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From ocean it came on a murmuring wave,
The voice of years:

And it spoke of the time êre the birth of light;
When earth was hushed, 'neath the ocean's might,
And the waters rolled, and the dashing roar
Of the angered surge owned not yet the power
Which whispers in that murmuring wave,
The voice of years.

From earth it came, from her inmost deep,
The voice of years:

It murmured forth with the bubbling stream,
It came like the sound of a long-passed dream-.
And it spoke of the hour ere Time had birth,
When living thing moved not yet on earth,
And, solemnly sad, it rose from the deep,

The voice of years.

From heaven it came, on a beam of light,

The voice of years:

And it spoke of a God who reigned alone,
Who waked the stars, who lit the sun.

As it glanced o'er mountain, and river, and wood,
It spoke of the good and the wonderful God;
And it whispered to praise that God of light,
The voice of years.

It howled in the storm as it threatening passed,

The voice of years:

And it spoke of ruin, and fiercest might;
Of angry fiends, and of things of night;.
But raging, as o'er the earth it strode,
I knelt and I prayed to the merciful God,
And methought it less angrily howled as it passed,
The voice of years.

And it came from yon moss-grown ruin gray,

The voice of years:

And it spoke of myself, and the years which were gone,
Of hopes which were blighted, and joys which were flown;
Of the wreck of so much that was bright and was fair;
And it made me sad, and I wept to hear,

As it came from yon moss-grown ruin gray,

The voice of years.

And it rose from the grave with the song of death,
The voice of years:

And I shuddered to hear the tale it told,

Of blighted youth, and hearts grown cold;*
And anguish and sorrow which crept to the grave,
To hide from the spoiler the wound which he gave.
And sadly it rose from that home of death,

The voice of years.

But again it passed on the passing breeze,

The voice of years:

And it spoke of a God, who watched us here,
Who heard the sigh, and who saw the tear;
And it spoke of mercy, and not of woe;
There was love and hope in its whispering low;
And I listened to catch, on that passing breeze,
The voice of years.

And it spoke of pain which might not last,
That voice of years:

And it taught me to think, that the God who gave
The breath of life, could wake from the grave;
And it taght me to see that this beautiful earth
Was not only made to give sorrow birth;
And it whispered, that mercy must reign at last,
That voice of years.

And strangely, methought, as it floated by,
That voice of years

Seemed fraught with a tone from some higher sphere,
It whispered around me, that God was near;

He spoke from the sunbeam; He spoke from the wave;
He spoke from the ruin; He spoke from the grave;
"Twas the voice of God, as it floated by,

That voice of years.

MRS. L. S. 'M'CORD.

CLV.-PHYSICAL AND MORAL BEAUTY.

Look, too, at the provision which the bounty of God has made for the aesthetic or beauty-loving part of nature. We might have eaten and drank and worked in a drab-colored universe, as well as in this scene of ever-varying splendor; in a world of monotone and droning, as well as in the midst of

"Ten thousand harps that tune
Angelic harmonies;"

in a world of geometric triangles and polygons, instead of fields of waving grain, and bowers of wreathing vines, and all the graceful lines of beauty and of art.

Yet what a prodigality of creations to gratify the sentiment of beauty in the mind of man!—the many-colored flowers of the green earth, and the many-colored stars of the °cerulean sky; the tints of the living foliage of summer, and the more gorgeous hues of the dying foliage of autumn,-that season when nature weaves a mantle of more than Tyrian splendor, and spreads it like a garment over valley and hill; the fervid and everchanging effulgence of the rising sun, and the gentler glories of his setting hour; the stationary rainbow and the shooting auroras; the glittering colors of bird and insect and shell; all nature's symmetry of proportion, whether in the tiny walls of the coral insect's sepulchre, or in the honey-bee's comb, or in the basaltic pillars that uphold the mountains; the rigid shaft of the oak, and the vine that gracefully °festoons it;-but I forbear; for who shall catalogue the master-pieces in nature's galleries of beauty,— all marvels, all fashioned from archetypes of infinite excellence in the Divine mind?

Surely, He who created the fragrance and flowers and music of Paradise; He who has commanded a thousand sleepless attendants, each with a horn of plenty in its hand, to stand around even the disobedient children of men, and minister to their luxury and their adornment, was no anchorite. Surely, He who created all colors, and has mingled them together in the petals of flowers, in the armature of insects, and in the plumage of birds, and has blended lily and rose in the cheek of youth; He who has strewed the bottom of the ocean with pearls, and sowed jasper and amethyst and chrysolite among the rocks, was no contemner of adornment. He prepared this wondrous frame of things not only to excite the exultation of sense and sentiment, but to inspire the sublime contemplations of the intellect, and to make our devotions impassioned by making their object so admirable. And with what nice adaptations and adjustments man is fitted to the universe in which he is placed!

