I.—HOPE.
I mark, as April days serenely smile,
Clouds heaped on clouds in mountain-like array,
While radiant sunbeams with their summits play,
Gilding with gorgeous tints the mighty pile;
And earth partakes of every hue the while!
Oft have I felt on such a day as this,
The sudden shower down-pouring on my head,
Though in the distance all is loveliness.
Thither, in vain, with rapid step I've sped.
I liken this to Hope: although with sorrow
The heart is overcast, and dim the eye;
Delusive Hope—not present, ever nigh,
Presages gladness on a coming morrow,
And lures us onward, till our latest sigh.
II.—A PREDICTION.
The day approaches, when a mystic power,
Shall summon mute Antiquity, to tell
The buried glories of the long lost hour;
And she will answer the enchanter's spell—
Then shall we hear what wondrous things befell
When the young world existed in its prime.
The truths revealed will turn the wisest pale,
That ignorance so long abused their time.
Vainly may Error blessed Truth assail
With specious argument, and looking wise
Exult, as millions worship at her shrine;
Yet, in the time ordained, shall Truth arise
And walk in beauty over earth and skies,
While man in reverence bows before her power divine!
PHANTASMAGORIA.
BY JOHN NEAL.
I don't believe in night-caps. That is, I don't believe in stopping the ears, in shutting the eyes, in sealing up the senses, nor in going to sleep in the midst of God's everyday wonders. We are put here to look about us. We are apprentices to Him whose workshop is the universe. And if we mean to be useful, or happy, or to make others happy, which, after all, is the only way of being happy ourselves, we must do nothing blindfold. Our eyes and our ears must be always open. We must be always up and doing, or, in the language of the day, wide awake. We must have our wits about us. We must learn to use, not our eyes and our ears only, but our understandings—our thinkers.