I could not but compare it to a seraph, who with his soul of music all fitted to the harmony of the skies, visits the earth and takes a lyre from a mortal hand; its strings are touched, and exquisite and thrilling is the sound; but as he rises in his strains and reaches beyond the verge of mortal song, the mortal strings give way, and leave him with the swelling anthem half unsung. A mortal instrument could not hear immortal strains.

itself,

I at length felt as passing through the dark valley—but it was made light by the dying love of a risen Saviour—I had now arrived where I could see life only as "the bud of being," and to me how beautiful was the thought, that this life was but the "Bud of Being." Look at this bud as it presents warmed by the genial rays of an Eternal Sun, ever invigorating, never destroying; its modest beauties, opening to the light, expand, and in expanding, gather strength for fresh expansions. Like that rich flower, which, clothed with a radiance of her own, scorns the light of day in which to show her beauties, and bursts from the bud with sudden start, perfect in a splendor all her own :* unlike that flower, she dies not with the morning, but, mighty in her perennial strength, the beauty now so suddenly disclosed, increases still, and still increases, illimitable and unbounded.

Now look at intellect in the Eternal World-the power of thought is overborne by the grandeur of the view, and scarcely can the mind, enriched beyond comparison with things of time, bestow a furtive glance beyond its bounds.

Finite and mortal, we are here as captives in the narrow cell of life, but as the pent up fires in the volcano's bed, which suddenly burst forth in flame, and reaching to the very verge of heaven, illumines all her canopy, we cast off our fetters, overleap our dungeon walls, and breaking forth into space unlimited, pursue that path which widens as we run, and as it widens, displays to our admiring vision, beauties at every step, which still refreshing the exhaustless strength, adds in each móment of our flight, such energy, such ecstasy, and such power, as to prepare us for still higher spheres; and reaching these, we find ourselves as it were but on earth's surface, and in narrow bounds, so endless is the view, and so wide is the expanse. But still advancing "onward and upward," our mind at rest, although enhancing its rich treasures, our body freed from its frail particles, and rendered a fit tenement for

* The Night-blooming Cereus is said to emit a light upon the expansion of its buds.

such a mind, the temple of each science and each art, into the
vestibule of which we here scarce entered, there exhibiting
each lofty gallery and each deep recess, allowing free access to
every part, opening to our admiring eyes what had been to us
phenomena, and showing that which was to us phenomena on
earth, was but the simple surface: but now phenomena rise
upon phenomena, leaving us in wonder and surprise at the
diminutiveness of what on earth had been our pride.
And now the portals of infinitude being passed,

"We take our flight from star to star,
From world to glorious world as far
As the Universe spreads her fiery wall,”

and holding converse with the intelligences of these upper spheres, having all nature like an open volume spread before us, our intellectual fire so bright as to throw on all its works a beam transcendant, which shall pierce their every mystery and bare them to the eye, we fix our upward gaze; and looking from "Nature up to Nature's God," and knowing now the first Great Cause-His attributes glorious, perfect, harmonious, and incomprehensible, and especially displayed in the salvation of the world by a crucified Redeemer, flashing upon our minds with the power and quickness of an electric shock; we catch the seraphic flame, and shout forth wild peans of exalted everlasting joy. All this I saw, I felt, and in the rapture of the thought I woke.

T.

THE POET'S MIND.

VEX not thou the poet's mind
With thy shallow wit:
Vex not thou the poet's mind;

For thou can'st not fathom it.
Clear and bright it should be ever,

Flowing like a crystal river;
Bright as light, and clear as wind.

Dark-brow'd sophist, come not anear;
All the place is holy ground;
Hollow smile and frozen sneer

Come not here.

Tennyson.

196

The Spirit of Love.

THE SPIRIT OF LOVE.

BY MINERVA CATLIN.

THE flowers were scentless, and a dreamy mist
Like twilight lay upon their sleeping forms,
And half concealed the glowing tints that traced
Rich loveliness on cheek and lip The vine
That folds its tiny tendrils round the oak
In soft embrace, and lifts itself to heaven,
Went trailing earthward like a thing of dust,
And drooped its languid forehead to the ground;
While ever 'mid the green-robed forest trees,
The listless breezes wandered to and fro,
Yet sought no sweet response from leafy lute,
Or nodding blossom in its,mossy dell.
Day came-and like a cold dead orb uprose
The sun, and wheeled his brazen circuit round
With painful glare, yet not a ray of warmth
To thrill the bosom of the waiting earth,
Then sank in gloomy splendor on the wave,
Nor left one golden foot-print on his path-
And when the Evening loosed her burning zone,
And spread her jewelled tresses to the sky,
The placid bosom of the deep, that lay
Like marble in its still cold rest, gave back
No mirrored star from out its slumb'ring depths.
Life beat with measured, slow, uncertain pulse-
Dull, aimless, spiritless, and void. Man, too,
Amid the listlessness of earth, gazed round
With vacant eye upon the voiceless world,
Glanced upward on the cold yet glorious sky
While thought rose dreamily within his heart,
Till slumber swept its mazy folds aside,
And threw her blank around the passive soul.
At length, as Morning drew the veil of Night,
And spread her robe of fire along the east,
Unwonted radiance lit the azure sky,
And o'er the orient stole a rosy blush,
Till the white curling clouds, in rainbows wreathed,
Sprang gaily up and melted into light.

The rising Day-King, from his blazing urn,
Poured streams of liquid gold o'er earth, and wove
A glowing halo o'er its misty brow.

The flowers awoke, and spread their snowy folds
Abroad, and from their tiny censors sent
A sweet perfume like holy incense forth,
Till wooing breezes dipt their silver wings
In the rich fragrance of the infant flowers,
And bore it up-pure off'ring to the sky.
The vine, in vernal beauty too, enwove
Its tender arms around the towering trees,