thy citizens in terror! thy ships in flames! I hear the victorious shouts of Rome! I see her eagles glittering on thy ramparts. Proud city, thou art doomed! The curse of God is on thee-a clinging, wasting curse. It shall not leave thy gates till hungry flames shall lick the fretted gold from off thy proud palaces, and every brook runs crimson to the sea.'

E. KELLOGG.

I

THE CLOUD.

BRING fresh showers for the thirsting flowers,
From the seas and the streams;

I bear light shades for the leaves when laid
In their noon-day dreams;

From my wings are shaken the dews that waken
The sweet birds every one,

When rocked to rest on their mother's breast,
As she dances about the sun.

I wield the flail of the lashing hail,

And whiten the green plains under;
And then again I dissolve it in rain,
And laugh as I pass in thunder.

I sift the snow on the mountains below,

And their great pines groan aghast;
And all the night 'tis my pillow white,

While I sleep in the arms of the blast,
Sublime on the towers of my skyey bowers,
Lightning, my pilot, sits;

In a cavern under is fettered the thunder

It struggles and howls by fits.

Over earth and ocean, with gentle motion,
This pilot is guiding me,

Lured by the love of the genii that move
In the depths of the purple sea;

Over the rills, and the crags, and the hills,
Over the lakes and the plains,

Wherever he dream, under mountain or stream,
The spirit he loves remains;

And I, all the while, bask in heaven's blue smile,
Whilst he is dissolving in rains.

The sanguine sunrise, with his meteor eyes,
And his burning plumes outspread,
Leaps on the back of my sailing rack,

When the morning-star shines dead ;

As on the jag of a mountain crag,

Which an earthquake rocks and swings,

An eagle, alit, one moment may sit,

In the light of its golden wings.

And when sunset may breathe, from the lit sea beneath.

Its ardours of rest and love,

And the crimson pall of eve may fall

From the depth of heaven above,

With wings folded I rest, on mine airy nest,
As still as a brooding dove.

That orbed maiden, with white fire laden,
Whom mortals call the moon,

Glides glimmering o'er my fleece-like floor,
By the midnight breezes strewn;
And whenever the beat of her unseen feet,
Which only the angels hear,

May have broken the woof of my tent's thin roof,
The stars peep behind her and peer!

And I laugh to see them whirl and flee,

Like a swarm of golden bees,

When I widen the rent in my wind-built tent,
Till the calm rivers, lakes, and seas,

Like strips of the sky fallen through me on high,
Are each paved with the moon and these.

I bind the sun's throne with a burning zone,
And the moon's with a girdle of pearl;
The volcanoes are dim, and the stars reel and swim,
When the whirlwinds my banners unfurl.
From cape to cape, with a bridge-like shape
Over a torrent sea,

Sunbeam proof, I hang like a roof,

The mountains its columns be.

The triumphal arch through which I march
With hurricane, fire, and snow,

When the powers of the air are chained to my chair, is the million-colored bow;

The sphere-fire above its soft colors wove,
While the moist air was laughing below.

I am the daughter of earth and water,

I

And the nursling of the sky;

pass through the pores of the ocean and shores;

I change, but I cannot die:

For, after the rain, when, with never a stain,

The pavilion of heaven is bare,

And the winds and sunbeams, with their convex gleams,

Build up the blue dome of air,

I silently laugh at my own cenotaph,

And out of the caverns of rain,

Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb,

I arise and unbuild it again.

PERCY B. SHELLEY.

THE HUMBLEST OF THE EARTH-CHILDREN.

L

ICHEN and mosses (though these last in their luxu riance are deep and rich as herbage, yet both for the most part humblest of the green things that live)—how of these? Meek creatures! the first mercy of the earth, veiling with hushed softness its dintless rocks; creatures full of pity, covering with strange and tender honor the scarred disgrace of ruin,-laying quiet finger on the trembling stones, to teach them rest. No words, that I know of, will say what these mosses are. None are delicate enough, none perfect enough, none rich enough. How is one to tell of the rounded bosses of furred and beaming green-the starred divisions of rubied bloom, fine-filmed, as if the Rock Spirits could spin porphyry as we do glass-the traceries of intricate silver, and fringes of amber, lustrous, arborescent, burnished through every fibre into fitful brightness and glossy traverses of silken change, yet all subdued and pensive, and framed for simplest, sweetest offices of grace. They will not be gathered, like the flowers, for chaplet or love-token; but of these the wild bird will make its nest, and the wearied child his pillow.

to us.

And, as the earth's first mercy, so they are its last gift When all other service is vain, from plant and tree, the soft mosses and gray lichen take up their watch by the headstone. The woods, the blossoms, the giftbearing grasses, have done their parts for a time, but these do service forever. Trees for the builder's yard, flowers for the bride's chamber, corn for the granary. moss for the grave.

Yet as in one sense the humblest, in another they are

the most honored of the earth-children. Unfading, as motionless, the worm frets them not, and the autumn wastes not. Strong in lowliness, they neither blanch in heat nor pine in frost. To them, slow-fingered, constanthearted, is entrusted the weaving of the dark, eternal, tapestries of the hills; to them, slow-penciled, iris-dyed, the tender framing of their endless imagery. Sharing the stillness of the unimpassioned rock, they share also its endurance; and while the winds of departing spring scatter the white hawthorn blossom like drifted snow, and summer dims on the parched meadow the drooping of its cowslip-gold,-far above, among the mountains, the silver lichen spots rest, star-like, on the stone, and the gathering orange-stain upon the edge of yonder western peak reflects the sunsets of a thousand years. JOHN RUSKIN.

THE CHOPPER'S CHILD.

A THANKSGIVING-DAY STORY

THE smoke of the Indian Summer

Darkened and doubled the rills,
And the ripe corn, like a sunset,
Shimmered along the hills;
Like a gracious, glowing sunset,
Interlaced with rainbow light,
Of vanishing wings a-trailing
And trembling out of sight;

As with the brier-buds gleaming
In her darling dimpled hands.
Toddling slow adown the sheep-paths
Of the yellow stubble lands-