THE POET'S SONG TO THE STARS. Since first the world was new! While trustingly I gaze Within my breast and brain. Breath'd forth in vain! The love that I have known,The love I thought my own,It fails-and left alone, Mine is a joyless lot! Restore that love which blest The poet's clinging breast; This is my first requestRefuse it not ! And deem it not too hard, Oh, stars! to grant the bard One-only one-reward For all his glowing lays! The lyre beneath my hand, Oh, let it but command In this, my Fatherland, One voice of praise ! And when death's hour is nigh, A singer pure and true! ALICIA J. SPARROW. FRAGMENTS. The bitterness of death is felt by those Though all were night; if but the light CHARLES SWAIN. THE PROGRESS OF A SOUL. BY MRS. JAMES GRAY. Lit by the Creator's hand, By his breath to brightness fanned, Shrined within the babe's frail frame, Slumbering in its depths—the seeds Of many thoughts, and words, and deeds; Never counting passing hours, Yet every hour increased and brightening, Through the infant's wailing sadness, Common things with look intense- Of the full-grown, careful man- With Thought's ocean, floating, driving; Wondering, with most wondrous glee, Truths that on the surface lie, Seem its own discovery. Might it but thus happy stray, Ever in this stage delay? No! its task must all be doneOn, on, on! On! through all the Cloudland wrought Of cloud, and mist, and tempest bare; What stains of dark and clinging clay- It may no farther pass. In its fallen nature see, On, on, on! no stop, no rest! Till it reach the bright abode Of Him who traced its upward roadIts Maker and Redeemer-God! Where the tree of life doth grow, Where the living waters flow, It shall rest, no more disturbed; No wild passions to be curbed; No more struggling to be gone, On, on, on! TO A YOUNG FRIEND. BY MRS. JAMES GRAY. Maiden! we met, we loved, and now we part- Passed by the sea, or amidst sweetest flowers, Ours was no common love, no childish dreaming- But in our souls we felt it calm and soft, And yet we are far different-thy sweet life All beautiful, and pure, and singing still- Or dead, not calm! The river seeks the sea, Into the ocean's deep-embosomed caves- We part! yet sweet! we never shall forget Simple and done in carelessness, shall cling Thou wilt remember me whene'er thy thought Or weedy pond, or water-lily dank, That we so dearly sought. And with the sweet wild thyme, or yellow furze, And the full-sounding sea Blended with things like these my form will be, When thy dear memory stirs. 1 shall remember thee, too-not with flowers, For with full many a one, Swept from the world, like lightning seen and Gold's a very good thing, though the love of it's bad I et a man be thought rich and his sky will be (I know who'd be better if more gold he had!); clear; But a cord for the cut-purse who cuts you when poor All the world will flock round him and bid him good cheer; The doctor will smile, and the squire doff his hat, And the ladies will bend, and wave hands, and all that. Well to do in the world? Then of friends you've You'll daily find cards in the hall-quite a pack- Your wife at baza ars will sit down at a stand, When your gilt is rubbed off-that's the rub! THE GIPSY COUNTESS *-A DUET. BY MRS CRAWFORD. Oh! how can a poor Gipsy maiden like me To some bright jewel'd beauty thy vows will be And thou wilt forget her, the poor Gipsy maid. Earl. You'll be asked for permission your name to put To devote all the love of my spirit to thee; Away with that thought! I am free, I am free down On all the committee lists printed in town. Will say, that. Young rose of the wilderness, blushing and sweet, All my heart all my fortunes I'll lay at thy feet. Go, flatterer, go; I'll not trust to thine art, Earl. I have lands and proud dwellings, and all shall be thine; A coronet, Hilda, that brow shall entwine; * From an old legend. Where are the friends of earlier years The fond, the faithful-hearted- The friends who cheer'd our infant hours, Oh! where are they! The stream of time But on its breast our manhood's prime And swiftly, too, adown that tide Have passed those friends once round us; But death's dark stream shall ne'er divide The links of love that bound us. Yes, pray for those thou lovest; if uncounted wealth were thine, The treasures of the boundless deep, the riches of the mine, Thou couldst not to thy cherish'd friend so dear a gift impart As the earnest benediction of a deeply-loving heart. Seek not the worldling's friendship, it shall droop and wane ere long, In the cold and heartless glitter of the pleasureloving throng; But seek the friend who, when thy prayer for him shall murmur'd be, Breathes forth in faithful sympathy a fervent prayer for thee. And should thy flowery path of life beco.ne a path of pain, The friendship formed in bonds like these thy spirit shall sustain; Years may not chill, nor change invade, nor poverty impair, The love that grew and flourished at the holy time of prayer. THE TWO MAIDENS.