Ye delicate! who nothing can support,
Yourselves most insupportable! for whom
The winter rose must blow, the sun put on
A brighter beam in Leo; silky soft
Favonius, breathe still softer, or be chid;

And other worlds sends odors, sauce and song,
And robes, and notions, framed in foreign looms!
O ye Lorenzos of our age! who deem
One moment unamused a misery

Not made for feeble man! who call aloud
For every bauble drivelled o'er by sense;
For rattles, and conceits of every cast,
For change of follies and relays of joy!
To drag you patient through the tedious length
Of a short winter's day,—say, sages! say,
Wit's oracles! say, dreamers of gay dreams!
How will you weather an eternal night,
Where such expedients fail?

I

ASKED an aged man, with hoary hairs,
Wrinkled and curved with worldly cares!
"Time is the warp of life," said he; “'O' tell
The young, the fair, the gay, to weave it well!"
I asked the ancient, venerable dead,
Sages who wrote, and warriors who bled:

From the cold grave a hollow murmur flowed;
"Time sowed the seed we reap in this abode!"
I asked a dying sinner, ere the tide
Of life had left his veins: "Time!" he replied;
"I've lost it! ah, the treasure!" and he died.
I asked the golden sun and silver spheres,
Those bright chronometers of days and years:
They answered, "Time is but a meteor glare,"
And bade me for eternity prepare.

I asked the Seasons in their annual round,
Which beautify or desolate the ground;
And they replied (no oracle more wise),

"'Tis Folly's blank, and Wisdom's highest prize!" I asked a spirit lost-but O! the shriek

That pierced my soul! I shudder while I speak.
It cried, "A particle! a speck! a mite
Of endless years, duration infinite!"
Of things inanimate my dial I

Consulted, and it made me this reply:-
"Time is the season fair of living well.
The path of glory or the path of hell."

I asked my Bible, and methinks it said,
"Time is the present hour, the past has fled;
Live! live to-day! to-morrow never yet
On any human being rose or set."

I asked old Father Time himself at last;
But in a moment he flew swiftly past:
His chariot was a cloud, the viewless wind
His noiseless steeds, which left no trace hehind.
I asked the mighty angel who shall stand
One foot on sea and one on solid land:
"Mortal!" he cried, "the mystery now is o'er;
Time was, Time is, but Time shall be no more!"
-William Marsden.

W°

Touch not a single bough!

In youth it sheltered me,

And I'll protect it now. 'Twas my forefathers' hand

That placed it near his cot; There, woodman, let it stand, Thy ax shall harm it not !

That old familiar tree, Whose glory and renown

Are spread o'er land and sea,
And wouldst thou hew it down?
Woodman, forbear thy stroke!
Cut not its earth-bound ties;
O, spare that aged oak,

Now towering to the skies!
When but an idle boy

I sought its grateful shade;
In all their gushing joy
Here too, my sisters played,

My mother kissed me here;

My father pressed my handForgive this foolish tear,

But let that old oak stand!

My heart-strings round thee cling, Close as thy bark, old friend!

Here shall the wild bird sing,

And still thy branches bend.
Old tree! the storm still brave!
And, woodman, leave the spot;
While I've a hand to save,
Thy ax shall hurt it not.

-George Perkins Morris.

IF

woman could be fair and never fond,

Or that their beauty might continue still,

I would not marvel though they made men bond, By service long to purchase their good-will;

But when I see how frail these creatures are

I laugh that men forget themselves so far.

To mark what choice they make, and how they change;

How, leaving best, the worst they choose out still,

And how like haggards, wild about they range,
Scorning the reason to follow after will;
Who would not shake such buzzards from the fist,
And let them fly, fair fools, what way they list?
Yet for our sport we fawn and flatter both,

To pass the time when nothing else can please,
And train them on to yield, by subtle oath,
The sweet content that gives such humor cease,
And then we say, when we their follies try,
To play with fools, O, what a fool was I !
-Edward Vere, Earl of Oxford.

H

EAVEN from all creatures hides the book of fate,

All but the page prescribed, their present state; from brutes what men, from men what spirits know,

Or who could suffer being here below? The lamb thy riot dooms to bleed to-day, Had he thy reason, would he skip and play? Pleased to the last he crops the flowery food, And licks the hands just raised to shed his blood. O blindness to the future! kindly given, That each may fill the circle marked by Heaven ; Who sees with equal eye, as God of all, A hero perish or a sparrow fall; Atoms or systems into ruin hurled, And now a bubble burst, and now a world.

Hope humbly, then, with trembling pinions soar; Wait the great teacher, death, and God adore. What future bliss, he gives not thee to know,

But gives that hope to be thy blessing now.
Hope springs eternal in the human breast;
Man never is, but always to be blest;
The soul, uneasy and confined from home,
Rests and expatiates in a life to come.

Lo, the poor Indian, whose untutored mind
Sees God in clouds, and hears him in the wind;
His soul proud science never taught to stray
Far as the solar walk, or milky way;

Yet simple nature to his hope has given,
Behind the cloud-topped hill, an humbler heaven;
Some safer world in depth of woods embraced,
Some happier island in the watery waste,
Where slaves once more their native land behold,
No fiends torment no Christians thirst for gold.
To be, contents his natural desire,
He asks no angel's wing, no seraph's fire:
But thinks, admitted to that equal sky,
His faithful dog shall bear him company.
Go, wiser thou and in thy scale of sense