"At last she spoke, her voice

Sank deep and mournful on my listening ear,
As moans the sad sea-wind the long night through
About the desert, unfrequented shore.

And who art thou,' she said, 'whose careless step
Hath thus disturbed us in our place of rest,
Our long last home, where ages flow untold
In sad succession, like a funeral train

That knows no end; and never breaks the morn,
But morn and eve are lost in ceaseless night?'
Then I in wonder, 'Not with curious eye
Led on by idle fancy have I come,

But wandering in amazement, from among
The lordly mansions of an early time,

When dwelt the gods on earth, and raised them up
Eternal houses, splendid as the crest

Of white Olympus when his topmost snows
Reflect the Thunderer's presence, and the state
Of heaven descends, to awe the eyes of men.'
'Poor relics these,' she said, 'but I have seen
The hundred-gated Theba, when in youth
She sat aloft in queenly state, as sits

The cloud-capped rock above a waste of sea.
A wondrous city; and a wondrous land,
Such as no eye can e'er again behold."

This lonely woman-how fortunate that he should find her in the "dim inner chamber!"-calls up visions from the past, and describes the night and morning of this wondrous city, bidding its crowded streets and active life rise at her summons:

"I turned me at her bidding, and beheld
A countless people, toiling on till eve,
All with a single purpose, piling up
Huge granite rocks, and moulding into form
With curious art the uncouth mass of stone;
And while they laboured, rose, as in a dream,
Deep-bastioned walls, and turrets high to heaven,
And spacious courts, and palaces, and shrines
Of jewelled fretwork, deep inlaid with gold:
And one was there who urged them on to toil,
And sang the glories of the coming age,
And Thebes, the queen of nations; and I knew
The guardian goddess of the town, and knew
The strange sad lady whom I erst had found
In lonely sorrow, weeping in the tombs."

Thebes, such as old Homer knew it, is then faintly

seen:

"Once more I gazed; Tithonus' royal son

Rode forth to battle with the warrior Greeks
That fought at Ilium; twenty thousand knights
And thousand chariots thronged the changing plain.
'Twas early morning, and the glowing East
Flushed with the purple sunrise, as the car
Of bright Aurora shone upon the day,
Led by the rosy Hours: about his head
The bickering sunbeam floated, kindling up
A thousand rainbow hues, red, emerald, gold,
And violet. As in some deep-shaded bower
The twining jasmine, tangled with the rose,
Iris and honeysuckle, cheats the eye

With warm soft hues, half manifold, half one,
So beamed, innoxious, round his crested head,
The wild bright glory of the lambent flame,
Aurora's greeting to her warrior child."

The scene and the time change. It is not the purple sun-rise flashing upon the exultant hosts of Thebes; but the surging deluge of the victorious in

vader :

"Through every gate

In strange dark garb, poured in the victor band
From Susa's palace, and the Median band

Of fair Choaspes; tall above the rest

The monarch of the East, Cambyses, rode
In more than kingly state, his chariot yoked
With snow-white horses, and the gods looked down
With jealous eyes, unseen; but now he came
All conqueror, none withstood his onward way.
But while I gazed, and heard, or seemed to hear,
The burning temples crash in thunder down;
And tongues of fire and clouds of pillared smoke
Rose everywhere, as burst upon the town
The long-pent fury of the Persian host;
The sun had flaunted in the eastern sky
The first red banner of the early dawn,
And, nearer now, had fringed the purple clouds
With hues of morning; and my vision passed
Affrighted from before me, and the day
Came up victorious, scattering in his course
The changeful shadows of reluctant night."

And thus ends the dream. Amidst applause the poet himself retires, and the Sheldonian Theatre pours forth its crowded occupants.

W. M. W.

"WHAT SORROW WORKETH.”

WRITTEN FOR THE YOUTHS' MAGAZINE, BY AN OLD FRIEND.

