Phoebe! it calls and calls again,
And Ovid, could he but have heard,
Had hung a legendary pain
About the memory of the bird;

A pain articulate so long
In penance of some mouldered crime,
Whose ghost still flies the furies' thong
Down the waste solitudes of time;

* * * * *

Phoebe! is all it has to say
In plaintive cadence o'er and o'er,
Like children that have lost their way
And know their names, but nothing more.

Is it in type, since Nature's lyre
Vibrates to every note in man,
Of that insatiable desire
Meant to be so, since life began?

I, in strange lands at gray of dawn,
Wakeful, have heard that fruitless plaint
Through memory's chambers deep withdrawn
Renew its iterations faint.

So nigh! yet from remotest years
It seems to draw its magic, rife
With longings unappeased, and tears
Drawn from the very source of life.

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL: in _Scribner_.

* * * * *

TO THE STORK.

Welcome, O Stork! that dost wing
Thy flight from the far-away!
Thou hast brought us the signs of Spring,
Thou hast made our sad hearts gay.

Descend, O Stork! descend
Upon our roof to rest;
In our ash-tree, O my friend,
My darling, make thy nest.

To thee, O Stork, I complain,
O Stork, to thee I impart
The thousand sorrows, the pain
And aching of my heart.

When thou away didst go,
Away from this tree of ours,
The withering winds did blow,
And dried up all the flowers.

Dark grew the brilliant sky,
Cloudy and dark and drear;
They were breaking the snow on high,
And winter was drawing near.

From Varaca's rocky wall,
From the rock of Varaca unrolled,
The snow came and covered all,
And the green meadow was cold.

O Stork, our garden with snow
Was hidden away and lost,
And the rose-trees that in it grow
Were withered by snow and frost.

H. W. LONGFELLOW.

* * * * *

THE STORKS OF DELFT.

The tradition of the storks at Delft (Holland), is, however, still alive,
and no traveller writes about the city without remembering them.

The fact occurred at the time of the great fire which ruined almost all the
city. There were in Delft innumerable storks' nests. It must be un