Thirty nobles saddled with speed; (Hurry!)

Each one mounting a gallant steed

Which he kept for battle and days of need.
(Oh, ride as though you were flying!)
Spurs were struck in the foaming flank;
Worn-out chargers staggered and sank;
Bridles were slackened and girths were burst,
But, ride as they would, the king rode first,
For his rose of the isles lay dying!

His nobles are beaten one by one;

(Hurry!)

They have fainted and faltered and homeward gone; His little fair page now follows alone,

For strength and for courage trying!

The king looked back at that faithful child;
Wan was the face that answering smiled;

They passed the drawbridge with clattering din,
Then he dropped; and only the king rode in
Where his rose of the isles lay dying!

The king blew a blast on his bugle-horn;
(Silence!)

No answer came, but faint and forlorn
An echo returned on the cold, gray morn,
Like the breath of a spirit sighing.

The castle portal stood grimly wide

None welcomed the king from that weary ride;
For dead, in the light of the dawning day,
The pale, sweet form of the welcomer lay,

Who had yearned for his voice while dying.
The panting steed, with a drooping crest,
Stood weary.

The king returned from her chamber of rest,
The thick sobs choking in his breast;

And, that dumb companion eying,

The tears gushed forth which he strove to check;
He bowed his head on his charger's neck;

"O steed, that every nerve didst strain

Dear steed, our ride hath been in vain

To the halls where my love lay dying!"

MUMFORD'S PAVEMENT.

Some person accidentally upset a bucket of water on Mumford's pavement one of those snapping cold evenings last week, and Jack Frost slipping along soon after transformed it into a sheet of glistening, bone-breaking ice.

Mumford, wholly unconscious of the pitfall in front of his door, had just taken his seat at the basement window, when a stout old gentleman came along, carrying a half-peck of cranberries tied up in brown paper, and softly humming to himself:

"I wish I was a turtle-dove,

I wish I was a sparrow,

I'd fly away to--

Je-ru-salem!" he exclaimed, as his legs spread themselves suddenly apart. A frightened, dazed look crept into his eyes, and a minute later he had burst the suspender buttons off his pantaloons, and hopelessly ruined a new eight-dollar silk hat trying to butt a barrel of ashes into the gutter, while the air in that vicinity was filled with blue profanity and red cranberries.

Owing to the thermometer being down one flight of stairs below zero, and the old gentleman not having a calcium light in his vest pocket, he concluded not to pick the eightyeight-thousand-and-odd scattered cranberries, but contented himself by shaking his fist violently in Mumford's direction and yelling as he moved away:

"I can lick the stuffing out of a hull cart-load of such 'smartys' as you!"

"Mercy, what a funny old gentleman! first he falls down, and then he jumps up and blames me for it," remarked Mumford to his wife, who was sitting by the light, sewing.

He can't to this hour recollect what reply his wife made, his whole attention being suddenly riveted upon a very tall, thin woman with a long nose and big bustle, who was dragging a fat, dumpling-built little boy along by the hand. She had reached about the same spot where the old gentleman a moment before had been performing, when she stopped suddenly, clutched wildly at vacancy, tried to kick her bonnet off, missed it by a few of the shortest kind of inches, tripped up the boy and sat down on him with a force that threatened to drive him through the earth to China.

The prompt use of the boy preserver saved her bones and bustle from destruction, but it flattened the sacrificing youth to a thickness of a Jack of Clubs in a euchre deck.

"Don't you grin at me, you nasty big baboon, you!" she screamed, nodding her head at Mumford, while she groped

around for her false teeth that had slipped out of her mouth in the confusion.

"She must certainly be drunk," soliloquized Mumford, watching her actions with amazement.

"If I was a man I'd skin you alive for this, you wretch!" she shouted, when she had got her teeth back, her bonnet on, and her bustle-propped up,

“Drunk, and a lunatic both. What 've I got to do with her slamming herself around on the sidewalk, I'd like to know?" he asked himself, as he watched her fading away in the darkness with her flattened boy in tow.

A few moments later, as he was flattening his nose against the window-pane, a pair of lovers came tripping along.

"And, Amy, love," said the gentleman, “I can hardly realize that soon you are to be my own little darling duckseySuffering alligator!" he shrieked, as his legs opened like a pair of compasses, and he struck the sidewalk with a jar that loosened his back teeth, lifted his scalp an inch or two, cooled his love, ripped his pantaloons, started his eyes full of tears, and made him regret bitterly that he'd forgotten so much of his boyhood's profanity.