A LADY sat in a stately room, a babe lay on her knee;
Her eyes were fixed on its marble brow, sadly, despairingly :

For she knew by the sobbing, flickering breath, by the glassy, halfclosed eye;

By the nerveless limb, and the clay-cold hand, that her only child must die.

And she moved not, she scarcely dared to speak, as tho' silence could retain

The spirit, that God having only lent, was taking back again :

Vain hope!-for one sharp, quick struggle came, one ray from the dark eyes shone,

One cry, one lifting of the hands, and the baby to rest has gone.

Then the mother clasped o'er her burning brow, her hands so thin and pale:

And from her pallid lips there came, one low heart-broken wail;
And rising, she calmly laid her child in his little cradle bed;
And the morning light broke on her there, still kneeling by the dead.

Why thus alone? was there none to soothe, to strengthen, to sympathize,
To comfort? (for oh! how it softens grief to see tears in loving eyes,)
There was one, but he is where the child is now; and her spirit
could not bear

That others should witness the bitter pangs of a sorrow they could not share.

Bright, but too brief, was her wedded life, three summers it had not

seen,

When the cold grave hid from her tear-dimmed oyes, the form that so late had been

The shrine of as noble and pure a soul as ever life's dark waves

crossed;

And the mourner said that she knew not his worth, till the priceless gem was lost.

But even then, though the sun of her life was eclipsed, for many a day,

Her child was a sign, like the fringe of light, that the darkness

should pass away;

And although her tears were like summer showers, thought like a sunbeam fell

On the glistening drops-and Hope's rainbow seemed a bright future to foretell.

But the sunbeam paled, and the rainbow arch with the sunbeam passed away,

And a night hath fallen upon her soul, with no hope of returning day.

For she felt that the spirit light was gone (earth without it is ever drear,)

And she could not look on to the far off land, that God-lit, unsorrowing sphere.

And a lonely grave ever haunted her, and a sealed coffin lid;

And the wax-like form that beneath it lay, amid snowy flowers half

hid;

And ever in sleep were the warm soft arms, as of old round her neck entwined;

Oh! to waken, and fancy she heard his cry in the wailing of the wind!

Yet a Guardian was watching over her, unknown and yet a friend:
Far more than a brother's love He gives, it may fail, but His cannot

end.

And He grieveth not willingly, and but afflicts, to the end, that the spirit tried

May pass through affliction's furnace, freed from earth's dross and purified.

And He knocked at the door of her heart, and spoke in the sympathizing tone

That draweth with cords of love to kneel at the footstool of His throne:

Seeking pardon for all her repining vain, where her pleasant plants seemed to die,

Now she knew they were only transplanted to the garden above the sky.

And while waiting the welcome summons that should call her to join

them there,

Knowing well that an idle Christian is a thing God cannot bear ;

She visited widows, and fatherless babes, childless mothers too she

sought:

To comfort them with the comfort wherewith her mind was now peacefully fraught.

And to life's young and happy ones she was ever wont to tell

Of the danger of setting our hopes on earth, and of loving the world too well.

For she knew by her own experience, every idol God takes away; For He suffereth not that a rival power should reign where He holdeth

sway.

And the warning I echo; and pray you, try yourselves by this simple test,

"What thought cometh first with the early morn, what last ere I sink to rest?"

Whether wealth or fame, or friends or home be the idol you dearest prize,

Remember," He buildeth his nest too low who buildeth below the skies."

LEIGH.

A DISCOURSE OF FLOWERS.

HAPPY is the man that loves flowers! Happy even if his love be adulterated with vanity and strife. For human passions nestle in flowers too. Some have their zeal chiefly in horticultural competitions, or in the ambitions of floral shows; others love them as curiosities, and search for novelties, and monstrosities. We have been led through costly collections, by men whose chief pleasure seemed to be in the effect which their treasures produced on others, not on themselves. But there is a choice in vanities and ostentations. A contest of roses is better than of horses. We had rather take a premium for the best tulip, dahlia, or ranunculus, than for the best shot. Of all fools, a floral fool deserves the eminence.