fiercest animal fire;—just for that I hate it."
"Why, then, is it fitted for me?"
He laughed again, but replied,—"The hues harmonize,—the substances; you both are accidents; it suits your beauty."
So, then, it seemed I had beauty, after all.
"You mean that it harmonizes with me, because I am a symbol of its period. If there had been women then, they would have been like me,—a great creature without a soul, a"–
"Pray, don't finish the sentence. I can imagine that there is something rich and voluptuous and sating about amber, its color, and its lustre, and its scent; but for others, not for me. Yea, you have beauty, after all," turning suddenly, and withering me with his eye,—"beauty, after all, as you didn't say just now.—Mr. Willoughby is in the garden. I must go before he comes in, or he'll make me stay. There are some to whom you can't say, No."
He stopped a minute, and now, without looking,—indeed, he looked everywhere but at me, while we talked,—made a bow as if just seating me from a waltz, and, with his eyes and his smile on Louise all the way down the room, went out. Did you ever know such insolence?
SONG OF NATURE
Mine are the night and morning,
The pits of air, the gulf of space,
The sportive sun, the gibbous moon,
The innumerable days.
I hide in the blinding glory,
I lurk in the pealing song,
I rest on the pitch of the torrent,
In death, new-born and strong.
No numbers have counted my tallies,
No tribes my house can fill,
I sit by the shining Fount of life,
And pour the deluge still.
And ever by delicate powers
Gathering along the centuries
From race on race the fairest flowers,
My wreath shall nothing miss.
And many a thousand summers
My apples ripened well,
And light from meliorating stars
With firmer glory fell.
I wrote the past in characters
Of rock and fire the scroll,
The building in the coral sea,
The planting of the coal.
And thefts from satellites and rings
And broken stars I drew,
And out of spent and aged things
I formed the world anew.
What time the gods kept carnival,
Tricked out in star and flower,
And in cramp elf and saurian forms
They swathed their too much power.
Time and Thought were my surveyors,
They laid their courses well,
They boiled the sea, and baked the layers
Of granite, marl, and shell.
But him—the man-child glorious,
Where tarries he the while?
The rainbow shines his harbinger,
The sunset gleams his smile.
My boreal lights leap upward,
Forthright my planets roll,
And still the man-child is not born,
The summit of the whole.
Must time and tide forever run?
Will never my winds go sleep in the West?
Will never my wheels, which whirl the sun
And satellites, have rest?
Too much of donning and doffing,
Too slow the rainbow fades;
I weary of my robe of snow,
My leaves, and my cascades.
I tire of globes and races,
Too long the game is played;
What, without him, is summer's pomp,
Or winter's frozen shade?
I travail in pain for him,
My creatures travail and wait;
His couriers come by squadrons,
He comes not to the gate.
Twice I have moulded an image,
And thrice outstretched my hand,
Made one of day, and one of night,
And one of the salt-sea-sand.
I moulded kings and saviours,
And bards o'er kings to rule;
But fell the starry influence short,
The cup was never full.
Yet whirl the glowing wheels once more,
And mix the bowl again,
Seethe, Fate! the ancient elements,
Heat, cold, dry, wet, and peace and pain
Let war and trade and creeds and song
Blend, ripen race on race,—
The sunburnt world a man shall breed
Of all the zones and countless days.
No ray is dimmed, no atom worn,
My oldest force is good as new,
And the fresh rose on yonder thorn
Gives back the bending heavens in dew.
NEMOPHILY
An earnest plea was once entered in Maga's pages for the bodies of saints. Yet it is to be hoped that others not included in that respectable class may have physical needs also, and it is to be feared that they may not be above the necessity of a little of the same invigorating tonic. For there are not a few on this continent of ours, whom the Avvocata del Diavolo would certainly expect to enter a nolo contendere, who stand in much need of a healthy animalism. That these sinners would be benefited by what Mr. Kingsley's critics call "muscular Christianity" cannot be denied. For they are not sinners beyond all hope of amendment, by any means; and their offences being rather against the laws and light of Nature than against any of the commands of the Decalogue, it is earnestly desired that they be brought within the pale of promise, even if they never reach the sacred fane of canonization.
Indeed, at the outset, let there be a protest entered on behalf of the sinner against this unnecessary pity of the saint. It is a part of that false halo with which enthusiastic admiration (reckless of gilding and ruinously prodigal of ochre) delights to endue the favored heads of the beati. The saint himself countenances the folly, and meekly inclines his head (sideways) to the rays. It is a part of the capital of the calling to look interesting. The revered and reverend Charles Honeyman, in the hands of that acute manager, Mr. Sherrick, was bidden to sit in his pew at evening service and cough. A qualified consumption and a moderate bronchitis are no bad substitutes for eloquence, learning, and that indiscreet piety which is so careless of feminine favor as to bring into the pulpit a robust person and to the dinner-table a healthy appetite.
But
