White lilies stand, graceful and still, in the Ah! life seems

Pale sunbeams are gliding about through the And I'd be content, with my love for comhollow

Still on glides our boat o'er the shimmering To make it sure. Of all God made upright

And bear to us burdens of odorous sweets. None bargained on so easy terms with death.

I could not torment and tease you,
My Jo,

Illustrious fool! Nay, most inhuman wretch!
He sat among his bags, and, with a look
Which hell might be ashamed of, drove the As you torture me while I wrestle with
poor

doubts that are giants to throw.

You seat yourself-still at a distanceOn a tree that this arm has laid low, All breathless with laughing resistance, My Jo, 'Neath your white furs warmly resenting the buffets of wind and of snow.

If I gave you hard words would you shun

me,

Or flatter me then as your foe?
If your coldness less easily won me,

My Jo,

Where the great hill, heavenward stum- Would you dazzle me much with the kindness.

bling,

Swells up like a huge ox-bow,

In a blind white cataract tumbling,

My Jo

Stands shading her eyes in the dazzle between
the sky and the snow,

Then, warily, lightly, descending,
With a step alert yet slow,

Her lithe shape swaying and bending,
My Jo,

Her arms flung out to save her from the
treacherous slope below.

And I, growing dizzy, eyes straining,
Half blinded, the sun on the snow,
No carelessness hiding or feigning,
My Jo-

From my fingers the axe dropped unheeded,

the minutes drag heavy and slow. Ah, Jo! does my waiting displease you? Is it folly to think of you so?

old Winter stands ready to show?

I can work for your bread or your pleasure,
At your bidding to come and to go;
The strength of my love you can measure,
My Jo,

By the length of the suns that I labor, by the
force of each far-splitting blow.

You look at me coldly reproving

Because of the weakness I show; You scorn me, so dog-like and loving, My Jo;

I will bend to the hardest of masters: in that weakness I cannot o'erthrow.

I will eat, and stretch up as a giant;
I will sleep, and my courage shall grow;
The pith of the ash shall turn pliant,
My Jo

Tough hickory bend like a sapling, the blood
of the maple shall flow.

Not here? As for me, am I learning
The lesson so painful and slow?

In my dark cheek the blood, too, is burn- PLACED

ing,

My Jo,

And I strain my eyes farther and farther to the rambling speck on the snow.

MAN IN NATURE.

LACED on this isthmus of a middle
state,

A being darkly wise and rudely great,
With too much knowledge for the sceptic
side,

With too much weakness for the stoic's

pride,

He hangs between, in doubt to act or rest,
In doubt to deem himself a god or beast,
In doubt his mind or body to prefer;
Born but to die and reas'ning but to err,
Alike in ignorance, his reason such,
Whether he thinks too little or too much;
Chaos of thought and passion, all con-
fused;

Still by himself abused or disabused
Created half to rise, and half to fall;
Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all;
Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurled,
The glory, jest and riddle of the world!

Go, wond'rous creature! mount where Science guides;

Go measure earth, weigh air and state the

tides;

Instruct the planets in what orbs to run,
Correct old Time and regulate the Sun;
Go soar with Plato to the empyreal sphere,
To the first good, first perfect and first fair;
Go teach Eternal Wisdom how to rule,
Then drop into thyself, and be a fool.

Superior beings, when of late they saw
A mortal man unfold all Nature's law,
Admired such wisdom in an earthly shape,
And showed a Newton as we show an ape.

ALEXANDER POPE.

May I express thee unblamed, since God is So were I equalled with them in renown,

light,

And never but in unapproachèd light
Dwelt from eternity, dwelt then in thee,
Bright effluence of bright essence increate?
Or hearest thou rather, pure ethereal stream,
Whose fountain who shall tell? Before the

sun,

Blind Thamyris and blind Mæonides,
And Tiresias and Phineus, prophets old,
Then fed on thoughts that voluntary move
Harmonious numbers, as the wakeful bird
Sings darkling, and in shadiest covert hid
Tunes her nocturnal note. Thus with the year
Seasons return, but not to me returns

Before the heavens, thou wert, and at the Day, or the sweet approach of even or morn,

voice

Or sight of vernal bloom, or summer's rose,
Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine;
But cloud instead, and ever-during dark
Surrounds me, from the cheerful ways of men
Cut off, and for the book of knowledge fair

Of God, as with a mantle, didst invest
The rising world of waters dark and deep,
Won from the void and formless infinite.
Thee I revisit now with bolder wing,
Escaped the Stygian pool, though long de- Presented with a universal blank

tained

In that obscure sojourn, while in my flight
Through utter and through middle darkness
borne,

With other notes than to th' Orphean lyre
I
sung
of Chaos and eternal Night,
Taught by the heavenly Muse to venture.
down

The dark descent, and up to reascend,
Though hard and rare. Thee I revisit safe,
And feel thy sov'reign vital lamp; but thou
Revisitst not these eyes, that roll in vain
To find thy piercing ray and find no dawn,
So thick a drop serene hath quenched their
orbs,

Or dim suffusion veiled. Yet not the more
Cease I to wander where the Muses haunt
Clear spring or shady grove or sunny hill,
Smit with the love of sacred song; but
chief,

Thee, Sion, and the flowery brooks beneath,

Of Nature's works to me expunged and rased,
And Wisdom at one entrance quite shut out.
So much the rather, thou celestial Light,
Shine inward, and the mind through all her

powers

Irradiate. There plant eyes; all mist from
thence

Purge and disperse, that I may see and tell
Of things invisible to mortal sight.

JOHN MILTON.

WHAT IS FAME?

WHAT is fame and what is glory?

A dream, a lying jester's story,

To tickle fools withal, or be

A theme for second infancy.

A word of praise, perchance of blame,
The wreck of a time-bandied name-
This, this is glory, this is fame.

WILLIAM MOTHERWELL.