THE PAST. THE debt is paid, The Furies laid, The plague is stayed, All fortunes made; Turn the key and bolt the door, Nor haughty hope, nor swart chagrin, Not the gods can shake the Past; No Satan with a royal trick, Steal in by window, chink, or hole, To bind or unbind, add what lacked, COMPENSATION. THE wings of Time are black and white, The lonely Earth amid the balls Or compensatory spark, Shoots across the neutral Dark. Man's the elm, and Wealth the vine; WILLIAM GILMORE SIMMS. [Born in 1806, died in 1871. LL.D. of the University of Alabama. A remarkably voluminous author-journalist, poet, dramatist, novelist, biographer, historian. Mr. Simms was a native of South Carolina, and an ardent Southerner in the War of Secession]. THE LOST PLEIAD. NOT in the sky Where it was seen, Nor or the white tops of the glistering wave, Though green And beautiful its caves of mystery, Shall the bright watcher have A place and, as of old, high station keep. Gone, gone! Oh never more to cheer The mariner who holds his course alone On the Atlantic, through the weary night, When the stars turn to watchers and do sleep, With the sweet fixedness of certain light, Vain, vain! Hopeful most idly then, shall he look forth, Howe'er the north Doth raise his certain lamp when tempests lour- Which may not, through the thick and crowding dark, Restore that lost and loved one to her tower. He looks, the shepherd on Chaldea's hills, And wonders the rich beacon doth not blaze, And, from his dreary watch along the rocks, Still wondering, as the drowsy silence fills And lone, Where its first splendours shone, Shall be that pleasant company of stars: How should they know that death Such perfect beauty mars? And, like the earth, its common bloom and breath, Their lights grow blasted by its touch, and die- A strain-a mellow strain Of wailing sweetness filled the earth and sky; Alas! 'tis evermore the destiny,— The hope heart-cherished is the soonest lost; GEORGE LUNT. [Born about 1807, of a naval family. Has held various legal and other public offices in Massachusetts. Besides divers volumes of poetry, he has published, under the pseudonym of Wesley Brooke, a novel named Eastford]. PILGRIM SONG. OVER the mountain wave, see where they come ; "Pilgrims and wanderers, hither we come; Dim grew the forest-path: onward they trod; "Pilgrims and wanderers, hither we come; Not theirs the glory-wreath, torn by the blast; "Pilgrims and wanderers, hither we come; 1 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. [Born in 1807, died in 1867. While still at college, he acquired a showy but unstable reputation by certain Scripture Sketches in verse; and continued producing various metrical and more numerous prose compositions, of a light and miscellaneous kind for the most part. He travelled in England and in Europe; making numerous acquaintances, some friends, and not a few enemies, by his social talents and his pen]. THE CONFESSIONAL. I THOUGHT of thee-I thought of thee, We furled before the coming gale, We flew beneath the straining sail,- I thought of thee-I thought of thee, Is pregnant with impassioned thought, With one warm meaning only fraught. I thought of thee-I thought of thee, In wonders of the deathless arts; Val d'Arno, with a song of old; |