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XXII. THE LONG AGO.

B. F. TAYLOR.

1. Oh! a wonderful stream is the river Time,
As it runs through the realm of tears,
With a faultless rhythm and a musical rhyme
And a broader sweep and a surge sublime,
As it blends in the ocean of years!

2. How the winters are drifting like flakes of snow,
And the summers like birds between,

And the years in the sheaf, how they come and they go
On the river's breast with its ebb and flow,
As it glides in the shadow and sheen!

3. There's a Magical Isle up the river Time,
Where the softest of airs are playing.
There's a cloudless sky and tropical clime,
And a song as sweet as a vesper chime,

And the Junes with the roses are straying.

4. And the name of this Isle is "the Long Ago,"
And we bury our treasures there ;

There are brows of beauty and bosoms of snow,
There are heaps of dust-oh! we love them so-
And there are trinkets and tresses of hair.

5. There are fragments of songs that nobody sings,
There are parts of an infant's prayer,

There's a lute unswept and a harp without strings,
There are broken vows and pieces of rings,

And the garments our dead used to wear.

6. There are hands that are waved when the fairy shore By the mirage is lifted in air,

And we sometimes hear through the turbulent roar Sweet voices we heard in the days gone before,

When the wind down the river was fair.

7. Oh! remembered for aye be that blessed isle,
All the day of life until night;

And when evening glows with its beautiful smile,
And our eyes are closing in slumbers awhile,

May the greenwood of soul be in sight.

[Let the pupil carefully study the similes in this selection, and show wherein the resemblance consists.] What is compared to a river, and why? to an ocean? to an island? 5. What is meant by "songs that nobody sings "? Is this piece joyous or sad? Does it require abrupt or lengthened tones? What emotions are expressed in it?

XXIII.-THINKING AND REVERIE NOT THE SAME.

J. G. HOLLAND.

1. It rained yesterday; and, though it is midsummer, it is unpleasantly cool to-day. The sky is clear, with almost a steel-blue tint, and the meadows are very deeply green. The shadows among the woods are black and massive, and the whole face of nature looks painfully clean, like that of a healthy little boy who has been bathed in a chilly room with very cold water. I notice that I am sensitive to a change like this, and that my mind goes very reluctantly to its task this morning. I look out from my window, and think how delightful it would be to take a seat in the sun, down under the fence, across the street.

2. It seems to me that if I could sit there awhile, and get warm, I could think better and write better. Toasting in the sunlight is conducive rather to reverie than thought, or I should be inclined to try it. This reluctance to commence labor, and this looking out of the window and longing for an accession of strength or warmth or inspiration or something or other not easily named, calls back to me an experience of childhood.

3. It was summer, and I was attending school. The seats were hard, and the lessons were dry, and the walls of the school-room were very cheerless. An indulgent, sweet

faced girl was my teacher; and I presume that she felt the irksomeness of the confinement quite as severely as I did. The weather was delightful, and the birds were singing every where; and the thought came to me, that if I could only stay out of doors, and lie down in the shadow of a tree, I could get my lesson.

4. I begged the privilege of trying the experiment. The kind heart that presided over the school-room could not resist my petition; so I was soon lying in the coveted shadow. I went to work very severely; but the next moment found my eyes wandering; and heart, feeling, and fancy were going up and down the earth in the most vagrant fashion. It was hopeless dissipation to sit under the tree; and discovering a huge rock on the hillside, I made my way to that, to try what virtue there might be in a shadow not produced by foliage.

5. Seated under the brow of the boulder, I again applied myself to the dim-looking text, but it had become utterly meaningless; and a musical cricket under the rock would have put me to sleep if I had permitted myself to remain. I found that neither tree nor rock would lend me help; but down in the meadow I saw the brook sparkling, and, spanning it, a little bridge where I had been accustomed to sit, hanging my feet over the water and angling for minnows. It seemed as if the bridge and the water might do something for me; and, in a few minutes, my feet were dangling from the accustomed seat.

6. There, almost under my nose, close to the bottom of the clear, cool stream, lay a huge speckled trout, fanning the sand with his slow fins, and minding nothing about me at all. What could a boy do with Colburn's First Lessons, when a living trout, as large and nearly as long as his arm, lay almost within the reach of his fingers? How long I sat there I do not know, but the tinkle of a distant bell startled me, and I startled the trout, and fish and vision faded before the terrible consciousness that I knew less of my lesson than I did when I left the school-house.

XXIV.-ADDRESS TO A MUMMY.

HORACE SMITH.

1. And thou hast walked about (how strange a story!)
In Thebes's streets, three thousand years ago,
When the Memnonium was in all its glory,
And time had not begun to overthrow
Those temples, palaces, and piles stupendous,
Of which the very ruins are tremendous !

2. Speak! for thou long enough hast acted dummy ;
Thou hast a tongue, come, let us hear its tune;
Thou'rt standing on thy legs above ground, mummy!
Revisiting the glimpses of the moon ;

Not like thin ghosts or disembodied creatures,
But with thy bones and flesh and limbs and features.

3. Tell us for doubtless thou canst recollect-
To whom should we assign the Sphinx's fame?
Was Cheops or Cephrenes architect

Of either pyramid that bears his name?

Is Pompey's pillar really a misnomer?

Had Thebes a hundred gates, as sung by Homer?

4. Perhaps thou wert a mason, and forbidden By oath to tell the secrets of thy trade, Then say, what secret melody was hidden

In Memnon's statue, which at sunrise played? Perhaps thou wert a priest-if so, my struggles Are vain, for priestcraft never owns its juggles.

5. Perchance that very hand, now pinioned flat, Has hob-a-nobbed with Pharaoh, glass to glass; Or dropped a halfpenny in Homer's hat,

Or doffed thine own to let Queen Dido pass;

Or held, by Solomon's own invitation,

A torch at the great temple's dedication.

6. I need not ask thee if that hand, when armed,
Has any Roman soldier mauled and knuckled,
For thou wert dead and buried and embalmed,

Ere Romulus and Remus had been suckled :
Antiquity appears to have begun

Long after thy primeval race was run.

7. Since first thy form was in this box extended,

We have, above ground, seen some strange mutations :
The Roman empire has begun and ended;

New worlds have risen: we have lost old nations,
And countless kings have into dust been humbled,
Whilst not a fragment of thy flesh has crumbled.

8. Didst thou not hear the pother o'er thy head,
When the great Persian conqueror, Cambyses,
Marched armies o'er thy tomb with thundering tread,
O'erthrew Osiris, Orus, Apis, Isis,

And shook the Pyramids with fear and wonder,
When the gigantic Memnon fell asunder?

9. If the tomb's secrets may not be confessed,
The nature of thy private life unfold:

A heart has throbbed beneath that leathern breast,
And tears adown that dusky cheek have rolled!
Have children climbed those knees and kissed that face?
What was thy name and station, age and race?

10. Statue of flesh! immortal of the dead!

Imperishable type of evanescence !

Posthumous man, who quitt'st thy narrow bed,
And standest undecayed within our presence!
Thou wilt hear nothing till the judgment morning,
When the great trump shall thrill thee with its warning!

11. Why should this worthless tegument endure,
If its undying guest be lost for ever?

O, let us keep the soul embalmed and pure

In living virtue, that, when both must sever,
Although corruption may our frame consume,
The immortal spirit in the skies may bloom.

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