THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH,
A DREAM OF PONCE DE LEON.

A STORY of Ponce de Leon,

A voyager withered and old, Who came to the sunny Antilles, In quest of a country of gold. He was wafted past islands of spices, As bright as the emerald seas, Where all the forests seem singing,

So thick were the birds on the trees; The sea was clear as the azure,

And so deep and so pure was the sky That the jasper-walled city seemed shining

Just out of the reach of the eye.

Away sailed De Leon, the sailor;
Away with a wonderful glee,

Till the birds were more rare in the azure,

The dolphins more rare in the sea. Away from the shady Bahamas,

Over waters no sailor had seen, Till again on his wandering vision, Rose clustering islands of green. Still onward he sped till the breezes Were laden with odors, and lo! A country embedded with flowers,

A country with rivers aglow! More bright than the sunny Antilles, More fair than the shady Azores. "Thank the Lord!" said De Leon, the sailor,

As feasted his eye on the shores, "We have come to a region, my brothers,

More lovely than earth, of a truth; And here is the life-giving fountain, The beautiful Fountain of Youth."

His own funereal destiny;
His wretchedness, and his resistance,
And his sad unallied existence:
To which his spirit may oppose
Itself- and equal to all woes,

And a firm vill, and a deep sense, Which even in torture can descry

Its own concentered recompense, Triumphant where it dares defy, And making death a victory!

WHEN COLDNESS

Away, away, without a wing,
O'er all, through all, its thoughts
shall fly;

A nameless and eternal thing,
Forgetting what it was to die.

SUN OF THE SLEEPLESS.

SUFFERING CLAY.

WHEN coldness wraps this suffering clay,

Ah! whither strays the immortal mind ?

It cannot die, it cannot stray, But leaves its darkened dust behind.

Then, unembodied, doth it trace
By steps each planet's heavenly
way ?

Or fill at once the realms of space,
A thing of eyes, that all survey ?

Eternal, boundless, undecayed,

A thought unseen, but seeing ali, All, all in earth, or skies displayed, Shall it survey, shall it recall: Each fainter trace that memory holds So darkly of departed years, In one broad glance the soul beholds, And all that was, at once appears.

Before Creation peopled earth, Its eyes shall roll through chaos back;

And where the furthest heaven had

birth,

The spirit trace its rising track, And where the future mars or makes, Its glance dilate o'er all to be,

How like art thou to joy remembered

well!

Every inmost thought could show!

'Twas not well to spurn it so.

Through the world for this commend
thee-
Though it smile upon the blow,
Even its praises must offend thee,
Founded on another's woe: