The strong desire, the torment, the fierce stress

That whirls my thoughts round, and inflames my brain,
But her great ardent eyes dark eyes, that draw

My being to them with a subtile law,
And an almost divine imperiousness.
Tell her I do not live until I feel

The thrill of her wild touch, and through each vein
Electric shoots its lightning; and again

Hear those low tones of hers, although they steal,
As by some serpent charm, my will away,
And wreck my manhood. O Octavia,

Of love this putting every word to school-
When all, at best, is blank indifference.

Even hate for you is only cold and dull-
I hate you that I cannot hate you more.
Were you, but savage, wicked to the core,
Less pious, prudish, prudent, made to rule,
I might have loved or hated more; but now
Nothing on earth seems half so deadly chill
As thy insipid smile and placid brow,
Your glacial goodness and proprieties.
Tell my dear serpent I must see her - fill
My eyes with the glad light of her great eyes,
Though death, dishonor, anything you will,
Stand in the way! Aye, by my soul! disgrace
Is better in the sun of Egypt's face
Than pomp or power in this detested place.
Oh for the wine my queen alone can pour
From her rich nature! Let me starve no more
On this weak, tepid drink, that never warms
My life-blood; but away with shams and forms!
Away with Rome! One hour in Egypt's eyes
Is worth a score of Roman centuries.
Away, Fonteus! Tell her, till I see
Those eyes I do not live-that Rome to me
Is hateful tell her oh! I know not what-
That every thought and feeling, space and spot
Is like an ugly dream, where she is not;
All persons plagues; all doing wearisome;
All talking empty; all these feasts and friends
These slaves and courtiers, princes, palaces
This Cæsar, with his selfish aims and ends,
His oily ways and sleek hypocrisies —
This Lepidus; and, worse than all by far,
This mawkish, pious, proud Octavia,
Are bonds and fetters, tedious as disease,

Not worth the parings of her finger-nails.
Oh, for the breath of Egypt! - the soft nights
Of the vuluptuous East-the dear delights
We tasted there

the lotus-perfumed galeş

That glows like autumn over her dark face-
For her large nature - her enchanting grace-
Her arms, that are away so many a mile!
Away, Fonteus! lose no hour-make sail-
Weigh anchor on the instant-woo a gale
To blow you to her. Tell her I shall be
Close on your very heels across the sea,
Praying that Neptune send me storms as strong
As passion is, to sweep me swift along,

Till the white spray sing whistling round my prow,
And the waves gurgle 'neath the keel's sharp plow.
Fly, fly, Fonteus! When I think of her

My soul within my body is astir!

My wild blood pulses, and my hot cheeks glow!

Love with its madness overwhelms me so

That I-oh! go, I say! Fonteus, go!

Cleopatra.

BY FANNY DRISCOLL.

On crimson cushions, floating down the Nile-
The old, old Nile of dreams and sleep-slow drifting,
With Antony a slave beneath her wife,

And over her the sunbeams brightly sifting,

O starry eyes that would a soul beguile

From glittering courts of heaven to nether hell!

Great midnight lamps-slumberous, and sweet, and fell,

With heavy lily-lids so slowly lifting

Falling, trembling, drooping 'neath his smile,

The smile of Antony, who drinks her beauty in

In breathless rapture!

Why should it be sin

To be a craven, and let proud Rome go

To the invading dogs, when the sweet woe

Of Cleopatra's love is all his own?

Oh, what is honor to a kiss of her

Clinging, and long, and warm, and rich as myrrh?

Languid she lies beside him as they float

Down the old Mystic Nile in sunset splendor.

A serpent gleams about her dusky throat;

Her luscious mouth is curved in smiles, and tender;

Her tawny limbs, half-bare and half-concealed,

Are perfect as the lotus buds; her hair,

Perfumed and silken, trails in heavy cloud
Across her tawny bosom, where the blood
Throbs red and hot. The sunset's tinted shrouds
Fade into night. Her velvet lips are parted;
She winds her arms round Antony, faint-hearted,

And all the world is lost, well-lost, for this,

For this one rapturous, shivering, maddening kiss.

And night comes down to take her star-gemmed throne.
And Antony is in the feverish flood

Of this great rushing madness. And the hours

Are long and dark; faint with the musk of flowers,

And drowsy music, as they drift and drift,

Wrapped in each other's arms, adown the Nile.

"He who died at Azen sends this to comfort all his friends:

Faithful friends, it lies, I know, pale, and white, and cold as snow
And ye say "Abdalla's dead!" Weeping at the head and feet.
I can see your falling tears, I can hear your signs and prayers;
Yet I smile and whisper this, "I am not the thing you kiss."
Cease your tears and let it lie, it was mine, it is not I.

Sweet friends: what the women leave for the last sleep of the grave,
Is a hut which I am quitting, is a garment no more fitting;

Is a cage from which at last, like a bird my soul has passed,

Love the inmate not the room, the wearer not the garb, the plume
Of the eagle, not the bars that keep him from those splendid stars.
Loving friends, be wise, and dry straightway every weeping eye.
What ye lift upon the bier is not worth a single tear.
"Tis an empty shell - one out of which the pearl has gone,

The shell is broken, it lies there, the pearl, the all, the soul, is here.
'Tis an earthern jar, whose lid Allah sealed, the while it hid
That treasurer of his treasury, a mind that loved him; let it lie.
Let the share be earth's once more, since the gold is in his store.
Allah glorious, Allah good, now thy word is understood;
Now the long, long wonder ends, yet ye weep my erring friends,
While the man whom you call dead, is unspoken bliss, instead,
Lives and loves you- lost, 'tis true, for the light that shines for you;
But in the light ye cannot see, of undisturbed felicity -

In a perfect paradise, and a life, that never dies.

