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Life.

LIFE! what is life? When the tempest journies through space on strong pinions, it sings to me a song which finds an echo in my soul. When the thunder rolls, when the lightning flames, then I divine something of life in its strength and greatness. But this tame every-day life-little virtues, little faults, little cares, little joys, little endeavors this contracts and stills my spirit. Oh! thou flame which consumest me, what wilt thou? There are moments in which thou illuminest, but eternities, in which thou tormentest and burnest me.

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Kisses.

THE fountain mingles with the river,
And the rivers with the ocean;
The winds of heaven mix forever,
With a sweet emotion;
Nothing in the world is single;
All things by a law divine
In one another's being mingle
Why not I with thine?

See the mountains kiss high heaven,
And the waves clasp one another;
No sister flower would be forgiven
If it disdained its brother;
And the sunlight clasps the earth
And the moonbeams kiss the sea,
What are all these kissings worth
If thou kiss not me?

SHELLEY.

Night and Morning.

So, oh dark mystery of the moral world! so, unlike the order of the external universe, glide together, side by side, the shadowy steeds of Night and Morning. Examine life

in its own world, the inner one, the practical one, with the more visible, yet airier and less substantial system, doing homage to the sun, to whose throne, afar in the infinite space, the human heart has no wings to flee. In life, the mind and the circumstance, give the two seasons, and regulate the darkness and the light. Of two men standing on the same foot of earth, the one revels in the joyous noon, the other shudders in the solitude of night. For Hope and Fortune the day-star is ever shining. The Anmuth Strathlendes lives ever in the air. For Care and Penury night changes not with the ticking of the clock, or the shadow on the dial. Morning for the heir, night for the houseless, and God's eye in both. BULWER.

May Morning.

THE bright May-morning's come again
With balmy air and showers,

And through the wood and in the glen
Is borne the breath of flowers.

And music floats upon the air
And sighs along the plain,
The feathered songsters everywhere
Pour forth their gladsome strain

Maidens and youths come hail the morn!
The birth of winsome May,

Come twine ye garlands to adorn

Your brows this bright spring day.

Blue violets are over all the plain
And cowslips by the brook-
Come, gather for Love's fairy chain
From every dell and nook.

And as ye twine your fragrant wreath
And sing your merry lay

Let each young, thrilling bosom breathe

A welcome to sweet May.

MRS. J. THAYER.

Farewell.

FAREWELL! that little word has power

To wake the thought that none may know ' A cloud to shade the sunniest hour,

And steep the brightest scenes in woe.

Farewell! farewell!

the heart will feel

What words may never, never tell; The throbbing brow may not reveal What broods in memory's mystic cell.

It withers not,

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that growing thorn; It passes not, that endless sting; That swelling tide is onward borne,

Till death shall drain its bitter spring.

But not to Death the power is given

To gild a brighter scene than this To twine the wreath by sorrow riven, And wake the angel smile of peace.

But there are bright and azure fields,
Where willow never droops its head,

Nor wasted grief her form reveals,

Her cypress shades the lonely dead.

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