurie spear,

And SOPHISTRY's gay glittering bubble burs As at the spousals of the Nereid's son, When that false Florimel, by her prototy Display'd in rivalry, with all her charms Dissolved away.-Nor can the halls of Hezw

love

Your tranquil joys; then shall the city stand
A huge void sepulchre, and rising fair
Amid the ruins of the palace-pile
The olive grow, there shall the TREE OF PEACE
Strike its roots deep and flourish. This the

state

Shall bless the race redeem'd of Man, when
WEALTH

And Power and all their hideous progeny
Shall sink annihilate, and all mankind
Live in the equal brotherhood of love.
Heart-calming hope, and sure! for hither-
ward

Tend all the tumults of the troubled world,
Its woes, its wisdom, and its wickedness
Alike: so He hath will'd, whose will is just.

Meantime, all hoping and expecting all In patient faith, to you, DoмESTIC GODS! I come, studious of other lore than song, Of my past years the solace and support: Yet shall my heart remember the past years With honest pride, trusting that not in vain Lives the pure song of LIBERTY and TRUTH.

RUDIGE R.

Divers Princes and Noblemen being assembled in a beautiful and fair Palace, which was situate upon the river Rhine, they beheld a boat or small barge inake toward the shore, drawn by a Swan in a silver chain, the one end fastened

about her neck, the other to the vessel; and in it an unknown soldier, a man of a comely personage and graceful presence, who stept upon the shore; which done, the boat guided by the Swan left him, and floated down the river. This man fell afterward in league with a fair gentlewoman, married her, and by her had many children. After some years, the same Swan came with the same barge unto the same place; the soldier entering into it, was carried thence the way he came, left wife, children, and family, and was never seen amongst them after.

Now who can judge this to be other than one of those spirits that are named Incubi? says Thomas Heywood. I have adopted his story, but not his solution, making the unknown soldier not an evil spirit, but one who had purchased happiness of a malevolent being, by the promised sacrifice of his first-born child.

BRIGHT on the mountain's heathy slope
The day's last splendours shine,
And rich with many a radiant hue,
Gleam gaily on the Rhine.

And many a one from Waldhurst's walls
Along the river stroll❜d,

As ruffling o'er the pleasant stream
The evening-gales came cold.

So as they stray'd a swan they saw
Sail stately up and strong,

And by a silver chain he drew
A little boat along.

Long floating flutter'd light, Beneath whose crimson canopy There lay reclined a knight.

With arching crest and swelling breast
On sail'd the stately swan,
And lightly up the parting tide
The little boat came on.

And onward to the shore they drew,
Where having left the knight,
The little boat adown the stream
Fell soon beyond the sight.

Was never a Knight in Waldhurst's wal
Was never a youth at aught esteem'd
Could with this stranger vie,
When Rudiger was by.

Was never a Maid in Waldhurst's walls
Might match with Margaret,
Her cheek was fair, her eyes were dark.
Her silken locks like jet.

And many a rich and noble youth
Had strove to win the fair,
But never a rich and noble youth
Could rival Rudiger.

At every tilt and tourney he

Still bore away the prize,
For knightly feats superior still
And knightly courtesies.

His gallant feats, his looks, his love,
Soon won the willing fair;
And soon did Margaret become
The wife of Rudiger.

Like morning-dreams of happiness
Fast roll'd the months away;
For he was kind and she was kind,
And who so blest as they?

Yet Rudiger would sometimes sit
Absorb'd in silent thought,

And his dark downward eye would seem
With anxious meaning fraught.

But soon he raised his looks again,
And smiled his cares away,
And 'mid the hall of gaiety

Was none like him so gay.

And onward roll'd the waning months, The hour appointed came,

And Margaret her Rudiger

Hail'd with a father's name.

But silently did Rudiger
The little infant see;

And darkly on the babe he gazed,—
A gloomy man was he.