"O Fred!" exclaimed his fiance, trying to lift him up by his paper collar, and the next instant his charmer's feet slipped on the ice, and after swaying to and fro violently for a moment, she attempted to turn a back somersault which her lover did not look upon as a success, owing probably to the fact of her kicking him in the ear as she went over him, with more of the force of a yellow mule or a dynamite cartridge, than that of the cardinal-stockinged idol of his heart. They got up, glanced sheepishly around to see if any one had noticed them, tried to coax up a sickly smile, and limped away trying to look as if they didn't want to rub themselves.

"Hang it all! why don't you sprinkle some ashes on that ice?" called out a grocer, who had skated off into the gutter, and mashed two dozen eggs, the back of his head, and a bottle of olive oil, in falling.

"Oh! there's ice there; so that accounts for the gymnastics," said Mumford, filling a scuttle with hot coals and ashes, and hurrying out.

Some of the neighbors, who happened to be looking out of their front windows about this time, have said since that

it was grand and awe-inspiring to see Mumford, after remaining for a second on the back of his neck, pointing at the twinkling stars with his heels, and emptying his pockets out on to the walk, suddenly collapse into a tangled, scorched and bruised heap, and fill the air with shrieks and more sparks than a firework explosion would make.

A policeman helped his wife and the cook carry him into the house, and he has informed the doctor who is attending him, that as soon as he can cultivate enough skin to cover the burned places, he's going to move to a climate where it don't freeze once in a billion years. His wife thinks she has read of such a place in the Bible.

THE RAINBOW.

The evening was glorious, and light through the trees Played the sunshine, the rain-drops, the birds, and the breeze; And the landscape, outstretching in loveliness, lay

In the lap of the year, in the beauty of May;

For the queen of the spring as she passed down the vale,
Left her robe on the trees and her breath in the gale;
And the smile of her presence gave joy to the hours,
And flush in her footsteps sprang herbage and flowers.
The skies, like a banner, in sunset unrolled,
O'er the west threw their splendor of azure and gold;
But one cloud at a distance rose dense, and increased,
Till its margin of black touched the zenith and east.
Then forth from its depths, in their fearful array,
Came the thunder-peal's voice and the lightning's fierce play,
When the rain in swift torrents poured down from the sky,
And then ceased, as the storm, with the moment, passed by.
We gazed on the scene as around us. it glowed,
When a vision of beauty appeared on the cloud;

It was not like the sun which at midday we view,

Nor the moon that rolls nightly through star-light of blue,
Like a spirit it came in the path of the storm,

And the eye and the heart hailed its beautiful form;
For it looked not severe, like an angel of wrath,

But a garment of glory illumined its path.

In the hues of its grandeur sublimely it stood
O'er the river, the village, the field and the wood;
And river, field, village, and woodland grew bright,
As conscious they felt and afforded delight.
"Twas the bow of Omnipotence, bent by His hand,
Whose grasp, at creation, the universe spanned;

SSSS*

"Twas the presence of God in a symbol sublime,
His vow from the flood to the exit of time!
Not dreadful, as when in the whirlwind He pleads,
When storms are His chariot and lightnings His steeds,
The black cloud His banner of vengeance unfurled,
And thunder His voice to a guilt-stricken world,-
At the breath of His anger when thousands expire,
And seas boil in fury and rocks burn with fire,

And the sword and the plague-spot with death strew the plain,
And vultures and wolves are the graves of the slain;-
Not such was the rainbow, that beautiful one,
Whose arch was refraction, its keystone the sun,
A pavilion it seemed by the Deity graced,
While justice and mercy met there and embraced.
Awhile, and it sweetly bent over the gloom,
Like love o'er a death-couch, or hope o'er a tomb:
Then left the dark scene whence it slowly retired,
As love has just vanished or hope has expired.
I gazed not alone on that source of my song;
To all who beheld it these verses belong;
Its presence to all was the path of the Lord,
Each full heart expanded, grew warm, and adored.
Like a visit, the converse of friends, or a day,
That bow from the sight passed forever away;
Like that visit, that converse, that day to my heart,
That bow from remembrance can never depart.
'Tis a picture in memory distinctly defined,
In the strong and imperishing colors of mind,
A part of my being beyond my control,

Beheld on that cloud, and transcribed on my soul.

THE CIRCUS CLOWN.-NATHAN D. URNER.

There he stands, in his pitiful parti-hues,
With his painted face, and his coxcomb crest,
And his shrill, cracked voice, for his nightly dues-
The crowd's rough laugh at his senseless jest,
His ribald puns, and his antics strange

That make the little ones roar again,

Till you'd deem his life but a merry change
From laugh to laugh, and devoid of pain.

But follow me, upon fancy's wing,

To the dim tent corner he swiftly seeks,
When he tumbles off from the lighted ring
For a respite brief. Lo! his painted cheeks
Are wet and furrowed with coursing tears,
The hollow groan from his breast ascends,