Oh! how sweetly she spoke, ere she uttered a word,
With that blush, partly hers, partly Even's,
And that tone, like the dream of a song we once heard,
As she whispered, 'That way is not Heaven's;

For the River that runs by the realm of the Blest
Has no song on its ripple, no star on its breast——
Oh! that River is nothing like this!

For it glides on in shadow, beyond the world's west,
Till it breaks into beauty and bliss.'

I am lingering yet, but I linger alone,

On the banks of the Beautiful River.

"Tis the twin of that day, but the wave where it shone, Bears the willow tree's shadow for ever!

Ploughshares and Sorrows.

GREAT grief in the clover just now, and every body but "Rachel, weeping for her children." For a few days past, they have kept a thing, a machine, a monster, going in the Clover Field, that they call a "breaking-up plough," and it is well named for an ill business; inasmuch as it interferes with more domestic arrangements, and destroys more domestic happiness and hopes, than "Consuelo" or the Last War-in fact, it breaks up whole families.

Talk about "beating swords into ploughshares!"

If this identical implement had been turned into a dozen good broad-swords, in these "piping times of peace," it would have hastened the Millennium, at least one generation, in the Meadow back of the Orchard.

What John Rogers-like families of infant mice were orphaned; what snug and cozy little homes were destroyed, no body can tell. If all ploughmen were poets, and all poets were Burns-es, and all Burns-es had sung,

"But, mousie, thou art not alane,

In proving foresight may be vain;

The best laid schemes o' mice an' men

Gang aft a-gley,

An' lea'e us naught but grief and pain
For promised joy,"

it wouldn't mend the matter; it wouldn't turn back the turf, nor restore the wee ones to their "mither " again.

Two of the beautifully dappled eggs of the Meadow lark were brought in by one of the boys,' this morning, thus left without "a local habitation;" furnishing, so it seems to us, an admirable escapement for the overflowing philanthropy that renders so many people so very miserable. Wouldn't a nest for the nestless" society be just the thing! And if some

body, whose sympathies have been "wool-gathering' at the sources of the White Nile, would volunteer to— I feel a delicacy about suggesting it-to-to hatch the eggs aforesaid, two innocents would be spared an untimely fate. They are wrapped in cotton-wool, awaiting orders. References exchanged."

Fire has also been called into requisition, to finish the work commenced by the share. Hard by a brush-heap, a Quail had hidden her summer hopes— sixteen spotless eggs-a cup full of pearls; within which, ere long, "Spiritual Rappings" should be heard, and a brood of life emerge, and skulk away, each with his cradle of a shell upon his back. The sad story is soon told; they set fire to the pile, that was to become a funeral-pyre; the brush sparkled and blazed, the logs kindled and glowed, but the bird, Phoenix-like, sat upon her nest. The flames surged

around her, but when the dark

volumes of smoke

lifted, 'our bird was still there.' The red fire at last, drove over the nest; the very straws were lighted, and the mother whirled despairingly away with a cry of anguish, and was seen no more. Many a heart heaves the twin billows of Circassian bosoms to-day, neither so true nor so wrung, as the little morsel of irritable muscle in the breast of that Quail mother

Many a marble has been graven and set up over less worth. Many an eloquent tribute has been paid to the memory of a less melancholy fate.

"Our Defences."

WHO talks of arsenals and armories-of Colt's Revolvers and "Dupont's best," when, on this quiet farm, in this peaceful neighborhood, where every body believes in the New Dispensation, Elihu Burritt, and Universal Brotherhood, there are more weapons of war, aggressive and defensive, than ever followed the Roman Eagles to conquest?

Why, you can meet any where, gentlemen in black, who wear rapiers, that are whipped out upon cause the slightest I always give them a wide berth and whole communities of individuals, engaged in "the SUGAR trade," to say nothing of "the cotton line," that carry blades, Toledo-tempered every one of them, and make nothing of using them too.

66

Under that pile of plank, boards a WATCHMAN, one of Nature's own Charlies," springing a rattle that "Old Hays" would have patented, and flourishing a

case of lancets that Cooper would have coveted.

Chivalry is here; for gallant knights in long spurs, stalk about the yards, and challenge each other from the tops of the fences. A genius crept out of the grass yesterday, with shield and breast-plate, like an old Roman. It was, as if one should invert a huge shell card-basket, give it a serpent's head, an elephant's feet, and a lizard's “continuation," inscribe it all over with Chinese characters, and "let it run."

Every evening, a Worthy of the QUILL comes rustling out from under the barn; quills behind his ears; quills under his arms; in fact, a back-load of quills. A very pungent, pointed author is he, with his quills; has talent for a modern critic, would work for his board, and ought to be encouraged.

Go " across lots to CHARLES', and you will catch

glimpses of pairs of little heels without owners, twinkling in every direction: GOPHERS going for quarters. Unfitted for a field fight, too weak for a sortie, they are prepared to stand a siege in their subterranean fastnesses. Set your Sappers and Miners to unearth the Garrison, and they will find the fortress deserted and the Gophers gone; for they have a proverb among them-those Gophers-that has been. rudely translated into English, thus: "There are more ways than one."