The stone, the good stone, which away thou hast

thrown,

Was the stone of all stones, the philosopher's stone!"

The friar looked pale, when his error he knew; The friar looked red, and the friar looked blue; And heels over head, from the point of a rock, He plunged, without stopping to pull off his frock.

He dived very deep, but he dived all in vain,
The prize he had slighted he found not again:
Many times did the friar his diving renew,
And deeper and deeper the river still grew.

Gwenwynwyn gazed long, of his senses in doubt,
To see the grey friar a diver so stout:

Then sadly and slowly his castle he sought, And left the friar diving, like dabchick distraught.

Gwenwynwyn fell sick with alarm and despite, Died, and went to the devil, the very same night: The magnanimous heroes he held in his pay Sacked his castle, and marched with the plunder away.

No knell on the silence of midnight was rolled, For the flight of the soul of Gwenwynwyn the Bold:

The brethren, unfeed, let the mighty ghost pass, Without praying a prayer, or intoning a mass.

The friar haunted ever beside the dark stream; The philosopher's stone was his thought and his dream:

And day after day, ever head under heels

He dived all the time he could spare from his meals.

He dived and he dived, to the end of his days, As the peasants oft witnessed with fear and

amaze:

The mad friar's diving-place long was their theme,

And no plummet can fathom that pool of the

stream.

And still, when light clouds on the midnight winds ride,

If by moonlight you stray on the lone river-side, The ghost of the friar may be seen diving there, With head in the water, and heels in the air.

THE USE OF FLOWERS.

MARY HOWITT.

God might have bade the earth bring forth Enough for great and small,

The oak-tree and the cedar-tree,

Without a flower at all.

We might have had enough, enough
For every want of ours,

For luxury, medicine, and toil,

And yet have had no flowers.

The ore within the mountain mine
Requireth none to grow;
Nor doth it need the lotus-flower
To make the river flow.

The clouds might give abundant rain,
The nightly dews might fall,
And the herb that keepeth life in man
Might yet have drunk them all.

Then wherefore, wherefore were they made, All dyed with rainbow light,

All fashioned with supremest grace,

Upspringing day and night,—

Springing in valleys green and tow,
And on the mountains high,
And in the silent wilderness,
Where no man passes by?

Our outward life requires them not,-
Then wherefore had they birth?
To minister delight to man,

To beautify the earth;

To comfort man, to whisper hope
Whene'er his faith is dim:

For whoso careth for the flowers
Will much more care for Him.

A COURT LADY.

ELIZABETH B. BROWNING.

Her hair was tawny with gold, her eyes with purple were dark,

Her cheeks' pale opal burnt with a red and restless spark.

Never was lady of Milan nobler in name and in

race;

Never was lady of Italy fairer to see in the face.