THE WORLD'S TRIUMPHS.

So far as I conceive the world's rebuke

To him address'd who would recast her new, Not from herself her fame of strength she took, But from their weakness, who would work her rue.

'Behold,' she cries, 'so many rages lull'd,
So many fiery spirits quite cool'd down!
Look how so many valours, long undull'd,
After short commerce with me, fear my frown!

Thou too, when thou against my crimes wouldst cry,
Let thy foreboded homage check thy tongue!'-
The world speaks well; yet might her foe reply:
'Are wills so weak?-then let not mine wait long!

Hast thou so rare a poison?-let me be
Keener to slay thee, lest thou poison me!'

GROWING OLD.

WHAT is it to grow old?

Is it to lose the glory of the form,

The lustre of the eye?

Is it for beauty to forego her wreath ?—

Yes, but not this alone!

Is it to feel our strength

Not our bloom only, but our strength-decay?

Is it to feel each limb

Grow stiffer, every function less exact,

Each nerve more weakly strung?

Yes, this, and more! but not,

Ah, 'tis not what in youth we dream'd 'twould be!

'Tis not to have our life

Mellow'd and soften'd as with sunset-glow,

A golden day's decline!

'Tis not to see the world

As from a height, with rapt prophetic eyes, And heart profoundly stirr'd;

And weep, and feel the fulness of the past,

The years that are no more!

It is to spend long days

And not once feel that we were ever young!

It is to add, immured

In the hot prison of the present, month

To month with weary pain.

It is to suffer this,

And feel but half, and feebly, what we feel. Deep in our hidden heart

Festers the dull remembrance of a change,

But no emotion-none !

It is last stage of all—

When we are frozen up within, and quite

The phantom of ourselves,

To hear the world applaud the hollow ghost Which blamed the living man.

DESPONDENCY.

HE thoughts that rain their steady glow

THE

Like stars on life's cold sea,

Which others know, or say they know

They never shone for me!

Thoughts light, like gleams, my spirit's sky,

But they will not remain;

They light me once, they hurry by,

And never come again.

SELF-DECEPTION.

AY, what blinds us, that we claim the glory

SAY,

Of possessing powers not our share?—

Since man woke on earth, he knows his story,
But, before we woke on earth, we were.

Long, long since, undower'd yet, our spirit
Roam'd, ere birth, the treasuries of God;
Saw the gifts, the powers it might inherit,
Ask'd an outfit for its earthly road.

Then, as now, this tremulous, eager being
Strain'd, and long'd, and grasp'd each gift it saw;

Then, as now, a power beyond our seeing

Staved us back, and gave our choice the law.

Ah, whose hand that day through Heaven guided Man's new spirit, since it was not we?

Ah, who sway'd our choice, and who decided

What our gifts, and what our wants should be?