Stream, softens many a climate naturally as
cold as that of Labrador. I just throw out this hint for the sentimental
reader to enlarge upon.

That quotation from Alexander Smith reminds me of one other thing, for
which your utilitarian has a sovereign contempt--that is _poetry_. What
is poetry? Every thing that stirs the soul to its depths, or but crisps
the surface, is poetry--every truth does this, therefore every truth is
poetry. Mind, I don't say _conversely_, etc. There--that word
'conversely,' suggests to you that now you have me; there is
mathematical truth, you say; you might as well attempt to raise a tree
from cube-root as to attempt to make poetry sprout from mathematics....
Is there no poetry in the marked path of the vessel on the trackless
ocean--no poetry in the magnificent sweep of suns and worlds through
space--in the eccentric orbit of the faithful comet--faithful, for from
the most distant errands he passes right by earth, and even Venus,
lingers not a moment, but hastens back to his lord--is there no poetry
in the icing over of the brook, (if you think not, read Lowell's _Sir
Launfel_,) each icy crystal being an exact geometrical figure? When 'God
geometrizes,' he also poetizes.

Then if we can't say conversely all poetry is truth, yet poetry gives to
every thing she touches with her magic wand, the charm of reality. Are
not Ariel, Puck, Oberon, real characters, though but 'beings of the
mind'? Shylock and Lady Macbeth are to me as real as John Wesley and
Hannah More, and far more real than the dimly defined heroes of
Plutarch, except those that Shakspeare has thrilled with his own
life-blood--his very ghosts have an awful individuality--they are enough
to make you believe in ghosts. But hark! what was that--pshaw! it is
only a screech-owl on the maple near my window--Keats' 'owl, for all his
feathers, was a-cold,' I should think this was, from his shivering
notes. Listen again! how old is the dead Time, whose age the distant
town-clock is tolling? I don't care to count--to tell the truth, that
owl makes me nervous--and if it is 'the witching time of night,' I don't
care to know it--so good-night.

In haste, MOLLY O'MOLLY.

WOUNDED

Up the quiet street in the early Sunday morning, came with slow
steps and silently, two wounded soldiers:
One with shattered arm and a cruel sabre-cut on his forehead;
One with amputated leg, hobbled slowly along on crutches.

In the thunder-stor