* FIRST MAIDEN. Sister, sweet sister, why pluck ye the flowers, That bloom all so bright in the garden bowers, Where the sunshine of heaven falls light on their head, And the dew of the evening is over them shed? SECOND MAIDEN. I'll weave thee a coronal for thy hair, FIRST MAIDEN. Sister, sweet sister, oh, weave not now SECOND MAIDEN. I'll make the a bouquet, so bright and gay, FIRST MAIDEN. Sister, fair sister, 'twould find no rest, showers Oh, let them not perish, the beautiful flowers! FLORENCE. * Suggested by wearing flowers which were fresh at noonday, yet withered ere night. い SCIENCE AND ART. A LATIN HEXAMETER MACHINE.-One John | millions of changes, such an occurrence is not Clark, late of Bridgewater, and now of Padding-likely to happen. Moreover, though the visible ton, for thirteen years has been occupied, as it display of the line is effected simply by mewould seem from the mere sport of the thing, and chanical movements, the conception of it is in a spirit of indifference as to what might be its not mechanical, but "essentially an imagination subsequent use, with the invention of a machine only, partaking somewhat of the nature of an The in- arithmetical infinite series." Each verse is confor composing hexameter Latin verses. vention is stated to be less difficult of realization ceived at the precise moment of time when its than might have been expected. The rules of corresponding geometrical figure is produced by verse, Mr. Clark tells me, the measured syllables the Kaleidoscope in the machine; every identiand the measured time of dactyls, spondees, tro- cal verse with its corresponding figure, and every Nor can it chees, &c., which act as fetters of confinement to figure with its corresponding verse. the writers of verses and much increase their diffi- by any possibility be otherwise. So much for Mr. John Clark's Latin Hexameter Machine. culties, have an opposite effect when applied to a machine ;-it being much more practicable to I have said, I do not see its immediate utility; construct one for composing verse than for com- but as something curious, it is, perhaps, entitled posing prose. The problem may be compared to take a place with Babbage's Calculating Mawith that of forming an indefinite number of geo-chine, and inventions of that class.--Athenæum. metrical figures by a machine; Sir David Brewster succeeded in doing this in The Kaleidoscope; and it is this principle, carried out, which the Latin Hexameter Machine illustrates. It is capable of composing about one verse a minute. The actual verses produced in my presence are the following: each, it will be perceived, is complete in itself, and independent of the other: 1. Horrida sponsa reis promittunt tempora densa. As THE EUREKA.-The "Eureka," which is now exhibiting at the Egyptian Hall, as "an extraordinary piece of mechanism," for the construction of Latin hexameters, will be found, on consideration, to be little better than a mere puzzle, which any school-boy might perform by a simpler process. On analyzing the verses produced, it will be seen that every one of them consists of six words, that each word is adapted, by its prosodial and grammatical construction to one certain position in the verse; and that every Latin word similarly constructed can be dovetailed into that particular part of the verse for which it is formed, without violating prosody, grammar, or even sense. I will take four of the verses produced by this machine as illustrative of my position: 4 Such are the verses, the mechanical nature of which is evident by their all belonging to the same grammatical formula and scansion. The exterior of the machine resembles in size and shape a small bureau book-case; in the frontispiece of which, through an aperture, the verses ap- All the verses exhibited are of the same metrical pear in succession as they are composed. ince construction; and, from these four examples, it its completion it has never, I understand, repeat-will be seen that the first word is uniformly a ed the same; and, being capable of several dactyl, and an adjective of the neuter plural; the |