Behold the marvelous reach and energy with which the narrow organs of our narrow bodies extend their cognisance and display their power! The nervous °filaments of the senses are finer than a spider's thread. Yet they are the avenues of communication between the world without and the world within. They spread themselves out over a little space at the roots of the tongue, and all the savors of nature become tributaries to our pleasure. They unfold themselves over a little space in the olfactory organs, and we catch the

perfumes of all the zones. They are ramified over a little space in the hollow of the ear, and the myriad voices of nature, from the shrill insect or the mellifluous song-bird, to the organ tones of heaven's cathe dral, the thunder, the cataract, and the ocean,-become our orches tra. They line a spot in the interior of the eye so small that the tip of the finger may cover it; when lo! the earth and the heavens, to the remotest constellations that seem to glitter feebly on the confines of space, are painted, quick as thought, in the chambers of the brain.

By these senses we hold connection with all external things, as though millions of telegraphic wires were stretched from every outward object, and came in converging lines to find their focus in our organs, and through these inlets to pour their pictures, their odors, and their songs, into the all-capacious brain. Nay, better than this, for we have the picture, the perfume, and the music, without the encumbrance of the wires.

But a higher and holier world than the world of Ideas, or the world of Beauty, lies around us; and we find ourselves endued with susceptibilities which affiliate us to all its purity and its perfectness. The laws of nature are sublime, but there is a moral sublimity before which the highest intelligences must kneel and adore. The laws by which the winds blow, and the tides of the ocean, like a vast clepsydra, measure, with inimitable exactness, the hours of ever-flowing time; the laws by which the planets roll, and the sun vivifies and paints; the laws which preside over the subtile combinations of chemistry, and the amazing velocities of electricity; the laws of germination and production in the vegetable and animal worlds;—all these, radiant with eternal beauty as they are, and exalted above all the objects of sense, still wane and pale before the Moral Glories that apparel the universe in their celestial light.

The heart can put on charms which no beauty of known things, nor imagination of the unknown, can aspire to emulate. Virtue shines in native colors, purer and brighter than pearl or diamond or °prism can reflect. Arabian gardens in their bloom can exhale no such sweetness as charity diffuses. Beneficence is godlike, and he who does most good to his fellow-man is the master of masters, and has learned the art of arts. Enrich and embellish the universe as you will, it is only a fit temple for the heart that loves truth with a supreme love. Inanimate vastness excites wonder; knowledge kindles admiration, but love enraptures the soul. Scientific truth is marvelous, but moral truth is divine; and whoever breathes its air and walks by its light, has found the lost paradise. For him a new heaven and a new earth have already been created. His home is the sanctuary of God, the Holy of Holies. HORACE 'MANN.

CLVI.-ADDRESS TO A MUMMY.

AND thou hast walked about (how strange a story),
In "Thebes's streets three thousand years ago,
When the Memnonium was in all its glory,
And time had not begun to overthrow
Those temples, palaces, and piles stupendous,
Of which the very ruins are tremendous.

Speak! for thou long enough hast acted dummy,
Thou hast a tongue-come let us hear its tune;
Thou'rt standing on thy legs above ground, Mummy!
Revisiting the glimpses of the moon,

Not like thin ghosts or disembodied creatures,
But with thy bones and flesh, and limbs and features.

Tell us for doubtless thou canst recollect-
To whom should we assign the Sphinx's fame?
Was Cheops or Cephrenes architect

Of either pyramid that bears his name?

Is 'Pompey's Pillar really a misnomer?

Had Thebes a hundred gates, as sung by Homer?

Perchance that very hand, now pinioned flat,
Has hob-a-nobbed with Pharaoh glass to glass,
Or dropped a half-penny in Homer's hat,

Or doffed thine own to let Queen Dido pass,
Or held, by Solomon's own invitation,
A torch at the great temple's dedication.

I need not ask thee if that hand, when armed,
Has any Roman soldier mauled or knuckled,
For thou wert dead and buried, and embalmed,

Ere Romulus and Remus had been suckled:
Antiquity appears to have begun

Long after thy °primeval race was run.

Since first thy form was in this box extended,

We have, above ground, seen some strange mutations;

The Roman empire has begun and ended,

New worlds have risen, we have lost old nations, And countless kings have into dust been humbled, While not a fragment of thy flesh has crumbled.

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