And when the fiend's art on the trustful heart
Had fastened its mortal spell,

In the silvery sphere of the first born tear
To the trembling earth I fell.

When the waves that burst o'er the world accurs'd

Their work of wrath had sped,

And the Ark's lone few, so tried and true,

Came forth among the dead;

With the wond'rous gleams of my bridal beams,
1 bade their terrors cease,

As I wrote, on the roll of the storm's dark scroll,
God's covenant of peace!

Like a pall at rest on a senseless breast,
Night's funeral shadow slept ;-

Where shepherd swains on the Bethlehem plains
Their lonely vigils kept-

When I flashed on their sight the heralds bright
Of Heaven's redeeming plau

As they chanted the morn of a Saviour born-
Joy, joy to the outcast man.

Equal favor I show to the lofty and low,

On the just and unjust I descend;

E'en the blind, whose vain spheres roll in darkness and

tears,

Feel my smile, the blest smile of a friend.

Nay, the flower of the waste by my love is embraced,

As the rose in the garden of Kings;

At the chrysalis bier of the worm I appear,
And lo! the gay butterfly wings.

The desolate Morn, like a mourner forlorn,
Conceals all the pride of her charms,

Till I bid the bright hours chase night from her flowers,
And lead the young day to her arms;

And when the gay rover seeks Eve for his lover,

And sinks to her balmy repose,

I wrap the soft rest by the zephyr fanned-west,

In curtains of amber and rose.

From my sentinel steep, by the night-brooded deep,
I gaze with unslumbering eye,

When the cynosure star of the mariner

Is blotted from out of the sky;

And guided by me through the merciless sea,
Though sped by the hurricane's wings,

His compassless, dark, lone, weltering bark
To the haven, home, safely he brings.

I waken the flowers in their dew-spangled bowers,
The birds in their chambers of green,

And mountains and plain grow with beauty again
As they bask in matinal sheen.

Oh, if such the glad worth of my presence to earth,
Though fitful and fleeting the while,

What glories must rest on the home of the blest,
Ever bright with the Deity's smile!

No snow falls lighter than the snow of age; but none is heavier, for it novel melts.

THE figure is by no means novel, but the closing part of the sentence is new as well as emphatic. The Scriptures represent age by the almond-tree, which bears blos

soms of the purest white. "The almond-tree shall flourish"-the head shall be hoary. Dickens says of one of his characters whose hair was turning gray, that it looked as if Time had lightly splashed his snows upon it in passing.

"It never melts"-no never. Age is inexorable. Its wheels must move onward-they know no retrogade movement. The old man may sit and sing, "I would I were a boy again"-but he grows older as he sings. He may read of the elixir of youth, but he cannot find it; he may sigh for the secrets of that alchemy which is able to make him young again, but sighing brings it not. may gaze backward with an eye of longing upon the rosy scenes of early years, as one who gazes on his home from the deck of a departing ship, which every moment carries him farther and farther away. Poor old man! he has little more to do than die.

He

"It never melts." The snow of winter comes and sheds its white blessings upon the valley and the mountains, but soon the sweet spring comes and smiles it all away. Not so with that upon the brow of the tottering veteran. There is no spring whose warmth can penetrate its eternal frost. It came to stay. Its single flakes fell unnoticed-and now it is drilled there. We shall see it increase until we lay the old man in his grave. There it shall be absorbed by the eternal darkness-for there is no age in heaven.

Yet why speak of age in a mournful strain? It is beautiful, honorable, eloquent. Should we sigh at the proximity of death, when life and the world are so full of emptiness? Let the old exult because they are old. If any must weep, let it be the young, at the long succession of cares that are before them. Welcome the snow, for it is the emblem of peace and of rest. It is but a temporal crown which shall fall at the gates of Paradise, to be replaced by a brighter and a better.

THE PERVERSE HEN.

ONCE with an honest Dutchman walking,
About his troubles he was talking-
The most of which seemed to arise
From friends' and wife's perversities.
When he took breath his pipe to fill,
I ventured to suggest that will
Was oft the cause of human ill;
That life was full of self-denials,
And every man had his own trials.

"Tis not the will," he quick replied,
"But it's the won't by which I'm tried.
When people will, I'm always glad;
'Tis only when they won't I'm mad!
Contrary folks, like mine old hen,
Who laid a dozen eggs, and then
Instead of sitting down to batch,
Runs off into mine garden pateh!
I goes and catches her and brings her
And back into her nest I flings her;
But sit she won't, for all I say,
She's up again and runs away.
Then I was mad, as mad as tire,
But once again I thought I'd try her,
So after her I soon made chase,
And brings her back to the old place,
And then I snaps her a great deal,
And does my best to make her feel
That she must do as she was bid;
But not a bit of it she did.
She was the most contrariest bird
Of which I ever saw or heard ;
Before I'd turn my back again,
Was running off that wilful hen.
Thinks I, I'm now a used up' man;
I must adopt some other plau;
I'll fix her now, for if I don't,
My will is conquered by her won't!
So then I goes and gets some blocks,
And with them makes a little box;
And takes some straw, the very best
And makes the nicest kind of nest;
Then in the nest the eggs I place,
And feel a smile upon my face
As I thinks, now at last I've got her,
When in the little box I've sot her;

For to this little box I did
Consider I must have a lid,
So that she couldn't get away,

But in it, till she hatched must stay.
And then again, ouce more I chase her,
And catch, and in the box I place her.
Again I snaps her on the head,
Until I fear she might be dead;

And then, when I had made her sit down,
Immediately I claps the lid on.

And now, thinks I, I've got her fast,
She'll have to do her work at last.
No longer shall I stand the brunt
Of this old hen's confounded won't!
So I goes in and tells mine folks,

And then I takes my pipe and smokes,
And walks about and feels so good

That wouldn't' yields at length to 'would.
And as so oft I'd snapped the hen,

I took some 'schnapps' myself, and then
I thought I'd see how the old creature
Was getting on where I had set her;
The lid, the box so nicely tits on,
I gently raised-dunder and blitzen!
(Give me more schnapps and fill the cup!)
There she was sitting-standing up!"

A WOMAN'S QUESTION.—ADELAIDE ANNE Proctor

BEFORE I trust my fate to thee,
Or place my hand in thine,
Before I let thy future give
Color and form to mine,
Before I peril all for thee,

Question thy soul to-night for me.

I break all slighter bonds, nor feel
A shadow of regret :

Is there one ink within the past
That holds thy spirit yet?

Or is thy faith as clear and free
As that which I can pledge to inee?

Does there within thy dimmest dreams
A possible future shine,

Wherein thy life could henceforth breathe,
Untouched, unshared by mine?

MM