Laboratories of a wider fold

I now behold,

Where are prepared the harvests yet unborn

Of wine, oil, corn.

In those mute rayless banquet halls I see

Myriads of coming feasts with all their revelry.—

Yon teeming and minuter cells enclose

The embryos

Of fruits and seeds, food for the feather'd race,

Whose chaunted grace,

Swelling in choral gratitude on high,

Shall with thanksgiving anthems melodize the sky.—

And what materials, mystic Alchemist!

Dost thou enlist

To fabricate this ever-varied feast,

For man, bird, beast?

Whence the life, plenty, music, beauty, bloom?

From silence, languor, death, unsightliness and gloom!—

From Nature's magic hand whose touch makes sadness

Eventual gladness,

The reverent moral Alchemist may learn

The art to turn

Fate's roughest, hardest, most forbidding dross,

Into the mental gold that knows not change or loss.

Lose we a valued friend?-To soothe our woe

Let us bestow

On those who still survive an added love,

So shall we prove,

Howe'er the dear departed we deplore,

In friendship's sum and substance no diminish'd store.-

Lose we our health?-Now may we fully know

What thanks we owe

For our sane years, perchance of lengthen'd scope;

Now does our hope

Point to the day when sickness, taking flight,

Shall make us better feel health's exquisite delight.

In losing fortune, many a lucky elf

Has found himself.

As all our moral bitters are design'd

To brace the mind,

And renovate its healthy tone, the wise

Their sorest trials hail as blessings in disguise.

There is no gloom on earth; for God above

Chastens in love,

Transmuting sorrows into golden joy

Free from alloy,

His dearest attribute is still to bless,

And man's most welcome hymn is grateful cheerfulness.

MORAL COSMETICS.

YE who would save your features florid,

Lithe limbs, bright eyes, unwrinkled forehead

From age's devastation horrid,

Adopt this plan ;—

"Twill make, in climates cold or torrid,

A hale old man.

Avoid, in youth, luxurious diet,

Restrain the passions' lawless riot;

Devoted to domestic quiet,

Be wisely gay:

So shall ye, spite of age's fiat,

Resist decay.

Seek not in Mammon's worship pleasure,

But find your richest, dearest treasure,

In books, friends, music, polish'd leisure; The mind, not sense,

Made the sole scale by which ye measure Your opulence.

This is the solace, this the science,

Life's purest, sweetest, best appliance,

That disappoints not man's reliance,

Whate'er his state;

But challenges, with calm defiance,

Time, fortune, fate.