Or caught by some enraptured eye,

Are quickly borne away!

Thus in its own sequestered bower,

An angel, in disguise,

By chance espied this matchless flower,

And plucked it for the skies.

HERRICK.

Can satisfy th' immortal mind;—

For pleasures pregnant with despair,
And leave eternal joys behind?

Why should we pant for other streams
Than those the wells of life supply ;-

For waters where pollution teems,

And pass the living fountains by?

Childhood.

"And I saw a lovely child, who knelt

Beside the cot where his father dwelt,

At the sunset hour; and his hands were raised

Toward the sky, on which he gazed;

And on his rosy lips a prayer

Seemed hovering, like the summer air:

'Fear'st thou,' said I, 'the shades of even?'

He smiled, and said-'See how bright is Heaven!'"

M. A. BROWN.

THOUGHT that my childhood for ever

would last,

With all its romances so gay;

But the days that I fancied would never be past,

How swiftly they vanished away!

I thought-but, alas! it was only a dream

I thought, as the older I grew,

My joys would flow on in a far richer stream

Than e'er in my childhood they flew.

But though the delights of my childhood are gone,
And my pillow's left flooded with tears,

A land full of beauty, to mortals unknown,
From Pisgah's high mountain appears:

A land where the weary for ever shall rest,
And their sorrows for ever shall cease;

The land of immortals, the land of the blest-
The loved region of glory and peace!

120

THE TROUBLES OF LIFE.

The Troubles of Life.

"I hold the world but as the world

A stage, where every man must play his part,
And mine a sad one."

SHAKSPERE.

HERE is the man who ne'er retired to weep

One deep-drawn, silent, solitary tear;

Before whose startled eyes, when closed in sleep,
No ghastly phantom ever did appear?

What mariner has never felt the shocks

Of some o'erwhelming, desolating wave;

Or, near the precincts of some hidden rocks,
Never been threatened with a watery grave?

Does not the footsore traveller often pant
To taste again the honied joys of home?
And the sad exile pray that Heaven may grant
One ray of sunshine on his hopeless doom?

Oh, what a world!—a dreary desert this,

O'errun with known and unknown beasts of prey,

Uprooting all the plants of social bliss

Tearing the olive branch of peace away!