ferent and distinct-think ye-or modifications of one and the same? 'Tis a puzzling question-and we, the Sphinx, might wait till doomsday, before you, Edipus, could solve the enigma. Certainly a rose is one thing and Mount Etna is another-an antelope and an elephant-an insect and a man-of-war, both sailing in the sun-a little lucid well, in which the fairies bathe, and the Greenland Sea, in which Leviathan is "wallowing unwieldy, enormous in his gait"-the jewelled finger of a virgin bride, and grim Saturn with his ring-the upward eye of a kneeling saint, and a comet," that from his hair shakes pestilence and war." But let the rose bloom on the mouldering ruins of the palace of some great king-among the temples of Balbeck or Syrian Tadmor-and in its beauty, methinks, 'twill be also sublime. See the antelope bounding across a raging chasm-up among the region of eternal snows on Mount Blanc-and deny it, if you please for assuredly we think that there is sublimity in the fearless flight of that beautiful creature, to whom nature grudged not wings, but gave, instead, the power of plumes to her small delicate limbs, unfractured by alighting among the pointed rocks. All alone, by your single solitary self, in some wide, lifeless desert, could you deny sublimity to the unlooked-for hum of the tiniest insect, or to the sudden shiver of the beauty of his gauze-wings? Not you, indeed. Stooping down to quench your thirst in that little lucid well where the fairies bathe, what if you saw the image of the evening star shining in some strange subterranean world? We shrewdly suspect that you would hold in your breath and swear devoutly that it was sublime. Dead on the very evening of her marriage day is that virgin bride whose delicate hands were so beautiful-and as she lies in her white wedding garments that serve for a shroud—that emblem of eternity and of eternal love-the ring upon her finger with its encased star shining brightly still now that her eyes, once stars, are closed-would, methinks, be sublime to all Christian hearts. In comparison with all these beautiful sublimities, Mount Etna, the elephant, the man-of-war, Leviathan swimming the ocean stream, Saturn with his ring, and with his horrid hair the cometwould be all less than nothings! Therefore beauty and

sublimity are twin-feelings of the soul-one and the same birth of imagination-throughout all life inseparable

as you or any man may know-if you still doubt itby becoming a fire-worshipper-and singing your morning and evening orisons to the rising and the setting

sun.

But we have heard it whispered that we are no metaphysicians and though we cannot say that

"The wicked whisper came, and made
Our hearts as dry as dust;"

yet as the metaphysics of most other men are indeed drier than the baked dust of the Great Desert when driven by sirocco or simoom into the eyes and noses of pilgrims journeying to Mecca, we are off and away out of our Winter Rhapsody-and beg to conclude Fytte IV. (shall there be Fyttes V. and VI.?-speak and it shall be done) with some delightful stanzas, this instant-what a pleasant coincidence!-put into our hands by Beelzebub-start not -'tis but a printer's devil-who caught the postman at our street-door-and having snatched the letter out of his paws, put him into too great a fright to remember to ask the postage.

THE WINTER WILD.

BY DELTA.

I.

How sudden hath the snow come down!
Last night the new moon show'd her horn,

And, o'er December's moorland brown,

Rain on the breeze's wing was borne;

But, when I ope my shutters, lo!

Old Earth hath changed her garb again,
And, with its fleecy whitening, snow
O'ermantles hill, and cumbers plain.

II.

Bright snow, pure snow, I love thee well,
Thou art a friend of ancient days;
Whene'er my eyes upon thee dwell,

Long-buried thoughts 'tis thine to raise ;

Far-to remotest infancy

My pensive mind thou hurriest back,
When first, pure blossoms of the sky,
I watch'd to earth your mazy track—

III.

And upward look'd, with wondering eyes,
To see the heavens with motion teem,
And butterflies, a thousand ways,

Down flaking in an endless stream;
The roofs around all clothed with white,
And leafless trees with feathery claws,
And horses black with drapery bright,-
Oh, what a glorious sight it was!

IV.

Each season had its joys in store,

From out whose treasury boyhood chose: What though blue Summer's reign was o'er, Had Winter not his storms and snows? The giant then aloft was piled,

And balls in mimic war were toss'd, And thumps dealt round in trickery wild, As felt the passer to his cost.

V.

The wintry day was as a spell
Unto the spirit-'twas delight
To note its varying aspects well,

From dawn to noon, from noon to night,

Pale morning on the hills afar,

The low sun's ineffectual gleam,—

The twinkling of the evening star
Reflected in the frozen stream:

VI.

And when the silver moon shone forth
O'er lands and lakes, in white array'd,

And dancing in the stormy north
The red electric streamers play'd;
'Twas ecstasy, 'neath tinkling trees,
All low-born thoughts and cares exiled,

To listen to the polar breeze,

And look upon "the winter wild."

VII.

Hollo! make way along the line:
Hark how the peasant scuds along,—
His iron heels, in concord fine,

Brattling afar their under-song:
And see, that urchin ho-ieroe!

His truant legs they sink from under,
And to the quaking sheet below,

Down thwacks he, with a thud like thunder!

VIII.

The skater there, with motion nice,
In semicirque and graceful wheel,
Chalks out upon the dark clear ice

His chart of voyage with his heel;
Now skimming underneath the boughs,-
Amid the crowd now gliding lone,-
Where down the rink the curler throws,
With dext'rous arm, his booming stone.

IX.

Behold! upon the lapsing stream

The frostwork of the night appears,-
Beleaguer'd castles, round which gleam
A thousand glittering crystal spears;
Here galleys sail of shape grotesque;
There hills o'erspread with palmy trees;
And mix'd with temples arabesque,-
Bridges and pillar'd towers Chinese.

Where are the playmates of those years?
Hills rise and oceans roll between:
We call—but scarcely one appears—
No more shall be what once hath been.

XII.

Yes! gazing o'er the bleak, green sea, The snow-clad peaks and desert plain, Mirror'd in thought, methinks to me

The spectral past comes back again:
Once more in retrospection's eyes,

As 'twere to second life restored,
The perish'd and the past arise,
The early lost, and long deplored!