Such too the sight, when I behold
The throng a factory's walls enfold,
Where parents sell their children's breath,
And youthful blood to long-drawn death;
And wealthy, honoured, spotless men,
Keep each, unblamed, his human den,
And make of infant's fevered screams
A strain to lull luxurious dreams.
"Tis worse to hear, as oft we can,
Some high-born, affluent, sated man,
Who vindicates his awful right,
Hung over thousands like a blight,
Affirming truths of holiest sense
With solemn tone of smooth pretence,
Till, turning with a sneer away,
At dice and bets he wastes the day.
And worst, perhaps, of all to see
The crowds who clamour to be free,
Poor, hungry, lewd, bewildered throng,
For good uncaring, mad with wrong,
Whose ulcer 'tis they ne'er were taught
What all men need, what all men ought,
While leaders, whom as gods they hail,
Delude them with a drunken tale,
Proclaiming still the frantic vaunt

That power-more power-is all they want.
To me such sights and sounds as these
Are worse than life's most sore disease;
And I could pray to close mine eyes
On all that moves beneath the skies,
And rather than such visions, bless
The gloomiest depths of nothingness.
But something whispers still within-
The dream is vain, the wish were sin;
'Tis worth a wise man's best of life,
'Tis worth a thousand years of strife,
If thou canst lessen but by one

The countless ills beneath the sun.

Elliot these lines will please thee-unsparing expurgator of the bloated body of vice! All that sin-all that wo-can it all be owing to the Bread Tax? "Yea! Christopher, all the evils of the Factory System !" " Open the ports, Ebenezer, still greed will glut itself on its prey." But we see frowning a face that we love best to look on when it sadly or somewhat sternly smiles-so turn with

us, O splendid villager! to a clear pool in a verdant forest, and forgetting for a little while this work-day world, only to remember and behold it more faithfully than before, gaze on the solitary maid and on her image-fair as one of thine own creations, when Love, unhaunted by Hate, bids Beauty bless thine eyes, and "sink like music" in thy

heart.

THE TWO MIRRORS.

There is a silent pool, whose glass
Reflects the lines of earth and sky;
The hues of heaven along it pass,
And all the verdant forestry.

And in that shining downward view,
Each cloud, and leaf, and little flower,
Grows 'mid a watery sphere anew,
And doubly lives the summer hour.

Beside the brink, a lovely maid,

Against a furrowed stem is leaning
To watch the painted light and shade
That give the mirror form and meaning.

Her shape and cheek, her eyes and hair
Have caught the splendour floating round;
She in herself embodies there

All life that fills sky, lake, and ground.

And while her looks the crystal meets,
Her own fair image seems to rise;
And, glass-like, too, her heart repeats

The world that there in vision lies.

In our day the shepherd-heaven bless his soul!-was the sweetest singer in the school of fairy poetry-as Tom Warton, we think, called it; and "Kilmeny" will never die. Remote in the nowhere of Nature lies the land of the Silent People-were the universe mapped as minutely as the small county of Clackmannan, you could not place your finger on it were you to seem for a moment to see it, and for a moment to trust your eyes, that very moment you would lament the disappearance, and abuse the manu

facturing town that in lieu thereof presented its cotton-mills. Oriental fairy fables are somewhat cold in their glitterours of the West-and of the West above and beyond all the beloved North-have warmth as well as light-not the warmth of human blood-the light of human life—but of some element mysteriously allied to both-rarified by fancy, but not too thin to be breathed-by fancy tempered, but not too fine to be felt by the human heart. Yet there is neither cold nor glitter-there is both balm and beauty in

y THE SPICE TREE.

The spice tree lives in the garden green,
Beside it the fountain flows;

And a fair bird sits the boughs between
And sings his melodious woes.

No greener garden e'er was known

Within the bounds of an earthly king

No lovelier skies have ever shone

Than those that illumine its constant spring.

That coil-bound stem has branches three,
On each a thousand blossoms grow;
And old as aught of time can be,

The root stands fast in the rock below.

In the spicy shade ne'er seems to tire
The fount that builds a silvery dome,
And flakes of purple and ruby fire

Gush out and sparkle amid the foam.

The fair white bird of flaming crest
And azure wings bedropt with gold,
Has known for ages no pause of rest

But sings the lament that he framed of old.

"O! Princess bright! how long the night
Since thou art sunk in the waters clear;
How sadly they flow from the depth below
How long must I sing, and thou wilt not hear?

"The waters play, and the flowers are gay,
And the skies are sunny above;

I would that all could fade and fall,
And I too cease to mourn my love.

"O! many a year so wakeful and drear

I have sorrowed and watched, beloved, for thee!

But there comes no breath from the chambers of death,
While the lifeless fount gushes under the tree."

The skies grow dark, and glare with red,
The tree shakes off its spicy bloom,
The waves of the fount in a black pool spread,
And in thunder sounds the garden's doom.

Down springs the bird with a long shrill cry
Into the sable and angry flood,

And the face of the pool, as he falls from high,
Curdles in circling stains of blood.

But sudden again upswells the fount,
Higher and higher the waters flow,
In a glittering diamond arch they mount,
And round it the colours of morning glow.

Finer and finer the watery mound

Softens and melts to a thin-spun veil,

And tones of music circle around,

And bear to the stars the fountain's tale.

And swift the eddying rainbow screen
Falls in dew on the grassy floor;
Under the spice tree the garden's queen
Sits by her lover, who wails no more.

We think so well of human nature, that we do not believe there is a single creature belonging to it, whose life "is calm and innocent," that does not daily experience gracious visitings worthy of being preserved in verse. Our most barren days produce something good, that is not stillborn; nor can we praise that father of the church who said that "Hell is paved with good intentions"-read rather bad actions. The best days of ordinary men bear fruit worth the gathering; and what a treasure would be a faithful journal, yet free from all trivial fond records, of the thoughts of them who daily reap

"The harvest of a quiet eye,

That broods and sleeps on its own heart."

"Moods of my own mind" should be pronounced with that emphasis; and here are the embodiments of a few out of many-peculiar and characteristic-though we never saw, and never may see the writer's face :

IXION AND THE CENTAURS.

Ixion clasp'd a cloudy form,

And Heaven's high Queen in fancy woo'd;
But when he saw the Centaur swarm,

Not such, he knew, were Here's brood:

In man's creative genial mood

How oft he dreams of heavenly joy!
But all his visionary good,

The following monster-birth destroy.

EARTH AND AIR.

The dweller 'mid material pelf,

All touch, and wanting eye and ear
And longing heart, would build himself
A world without an atmosphere.

THE TWO OCEANS.

Two seas amid the night,

In the moonshine roll and sparkle,

Now spread in the silver light,

Now sadden, and wail, and darkle.

The one has a billowy motion,

And from land to land it gleams;

The other is sleep's wide ocean,

And its glimmering waves are dreams.

The one with murmur and roar

Bears fleets round coast and islet;

The other, without a shore,

Ne'er knew the track of a pilot.

THE DREAMS OF OCEAN.

Ocean, with no wind to stir it,

Sleeping dreams of tempest nigh,

And the sailor's boding spirit

Quakes within, he knows not why.