Nightly, by the sweet spirit of Peace attended,
Than pine where life is splendid.

NIGHT STUDY.

I AM alone; and yet

In the still solitude there is a rush

Around me, as were met

A crowd of viewless wings; I hear a gush
Of uttered harmonies-heaven meeting earth,
Making it to rejoice with holy mirth.

Ye winged Mysteries,

Sweeping before my spirit's conscious eye,
Beckoning me to arise,

And go forth from my very self, and fly

With you far in the unknown, unseen immense

Of worlds beyond our sphere-What are ye? Whence?

Ye eloquent voices,

Now soft as breathings of a distant flute,
Now strong as when rejoices,

The trumpet in the victory and pursuit;
Strange are ye, yet familiar, as ye call

My soul to wake from earth's sense and its thrall.

I know you now-I see

With more than natural light-ye are the good,
The wise departed—ye

Are come from heaven to claim your brotherhood
With mortal brother, struggling in the strife
And chains, which once were yours in this sad life.

Ye hover o'er the page

Ye traced in ancient days with glorious thought
For many a distant age;

Ye love to watch the inspiration caught
From your sublime examples, and so cheer
The fainting student to your high career.

Ye come to nerve the soul

Like him who near the Atoner stood, when He,
Trembling, saw round him roll

The wrathful potents of Gethsemane,

With courage strong: the promise ye have known
And proved, rapt for me from the Eternal throne.

Still keep! O, keep me near you,

Compass me round with your immortal wings:
Still let my glad soul hear you

Striking your triumphs from your golden strings,
Until with you I mount, and join the song,
An angel, like you, 'mid the white-robed throng.

COLUMBUS.

(On looking at a print after a picture by Parmeggiano.)

FAME, LOVE, AMBITION! what are ye,
With all your wasting passions' war,
To the great strife that, like a sea,
O'erswept His soul tumultuously,

Whose face gleams on me like a star-
A star that gleams through murky clouds-
As here begirt by struggling crowds

A spell-bound loiterer I stand,

Before a print-shop in the Strand?
What are your eager hopes and fears
Whose minutes wither men like years-

Your schemes defeated or fulfilled,

To the emotions dread that thrilled
His frame on that October night,

When, watching by the lonely mast,
He saw on shore the moving light,
And felt, though darkness veiled the sight,
The long-sought world was his at last?

How Fancy's boldest glances fail,
Contemplating each hurrying mood
Of thought that to that aspect pale

Sent up the heart's o'erboiling flood
Through that vast vigil, while his eyes
Watched till the slow reluctant skies
Should kindle, and the vision dread,
Of all his livelong years be read!
In youth, his faith-led spirit doomed
Still to be baffled and betrayed,

B. SIMMONS.

His manhood's vigorous noon consumed
Ere Power bestowed its niggard aid;
That morn of summer, dawning gray,
When, from Huelva's humble bay,
He, full of hope, before the gale
Turned on the hopeless world his sail,
And steered for seas untracked, unknown,
And westward still sailed on-sailed on-
Sailed on till ocean seemed to be

All shoreless as eternity,

Till, from its long-loved star estranged,
At last the constant needle changed,
And fierce amid his murmuring crew
Prone terror into treason grew;
While on his tortured spirit rose,
More dire than portents, toils or foes,
The awaiting world's loud jeers and scorn
Yelled o'er his profitless Return;

No-none through that dark watch may trace
The feelings wild beneath whose swell,
As heaves the bark the billows' race,

His Being rose and fell!

Yet over doubt, and pride, and pain,

O'er all that flashed through breast and brain,
As with those grand, immortal eyes

He stood his heart on fire to know

When morning next illumed the skies,

What wonders in its light should glow-
O'er all one thought must, in that hour,

Have swayed supreme-Power, conscious Power-
The lofty sense that Truths conceived
And born of his own starry mind,
And fostered into might, achieved
A new creation for mankind!

And when from off that ocean calm

The tropic's dusky curtain cleared,

And those green shores and banks of balm,

And rosy-tinted hills appeared

Silent and bright as Eden, ere

Earth's breezes shook one blossom there

Against that hour's proud tumult weighed,

Love, Fame, Ambition, how ye fade!

Thou Luther of the darkened deep!

Nor less intrepid, too, than He

Whose courage broke Earth's bigot sleep,
Whilst thine unbarred the sea-
Like his, 'twas thy predestined fate

Against your grim benighted age,
With all its fiends of Fear and Hate,
War, single-handed war, to wage,
And live a conqueror, too, like him,
Till Time's expiring light grow dim!
O, hero of my boyish heart!

Ere from thy pictured looks I part,
My mind's maturer reverence now
In thoughts of thankfulness would bow
To the Omniscient will that sent
Thee forth, its chosen instrument,
To teach us hope, when sin and care,
And the vile soilings that degrade
Our dust, would bid us most despair-
Hope, from each varied deed displayed

Along thy bold and wondrous story,
That shows how far one steadfast mind,
Serene in suffering as in glory,

May go to deify our kind.

ADDRESS TO THE SUN.

OSSIAN.

My soul has been mournful for Carthon: he fell in the days of his youth; and thou, O Clessámmor! where is thy dwelling in the wind? Has the youth forgot his wound? Flies he on clouds with thee? I feel the sun, O Malvina! leave me to my rest. Perhaps they may come to my dreams: I think I hear a feeble voice! The beam of heaven delights to shine on the grave of Carthon: I feel it warm around.

O thou that rollest above, round as the shield of my fathers! Whence are thy beams, O sun! thy everlasting light! Thou comest forth in thy awful beauty; the stars hide themselves in the sky; the moon, cold and pale, sinks in the western wave; but thou thyself movest alone. Who can be a companion of thy course? The oaks of the mountains fall; the mountains themselves decay with years; the ocean shrinks and grows again; the moon herself is lost in heaven: but thou art for ever the same, rejoicing in the brightness of thy course. When the world is dark with tempests, when thunder rolls and lightning flies, thou lookest in thy beauty from the clouds, and laughest at

the storm. But to Ossian thou lookest in vain, for he beholds thy beams no more: whether thy yellow hair flows on the eastern clouds, or thou tremblest at the gates of the west. But thou art, perhaps, like me, for a season; thy years will have an end. Thou shalt sleep in thy clouds, careless of the voice of the morning. Exult then, O Sun, in the strength of thy youth! age is dark and unlovely; it is like the glimmering light of the moon, when it shines through broken clouds, and the mist is on the hills: the blast of the north is on the plain, the traveller shrinks in the midst of his journey.

THE POWER OF POETRY.
IMMORTAL Art! where'er the rounded sky
Bends o'er the cradle where thy children lie,
Their home is earth, their herald every tongue
Whose accents echo to the voice that sung.
One leap of Ocean scatters on the sand
The quarried bulwarks of the loosening land;
One thrill of earth dissolves a century's toil,
Strewed like the leaves that vanish in the soil;
One hill o'erflows, and cities sink below,
Their marbles splintering in the lava's glow;
But one sweet tone, scarce whispered to the air,
From shore to shore the blasts of ages bear;
One humble name, which oft, perchance, has borne
The tyrant's mockery and the courtier's scorn,
Towers o'er the dust of earth's forgotten graves,
As once, emerging through the waste of waves,
The rocky Titan, round whose shattered spear
Coiled the last whirlpool of the drowning sphere!

HOLMES.

THE SLEEP.

Or all the thoughts of God that are

Borne inward unto souls afar,

Along the Psalmist's music deep,
Now tell me if that any is,

For gift or grace, surpassing this-
"He giveth His beloved, sleep?"

MRS. BROWNING.