Farewell, friends! But not farewell: where I am ye too shall dwell.

I have gone before your face a moment's worth, a little space,
When ye come where I have stept-ye will wonder why ye wept.

Ye will know by true love taught, that here is all, and there is naught.
Weep awhile if ye are fain, sunshine still must follow rain.
Only not at death, for death now ye know is that first breath,

Which our souls draw, when we enter life which is of all life centre;

Be ye certain all seems love heard from Allah's throne above.
Be ye stout of heart, and come bravely onward to your home
La Allah illa Allah. O Love divine, O Love alway.
He who died at Azan gave this to those who made his grave."

A Problem in Gravitation.

BY EVAN MCLENNAN.

(The philosopher should be a man willing to hear every suggestion, but determined to judge for himself. He should not be biased by appearances, have no fav orite hypothesis, be of no school, and in doctrine have no master. He should not be a respecter of persons, but of things. Truth should be his primary object. If to these qualities he adds industry, he may indeed hope to walk within the veil of the temple of Nature. - FARADAY.)

The problem here to be discussed may be introduced by endeavoring to answer the question, Does the Mississippi River flow uphill? The practical way of answering this question is that, since the elevation of the river-bed with respect to the ocean level continually decreases southward until it finally reaches the Gulf of Mexico, and since water naturally flows from a higher to a lower level, therefore the Mississippi River flows downhill, and not uphill.

But this is only a superficial way of looking at the problem; and to get at the very bottom of it, we must examine the causes which, in accordanee with the theory of gravitation - universally admitted as governing the case have determined the present shape of the Earth's surface, and made it vary from the standard spherical form which it would have in the absence of those causes.

Let us proceed, then, carefully to examine the facts of the case in the light of this theory.

According to the theory, we are taught that the greater the distance from the Earth's center at which the Earth's attraction acts, the less will be the effect of that attraction: from which it follows that, in the absence of other intervening causes, it would be an impossibility for water to flow from any place relatively near to the Earth's center, where the attraction is relatively great, to a place more remote from the Earth's center, where the attraction would be relatively less. But this is precisely what the Mississippi River does, because, owing to the greater equatorial than polar diameter of the Earth, the mouth of the river is much farther from the Earth's center more than two miles, in fact than its source. Let us inquire, then, what other intervening causes have a bearing on the case.

In any recent work on astronomy we may find that the equatorial diameter of the Earth is about 7,926 miles, while the polar diameter is nearly 26 miles less. This makes the Equator more than thirteen miles farther from the Earth's center than the Pole. And since the given diameters of the Earth in

volve a meridianal circumference of 23,900 miles, and the distance from the Pole to the Equator is one fourth of this, or 6,225 miles, then there is, with respect to the Earth's center, an average rising gradient from the Pole to the Equator of 13 miles to 6,225 miles, or 11 feet to the mile; while, for the last 200 miles of the river's course, the falling gradient, with respect to the ocean level, is only one-eighth foot to the mile (according to the standard authority of Captain Humphrey's Report to Congress in 1861; from which also all other data relative to the river used in this problem are borrowed.)

In other words, the height of the river above sea level 200 miles from its mouth, or seven miles above Donaldsonville, is only about 25 feet, while, on the supposition that the said point of the river is on a parallel of latitude 75 miles due north of its mouth, that point would be 75X11, or 825 feet, nearer the Earth's center than the river mouth; so that, with respect to the Earth's center, the river in the last 200 miles of its course actually flows uphill a distance of Soo feet, or 10 feet to the mile, if the course of the river were directly south from the said point.

Now, starting from rest and if not obstructed by any other cause, a body may fall toward the Earth's center a distance of 16.1 feet in one second of time by the Earth's attraction. But, if the path of the falling body becomes more and more inclined from the vertical, the distance which the body will traverse in one second of time beeomes less and less than 16.1 feet, until, when the degree of inclination arrives at the horizontal, it be comes nothing. In fact, the distance through which the body will move in one second at different inclinations varies from 16.1 feet as the cosine of the angle which the inclined path makes with the vertical, or as the sine of the angle which it makes with the horizontal. (Compare G. P. Tait's Mechanics, $130, Ency. Brit., 9th Ed.) The uphill inclination of 10% feet to the meridianal mile, just found for the river, is equivalent to nearly seven minutes of arc from the horizontal; and the sine of this arc multiplied by 16.1 feet equals about .39 inch. So that, subject to the variation of level, with respect both to the ocean surface and the Earth's center, and excluding the effect of friction, the Mississippi River should flow northward in the last 200 miles of its course a distance of .39 inch in one second, starting from rest.

Now there is one, and apparently only one, factor that tends to prevent this result, namely, the centrifugal tendency generated by the Earth's axial rotation, which causes the water to flow toward the Equator much in the same manner that it is