Of new-sprung leaves their modulations mix | Others apart far in the grassy dale Or roughening waste their humble texture A melancholy murmur through the whole. 'Tis love creates their melody, and all arts Of pleasing teaches; hence the glossy kind With distant awe in airy rings they rove, seem Softening the least approvance to bestow, struck, Retire disordered; then again approach, Connubial leagues agreed, to the deep woods weave; But most in woodland solitudes delight, When by kind duty fixed. Among the roots Dry sprigs of trees in artful fabric laid But restless hurry through the busy air, sweeps The slimy pool, to build his hanging house Steal from the barn a straw, till soft and warm, Clean and complete, their habitation grows. As thus the patient dam assiduous sits, her blows, Her sympathizing lover takes his stand The tedious time away, or else supplies time Their food its insects and its moss their nests; With pious toil fulfilled, the callow young, Warmed and expanded into perfect life, young; What melting sentiments of kindly care, Be not the Muse ashamed here to bemoan Oh, then, ye friends of love and love-taught Spare the soft tribes, this barbarous art forbear, And charmed with cares beyond the vulgar If on your bosom Innocence can win, Of wandering swain the white-winged plover And yet whose tongue, when all is done, wheels Her sounding flight, and then directly on To tempt him from her nest. The wild duck, hence, Will tell thy worth? The poet's! He alone doth still Then love the poet-love his themes, O'er the rough moss, and o'er the trackless His thoughts, half hid in golden dreams, And later joys, like autumn flowers, Thy stream of life glides calmly on, The turbid waves of mine; Joy's sunshine on my brow, Thine scarce can be a happier doom Than I might boast of now. ALARIC A. WATTS. AN IDEAL WOMAN. SHE was my peer No weakling girl who would surrender will Her womanhood; had spread before her feet Had won a faith to which her life was brought In strict adjustment, brain and heart mean while Working in conscious harmony and rhythm With the great scheme of God's great universe On toward her being's end. DR. J. G. HOLLAND. THE DREAM OF PETRARCA. HEN I was younger, I was fond of wandering in solitary places, and never was afraid of slumbering in woods and grottoes. Among the chief pleasures of my life, and among the commonest of my occupations, was the bringing before me such heroes and heroines of antiquity, such poets and sages, such of the prosperous and of the unfortunate, as most interested me by their courage, their wisdom, their eloquence or their adventures. Engaging them in the conversation best suited to their characters, I knew perfectly their manners, their steps, their voices; and often did I moisten with my tears the models I had been forming of the less happy. Great is the privilege of entering into the studies of the intellectual; great is that of conversing with the guides of nations, the movers of the mass, the regulators of the unruly will, stiff in its impurity and rash against the finger of the Almighty Power that formed it; but give me rather the creature to sympathize with, apportion me the sufferings to assuage. sufferings to assuage. Allegory had few attractions for me, believing it to be the delight, in general, of idle, frivolous, inexcursive minds in whose mansions there is neither hall nor portal to receive the loftier of the passions. A stranger to the affections, she holds a low station among the handmaidens of Poetry, being fit for little but an apparition in a mask. I had reflected for some time on this subject, when, wearied with the length of my walk over the mountains and finding a soft old molehill covered with gray grass by the wayside, I laid my head upon it and slept. I cannot tell how long it was before a species of dream, or vision, came over me. Two beautiful youths appeared beside me. Each was winged, but the wings were hanging down and seemed ill-adapted to flight. One of them, whose voice was the softest I ever heard, looking at me frequently, said to the other, "He is under my guardianship for the present: do not awaken him with that feather." Methought, on hearing the whisper, I saw something like the feather of an arrow, and then the arrow itself, the whole of it, even to the point, although he carried it in such a manner that it was difficult at first to discover more than a palm's length of it; the rest of the shaft (and the whole of the barb) was behind his ankles. "This feather never awakens any one," replied he, rather petulantly, "but it brings more of confident security and more of cherished dreams than you, without me, are capable of imparting." "Be it so," answered the gentler; "none is less inclined to quarrel or dispute than I am. Many whom you have wounded grievously call upon me for succor; but so little am I disposed to thwart you it is seldom I venture to do more for them than to whisper a few words of comfort in passing. "Odd enough that we, O Sleep, should be thought so alike!" said Love, contemptuously. "Yonder is he who bears a nearer resemblance to you; the dullest have observed it." I fancied I turned my eyes to where he was pointing, and saw at a distance the figure he designated. Meanwhile, the contention went on uninterruptedly. Sleep was slow in asserting his power or his benefits. Love recapitulated them, but only that he might assert his own above them. Suddenly he called on me to decide and to choose my patron. Under the influence, first of the one, then of the other, I sprang from repose to rapture, I alighted from rapture on repose, and knew not which was sweetest. Love was very angry with me, and declared he would cross me throughout the whole of my existence. Whatever I might on other occasions have thought of his veracity, I now felt too surely the conviction that he would keep his word. At last, before the close of the altercation, the third genius had advanced, and stood near us. I cannot tell how I knew him, but I knew him to be the genius of Death. Breathless as I was at beholding him, I soon became familiar with his features. First they seemed only calm, presently they grew contemplative, and lastly beautiful: those of the Graces themselves are less regular, less harmonious, less composed. Love glanced at him unsteadily, with a countenance in which there was somewhat of anxiety, somewhat of disdain, and cried, "Go away! go away! Nothing that thou touchest lives." 66 'Say rather, child," replied the advancing form, and, advancing, grew loftier and statelier-" say rather that nothing of beautiful or of glorious lives its own true life until my wing hath passed over it." Love pouted and rumpled and bent down with his forefinger the stiff, short feathers on his arrow-head, but replied not. Although he frowned worse than ever, and at me, I dreaded him less and less, and scarcely looked toward him. The milder and calmer genius, the third, in proportion as I took courage to contemplate him, regarded me with more and more complacency. He held neither flower nor arrow, as the others did, but, throwing back the clusters of dark curls that overshadowed his countenance, he presented to me his hand openly and benignly. I shrank on looking at him so near, and yet I sighed to love him. He smiled, not without an expression of pity, at perceiving my diffidence, my timidity; for I remembered how soft was the hand of Sleep, how warm and entrancing was Love's. By degrees I grew ashamed of my ingratitude, and, turning my face away, I held out my arms and felt my neck within his. Composure allayed all the throbbings of my bosom, the coolness of freshest morning breathed around, the heavens seemed to open above me, while the beautiful cheek of my deliverer rested on my head. I would now have looked for those others, but, knowing my intention by my gesture, he said consolatorily, "Sleep is on his way to the earth, where many are calling him; but it is not to them he hastens, for every call only makes him fly |