Earth, one time, put on a frolic mood,

Heaved the rocks, and changed the mighty motion Of the strong, dread currents of the ocean; Moved the hills, and shook the haughty wood; Crushed the little fern in soft, moist clay, Covered it, and hid it safe away.

O, the long, long centuries since that day! O, the changes! O, life's bitter cost,

Since the little useless fern was lost!

Useless? Lost? There came a thoughtful man,
Searching Nature's secrets far and deep;
From a fissure in a rocky steep

He withdrew a stone, o'er which there ran
Fairy pencilings, a quaint design,—
Leafage, veining, fibres, clear and fine-
And the fern's life lay in every line.
So, I think, God hides some souls away,
Sweetly to surprise us the Last Day.

MARY L. BOLLES BRANOH.

Tuloom.

ON the coast of Yucatan,

As untenanted of man

As a castle under ban

By a doom

For the deeds of bloody hours,
Overgrown with tropic bowers,
Stand the teocallis towers
Of Tuloom.

One of these is fair to sight,
Where it pinnacles a height;
And the breakers blossom white,
As they boom

And split beneath the walls,
And an ocean murmur falls
Through the melancholy halls
Of Tuloom.

On the summit, as you stand,
All the ocean and the land
Stretch away on either hand,
But the plume

Of the palm is overhead,

And the grass, beneath your tread, Is the monumental bed

Of Tuloom.

All the grandeur of the woods,
And the greatness of the floods,
And the sky that overbroods,
Dress a tomb,

Where the stucco drops away,
And the bat avoids the day,
In the chambers of decay
In Tuloom.

They are battlements of death. When the breezes hold their breath,

Down a hundred feet beneath,

In the flume

Of the sea, as still as glass,
You can see the fishes pass

By the promontory mass
Of Tuloom.

Toward the forest is displayed,
On the terrace, a façade

With devices overlaid ;

And the bloom

Of the vine of sculpture, led
O'er the soffit overhead,
Was a fancy of the dead
Of Tuloom.

Here are corridors, and there,
From the terrace, goes a stair;
And the way is broad and fair
To the room

Where the inner altar stands;
And the mortar's tempered sands
Bear the print of human hands,
In Tuloom.

O'er the sunny ocean swell,
The canòas running well
Toward the Isle of Cozumel
Cleave the spume;

On they run, and never halt

Where the shimmer, from the salt,

Makes a twinkle in the vault

Of Tuloom.

When the night is wild and dark,
And a roar is in the park,
And the lightning, to its mark,

Cuts the gloom,

All the region, on the sight,
Rushes upward from the night,
In a thunder-crash of light
O'er Tuloom.

Oh! could such a flash recall
All the flamens to their hall,
All the idols on the wall,

In the fume

Of the Indian sacrifice

All the lifted hands and eyes,
All the laughters and the cries
Of Tuloom-

All the kings in feathered pride,
All the people, like a tide,
And the voices of the bride
And the groom!

But, alas! the prickly pear,
And the owlets of the air,

And the lizards, make a lair
Of Tuloom.

We are tenants on the strand

Of the same mysterious land.

Must the shores that we command
Reassume

Their primeval forest hum,
And the future pilgrim come
Unto monuments as dumb
As Tuloom?

'Tis a secret of the clime,

And a mystery sublime,

Too obscure, in coming time,

To presume;

But the snake amid the grass

Hisses at us as we pass,

And we sigh, Alas! alas!

In Tuloom.

ERASTUS WOLCOTT ELLSWORTH.

The Ocean.

LIKENESS of heaven, agent of power,

Man is thy victim, shipwrecks thy dower!
Spices and jewels from valley and sea,
Armies and banners, are buried in thee!

What are the riches of Mexico's mines

To the wealth that far down in thy deep water shines?
The proud navies that cover the conquering west,
Thou fling'st them to death with one heave of thy breast.

From the high hills that visor thy wreck-making shore,
When the bride of the mariner shrieks at thy roar,
When, like lambs in the tempest or mews in the blast,
O'er thy ridge-broken billows the canvas is cast,—

How humbling to one with a heart and a soul,
To look on thy greatness and list to thy roll,
And to think how that heart in cold ashes shall be,
While the voice of eternity rises from thee.

Yes, where are the cities of Thebes and of Tyre?
Swept from the nations like sparks from the fire!
The glory of Athens, the splendor of Rome,
Dissolved, and forever, like dew in thy foam!

But thou art almighty, eternal, sublime,
Unweakened, unwasted, twin brother of Time!
Fleets, tempests, nor nations thy glory can bow;
As the stars first beheld thee, still chainless art thou.

But hold !-when thy surges no longer shall roll,
And that firmament's length is drawn back like a scroll,
Then, then shall the spirit that sighs by thee now,
Be more mighty, more lasting, more chainless than thou.
JOHN AUGUSTUS SHEA.