In short, their toes so gentle to amuse,
The priest had ordered peas into their shoes:
A nostrum famous in old Popish times
For purifying souls so full of crimes:
A sort of apostolic salt,

Which Popish parsons for its powers exalt,
For keeping souls of sinners sweet,
Just as our kitchen salt keeps meat.

The knaves set off on the same day,
Peas in their shoes, to go and pray:

But very different was their speed, I wot:
One of the sinners galloped on,

Swift as a bullet from a gun;

The other limped, as if he had been shot.

One saw the Virgin soon-peccavi cried—
Had his soul white-washed all so clever;
Then home again he nimbly hied,

Made fit, with saints above, to live for ever.

In coming back, however, let me say,
He met his brother rogue about half way—

Hobbling, with out-stretched hands and bending knees;
Damning the souls and bodies of the

peas:

His eyes in tears, his cheeks and brows in sweat,

Deep sympathizing with his groaning feet.

"How now," the light-toed, white-washed pilgrim broke,

"You lazy lubber!"

"Ods curse it," cried the other, "tis no joke— My feet, once hard as any rock,

Are now as soft as any blubber.

"Excuse me, Virgin Mary, that I Swear

As for Loretto I shall not get there;

No! to the devil my sinful soul must go,

For hang me if I ha n't lost every toe.

"But, brother sinner, pray explain

How 'tis that you are not in pain:

What power hath worked a wonder for your toes:

While I, just like a snail am crawling,

Now swearing, now on saints devoutly bawling,

While not a rascal comes to ease my woes?

"How is 't that you can like a greyhound go,

Merry, as if that naught had happened, burn ye ?" "Why," cried the other, grinning, "you must know, That just before I ventured on my journey,

To walk a little more at ease,

I took the liberty to boil my peas."

Ex. CXVI.-THE FATE OF GOLDAU.

O SWITZERLAND! my country! 'tis to thee
I strike my harp in agony :-

My country! nurse of Liberty,

Home of the gallant, great, and free,
My sullen harp I strike to thee.
Oh! I have lost you all!
Parents, and home, and friends:

Ye sleep beneath a mountain pall;
A mountain's plumage o'er you bends.
The cliff-yew of funereal gloom,

Is now the only mourning plume

That nods above a people's tomb.

Of the echoes that swim o'er thy bright blue lake,
And, deep in its caverns, their merry bells shake,
And repeat the young huntsman's cry ;—
That clatter and laugh when the goatherds take
Their browzing flocks, at the morning's break,
Far over the hills,-not one is awake

In the swell of thy peaceable sky.

They sit on that wave with a motionless wing,

J. NEAL.

And their cymbals are mute; and the desert birds sing
Their unanswered notes to the wave and the sky,

As they stoop their broad wing, and go sluggishly by:
For deep, in that blue bosomed water, is laid

As innocent, true, and as lovely a maid

As ever in cheerfulness caroled her song,

In the blithe mountain air, as she bounded along.

The heavens are all blue, and the billow's bright verge
Is frothily laved by a whispering surge,

That heaves, incessant, a tranquil dirge,
To lull the pale forms that sleep below:-
Forms that rock as the waters flow.

That bright lake is still as a liquid sky:

And when o'er its bosom the swift clouds fly, They pass like thoughts o'er a clear, blue eye. The fringe of thin foam that their sepulcher binds Is as light as the clouds that are borne by the winds. Soft over its bosom the dim vapors hover

In morning's first light: and the snowy winged plover, That skims o'er the deep

Where my loved ones sleep,

No note of joy on this solitude flings,

Nor shakes the mist from his drooping wings.

