t seemed like a musical flame,
And I lay and I looked and I listened
Till the nymph of the waterfall came.

It was no Undine or Lurley
(Though I thought her as beautiful still)
That came in the evening early--
But a bare-footed maid from the mill.

The pitcher too frequently laden
Must break and be lost at the worst,
But the young heart, when full of a maiden,
Of the twain will be broken the first.

But the pitcher, when cracked by a tumble,
Must be laid, till repaired, on the shelf,
While the heart, although shattered and humble,
Will be mended in time by itself.

And we vowed that we loved--but with laughter,
And we kissed with our feet in the brook;
She left me--my whistle rung after,
To win from the maid a last look.

And months have flown by since I missed her,
For afar with another she's flown;
And now I wait here for her sister,
To vow that I've loved her alone.

Oh water that ever art roaming!
Oh fountain that never canst move!
Oh fancy--some new flame still loving!
Oh heart ever constant to--love!

Sing it, reader, 'if thou canst sing.' A lady friend assures us that it
goeth well unto voice and pianoforte.

* * * * *

YE JOLLIE POACHER.

'Twas I that kept a shoddy mill
In starving Lancashire;
And shaved the Yankees shamefully
For many and many a year.

The mill is stopped, I'm raving mad,
As from the _Times_ you hear;
Oh it's my delight to bark and bite
At all times of the year.

* * * * *

The
Continental Monthly.

The readers of the CONTINENTAL are aware of the important
position it has assumed, of the influence which it exerts, and of the
brilliant array of political and literary talent of the highest order
which supports it. No publication of the kind has, in this country, so
successfully combined the energy and freedom of the daily newspaper with
the higher literary tone of the first-class monthly; and it is very
certain that no magazine has given wider range to its contributors, or
preserved itself so completely from the narrow influences of party or of
faction. In times like the present, such a journal is either a power in
the land or it is nothing. That the CONTINENTAL is not the
latter is abundantly evidenced _by what it has done_--by the reflection
of its counsels in many i