amain--
Torrents, methinks, that heard a mighty voice,
And stopped at once amid their maddest plunge!
Motionless torrents! silent cataracts!
Who made you glorious as the gates of heaven
Beneath the keen full moon? Who bade the sun
Clothe you with rainbows? Who, with living flowers
Of loveliest blue, spread garlands at your feet?

"God!" let the torrents, like a shout of nations,
Answer! and let the ice-plain echo, "God!"
"God!" sing, ye meadow streams, with gladsome voice
Ye pine groves, with your soft and soul-like sounds
And they, too, have a voice, yon piles of snow,
And in their perilous fall shall thunder, "God!"

Ye living flowers that skirt the eternal frost!
Ye wild goats sporting round the eagle's nest!
Ye eagles, playmates of the mountain storm!
Ye lightnings, the dread arrows of the clouds!
Ye signs and wonders of the elements!
Utter forth "God!" and fill the hills with praise!

Thou too, hoar mount! with thy sky-pointing peaks
Oft from whose feet the avalanche, unheard
Shoots downward, glittering through the pure serene
Into the depth of clouds that veil thy breast,--
Thou too, again, stupendous mountain! thou
That, as I raise my head, awhile bowed low
In adoration, upward from thy base
Slow traveling, with dim eyes suffused with tears,
Solemnly seemest, like a vapory cloud
To rise before me,--rise, oh, ever rise!
Rise, like a cloud of incense, from the earth!
Thou kingly spirit, throned among the hills,
Thou dread ambassador from earth to heaven,
Great Hierarch! tell thou the silent sky,
And tell the stars, and tell yon rising sun,
Earth, with her thousand voices, praises God.

S.T. COLERIDGE.

* * * * *

MY STAR.

All that I know
Of a certain star
Is, it can throw
(Like the angled spar)
Now a dart of red,
Now a dart of blue,
Till my friends have said
They would fain see, too

My star that dartles the red and the blue!
Then it stops like a bird; like a flower, hangs furled;
They must solace themselves with the Saturn above it.
What matter to me if their star is a world?
Mine has opened its soul to me; therefore I love it.

ROBERT BROWNING.

* * * * *

A CONSERVATIVE.

The garden beds I wandered by
One bright and cheerful morn,
When I found a new-fledged butterfly
A-sitting on a thorn,
A black and crimson butterfly,
All doleful and forlorn.

I thought that life could have no sting