No chariots of fire on the clouds careered;
No warrior's arm on the hills was reared;
No death-angel's trump o'er the ocean was blown;
No mantle of wrath over heaven was thrown;
No armies of light, with their banners of flame,
On neighing steeds, through the sunset came,
Or leaping from space appeared:

No earthquake reeled: no Thunderer stormed:
No fetterless dead o'er the bright sky swarmed:
No voices in heaven were heard;

But, the hour when the sun in his pride went down,
While his parting hung rich o'er the world,
While abroad o'er the sky his flush mantle was blown,
And his streamers of gold were unfurled;
An everlasting hill was torn

From its primeval base, and borne,
In gold and crimson vapors drest,
To where a people are at rest.
Slowly it came in its mountain wrath;

And the forest vanished before its path;

And the rude cliffs bowed; and the waters fled;
And the living were buried, while over their head
They heard the full march of their foe as he sped ;-
And the valley of life was the tomb of the dead,
The mountain-sepulcher of all I loved!
The village sank; and the giant trees
Leaned back from the encountering breeze,
As this tremendous pageant moved.

The mountain forsook his perpetual throne,
And came down in his pomp: and his path is shown

In barrenness and ruin :-there
His ancient mysteries lie bare;
His rocks in nakedness arise;
His desolations mock the skies
Sweet vale, Goldau, farewell!

An Alpine monument may dwell
Upon thy bosom, O my home!

The mountain-thy pall and thy prison-may keep thee-
I shall see thee no more; but till death I will weep thee;
Of thy blue dwelling dream wherever I roam,
And wish myself wrapped in its peaceful foam.

CXVII.-POETRY.

THE world is full of poetry-the air
Is living with its spirit; and the waves
Dance to the music of its melodies,

And sparkle in its brightness. Earth is vailed
And mantled with its beauty; and the walls,
That close the universe with crystal in,
Are eloquent with voices, that proclaim
The unseen glories of immensity,
In harmonies too perfect and too high
For aught but beings of celestial mold,
And speak to man in one eternal hymn,
Unfading beauty, and unyielding power.

PERCIVAL.

The year leads round the seasons, in a choir
For ever charming, and for ever new,
Blending the grand, the beautiful, the gay,
The mournful, and the tender, in one strain,
Which steals into the heart, like sounds that rise
Far off, in moonlight evenings, on the shore
Of the wide ocean, resting after storms;
Or tones that wind around the vaulted roof,
And pointed arches, and retiring aisles
Of some old, lonely minster, where the hand,
Skillful, and moved with passionate love of art,
Plays o'er the higher keys, and bears aloft
The peal of bursting thunder, and then calls,
By mellow touches, from the softer tubes,
Voices of melting tenderness, that blend

With pure and gentle musings, till the soul,
Commingling with the melody, is borne,
Rapt, and dissolved in ecstasy, to heaven.
'Tis not the chime and flow of words, that move
In measured file, and metrical array;
'Tis not the union of returning sounds,
Nor all the pleasing artifice of rhyme,
And quantity, and accent, that can give
This all-pervading spirit to the ear,

Or blend it with the movings of the soul.
'Tis not the noisy babbler, who displays,
In studied phrase, and ornate epithet,
And rounded period, poor and vapid thoughts,
Which peep from out the cumbrous ornaments
That overload their littleness. Its words

. Are few, but deep and solemn; and they break
Fresh from the fount of feeling, and are full
Of all that passion, which, on Carmel, fired
The holy prophet, when his lips were coals,
His language winged with terror, as when bolts
Leap from the brooding tempest, armed with wrath,
Commissioned to affright us, and destroy.

Passion, when deep, is still; the glaring eye,
That reads its enemy with glance of fire;
The lip, that curls and writhes in bitterness,
The brow contracted, till its wrinkles hide

The keen, fixed orbs that burn and flash below;
The hand firm clinched, and quivering, and the foot
Planted in attitude to spring, and dart

In vengeance, are the language it employs.

So the poetic feeling needs no words

To give it utterance; but it swells, and glows,
And revels in the ecstasies of soul,

And sits at banquet with celestial forms,
The beings of its own creation, fair

And lovely as e'er haunted wood and wave,
When earth was peopled, in its solitudes,
With nymph and naiad. * *

*

Its spirit is the breath of Nature, blown
Over the sleeping forms of clay, who else
Doze on through life in blank stupidity,
Till by its blast, as by a touch of fire,
They rouse to lofty purpose, and send out,
In deeds of energy, the rage within.