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gleam upon its open face-
with "messages from the
heavens;" the rainbow
arches its waterfalls;
the panting lamb comes
to cool its parched tongue
in its limpid waters; the
lean blue heron, with
head and bill sunk
on its breast, stands

motionless in its:

shallows watching

for minnows all the long dull afternoon, while the dusky ousel flits from stone to stone in all the fearless play of its happy life.

13. Hurrying swiftly through the brown, heathy wastes that clothe the lower slopes, it lingers a while where the.

trembling aspen and the twinkling birch and the rugged alder weave their leafy canopy over it, freckling its bustling waves with ever-varying scintillations of light and shade; pauses to water the crofter's meadow and cornfield, and to supply the wants of a cluster of rude moss-grown huts on its banks, which look as if they had grown naturally ou of the soil; and then, through a beach of snow-white pebbles, it mingles its fretting waters in the blue profound peace of the loch.

14. Such is the bright and varied course of the Alpine stream, with its floral fringe; and from its fountain to its fall it is one continuous, many-linked chain of beauty-an epic of Nature, full of the richest images and the most suggestive poetry.

REV. HUGH MCMILLAN.

S

LXXVII. THE OLD CLOCK.

I.

OMEWHAT back from the village street
Stands the old-fashioned country-seat.

Across its antique portico

Tall poplar-trees their shadows throw;
And from its station in the hall

An ancient time-piece says to all:

"Forever-never!

Never-forever!"

II.

Halfway up the stairs it stands,

And points and beckons with its hands

From its case of massive oak,

Like a monk, who, under his cloak,

Crosses himself, and sighs, alas!

With sorrowful voice to all who pass:

"Forever-never!

Never-forever!"

III.

By day its voice is low and light;
But in the silent dead of night,
Distinct as a passing footstep's fall,
It echoes along the vacant hall,
Along the ceiling, along the floor,

And seems to say, at each chamber-door:
"Forever-never!

Never-forever!"

IV.

Through days of sorrow and of mirth,
Through days of death and days of birth,
Through every swift vicissitude

Of changeful time, unchanged it has stood;
And as if, like God, it all things saw,
It calmly repeats those words of awe:
"Forever-never!

Never-forever!"

V.

In that mansion used to be

Free-hearted hospitality;

His great fires up the chimney roared;
The stranger feasted at his board;

But, like the skeleton at the feast,
That warning time-piece never ceased:

"Forever-never!

Never-forever!"

VI.

There groups of merry children played; There youths and maidens, dreaming, strayed. O precious hours! O golden prime,

And affluence of love and time!

Even as a miser counts his gold,

Those hours the ancient time-piece told:

"Forever-never!

Never-forever!"

VII.

From that chamber, clothed in white,
The bride came forth on her wedding-night;
There, in that silent room below,

The dead lay in his shroud of snow;
And in the hush that follow'd prayer,

Was heard the old clock on the stair:
"Forever-never!

Never-forever!"

VIII.

All are scattered now and fled,
Some are married, some are dead;
And when I ask, with throbs of pain,
"Ah! when shall they all meet again?"
As in the days long since gone by,
The ancient time-piece makes reply:
"Forever-never!

Never-forever!"

IX.

Never here, forever there,

Where all parting, pain, and care,
And death and time shall disappear
Forever there, but never here!
The horologe of eternity

Sayeth this incessantly:

"Forever-never!

Never-forever!"

H. W. LONGFELLOW.

LXXVIII. BEAUTIFUL SIGHTS AT SEA.

TH

HE most beautiful thing I have seen at sea-all the more so that I had never heard of it-is the trail of a shoal of fish through the phosphorescent water. It is like a flight of silver rockets, or the streaming of northern lights through that silent nether heaven. I thought nothing could go beyond that rustling star-foam which was churned up by our ship's bows, or those eddies and disks of dreamy flame that rose and wandered out of sight behind us.

'Twas fire our ship was plunging through,
Cold fire that o'er the quarter flew;

And wandering moons of idle flame
Grew full and waned, and went and came,
Dappling with light the huge sea-snake
That slid behind us in the wake.

2. But there was something even more delicately rare in the apparition of the fish, as they turned up in gleaming furrows the latent moonshine which the ocean seemed to have hoarded against these vacant interlunar nights. In the Mediterranean one day, as we were lying becalmed, I observed the water freckled with dingy specks, which at last gathered to a pinkish scum on the surface. The sea had been so phosphorescent for some nights, that when the captain gave me my bath, by dowsing me with buckets from the house on deck, the spray flew off my head and shoulders in sparks.

3. It occurred to me that this dirty-looking scum might be the luminous matter, and I had a pailful dipped up to keep till after dark. When I went to look at it after nightfall, it seemed at first perfectly dead; but when I shook it, the whole broke out into what I can only liken to milky flames, whose lambent silence was strangely beautiful, and startled me almost as actual projection might an alchemist. I could not bear to be the death of so much beauty; so I poured it all overboard again.

4. Another sight worth taking a voyage for is that of the sails by moonlight. Our course was "south and by east, half south," so that we seemed bound for the full moon as she rolled up over our wavering horizon. Then I used to go forward to the bowsprit and look back. Qur ship was a clipper, with every rag set, stunsails, sky-scrapers, and all; nor was it easy to believe that such a wonder could be built of canvas as that white, many-storied pile of cloud that stooped over me, or drew back as we rose and fell with the waves.

5. Were you ever alone with the sun? You think it a very simple question; but I never was, in the full sense of

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