among the yellow flowers in the short Greenland
summer. Beneath the copper mountains of Fablun, and England's coal
mines, he flies, in the shape of a dusty moth, over the hymnbook
that rests on the knees of the pious miner. On a lotus leaf he
floats down the sacred waters of the Ganges, and the eye of the Hindoo
maid gleams bright when she beholds him.

The Phoenix bird, dost thou not know him? The Bird of Paradise,
the holy swan of song! On the car of Thespis he sat in the guise of
a chattering raven, and flapped his black wings, smeared with the lees
of wine; over the sounding harp of Iceland swept the swan's red
beak; on Shakspeare's shoulder he sat in the guise of Odin's raven,
and whispered in the poet's ear "Immortality!" and at the minstrels'
feast he fluttered through the halls of the Wartburg.

The Phoenix bird, dost thou not know him? He sang to thee the
Marseillaise, and thou kissedst the pen that fell from his wing; he
came in the radiance of Paradise, and perchance thou didst turn away
from him towards the sparrow who sat with tinsel on his wings.

The Bird of Paradise--renewed each century--born in flame,
ending in flame! Thy picture, in a golden frame, hangs in the halls of
the rich, but thou thyself often fliest around, lonely and
disregarded, a myth--"The Phoenix of Arabia."

In Paradise, when thou wert born in the first rose, beneath the
Tree of Knowledge, thou receivedst a kiss, and thy right name was
given thee--thy name, Poetry.

THE PORTUGUESE DUCK

A duck once arrived from Portugal, but there were some who said
she came from Spain, which is almost the same thing. At all events,
she was called the "Portuguese," and she laid eggs, was killed, and
cooked, and there was an end of her. But the ducklings which crept
forth from the eggs were also called "Portuguese," and about that
there may be some question. But of all the family one only remained in
the duckyard, which may be called a farmyard, as the chickens were
admitted, and the cock strutted about in a very hostile manner. "He
annoys me with his loud crowing," said the Portuguese duck; "but,
still, he's a handsome bird, there's no denying that, although he's
not a drake. He ought to moderate his voice, like those little birds
who are singing in the lime-trees over there in our neighbor's garden,
but that is an art only acquired in polite society. How sweetly they
sing there; it is quite a pleasure to listen to them! I call it
Portugu