drooping sea-weed hears, in night abyssed,
Far and more far the waves' receding shocks,
Nor doubts, through all the darkness and the mist
That the pale shepherdess will keep her tryst,
And shoreward lead once more her foam-fleeced flocks.

For the same wave that laps the Carib shore
With momentary curves of pearl and gold,
Goes hurrying thence to gladden with its roar
The lorn shells camped on rocks of Labrador,
By love divine on that glad errand rolled.

And, though Thy healing waters far withdraw,
I, too, can wait and feed on hopes of Thee,
And of the dear recurrence of thy Law,
Sure that the parting grace which morning saw,
Abides its time to come in search of me.

TREFOIL.

BY EVERT A. DUYCKINCK.

"Hope, by the ancients, was drawn in the form of a sweet and
beautiful child, standing upon tiptoes, and a trefoil or
three-leaved grass in her hand."

_Citation from old Peacham in Dr. Johnson's Dictionary._

Three names, clustered together in more than one marked association, have
a pleasant fragrance in English literature. A triple-leaved clover in a
field thickly studded with floral beauties, the modest merits of
HERBERT, VAUGHAN and CRASHAW

"Smell sweet and blossom in the dust"--

endeared to us not merely by the claim of intellect, but by the warmer
appeal to the heart, of kindred sympathy and suffering. True poets, they
have placed in their spiritual alembic the common woes and sorrows of
life, and extracted from them "by force of their so potent art," a cordial
for the race.

Has it ever occurred to the reader to reflect how much the world owes to
the poets in the alleviation of sorrow? It is much to hear the simple
voice of sympathy in its plainest utterances from the companions around
us; it is something to listen to the same burden from the good of former
generations, as the universal experience of humanity; but we owe the
greatest debt to those who by the graces of intellect and the pains of a
profounder passion, have triumphed over affliction, and given eloquence to
sorrow.

There is a common phrase, which some poet must first have invented--"the
luxury of woe." Poets certainly have found their most constant themes in
suffering. When the late Edgar Poe, who prided himself on reducing
literature to an art, sat down to write a poem which should attain the
height of popularity, he said sorrow must be its