For though I caught them stealing "Swift,"

As swiftly went my "Steele."

And though I fixed a lock on Gray,"
There's gray upon my locks.

I'm far from "Young," am growing pale,
I see my "Butler" fly,

And when they ask about my ail,

"Tis "Burton," I reply.

They still have made me slight returns,

And thus my griefs divide;

For oh! they cured me of my "Burns,"

And eased my "Akenside."

But all I think I shall not say,

Nor let my anger burn,

THE MUSIC OF THE TELEGRAPH WIRES.

HENRY D. THOREAU.

As I went under the new telegraph wire, I heard it vibrating like a harp high over head; it was as the sound of a far-off glorious life, a supernal life which came down to us and vibrated the lattice-work of this life of ours-an Eolian harp. It reminded me, I say, with a certain pathetic moderation, of what finer and deeper stirrings I was susceptible. It said, Bear in mind, child, and never for an instant forget, that there are higher planes of life than this thou art now travelling on. Know that the goal is distant, and is upward. There is every degree of inspiration, from mere fulness of life to the most rapt mood. A human soul is played on even as this wire; I make my own use of the telegraph, without consulting the directors, like the sparrows, which, I observe, use it extensively for a perch. Shall I not, too, go to this office? The sound proceeds from near the posts, where the vibration is apparently more rapid. It seemed to me as if every pore of the wood was filled with music. As I put my car to one of the posts, it labored with the strains, as if every fibre was affected, and being seasoned or timed, rearranged according to a new and more harmonious law; every swell and change and inflection of tone pervaded it, and seemed to proceed from the wood, the divine tree of wood, as if its very substance was transmuted.

What a recipe for preserving wood, to fill its pores with music! How this wild tree from the forest, stripped of its bark and set up here, rejoices to transmit this music.

When no melody proceeds from the wire, I hear the hum within the entrails of the wood, the oracular tree, acquiring, accumulating the prophetic fury. The resounding wood-how much the ancients would have made of it! To have had a harp on so great a scale, girdling the very earth, and played on by the winds of every latitude and longitude, and that harp were (so to speak) the manifest blessing of Heaven on a work of man's. Shall we not now add a tenth muse to those immortal nine, and consider that this invention was most divinely honored and distinguished, upon which the muse has thus condescended to smile-this magic medium of communication with mankind?

To read that the ancients' stretched a wire round the earth, attaching it to the trees of the forest, on which they sent messages by one named Electricity, father of Lightning and Magnetism, swifter far than Mercury-the stern commands of war and news of peace; and that the winds caused this wire to vibrate, so that it emitted a harp-like and Eolian music in all the lands through which it passed, as if to express the satisfaction of the gods in this invention! And this is fact, and yet we have attributed the instrument to no god. I hear the sound working terribly within. When I put my ear to it anon it swells into a clear tone, which seems to concentrate in the core of the tree, for all the sound seems to proceed from the wood. It is as if you had entered some world-cathedral, resounding to some vast organ. The fibres of all things have their tension, and are strained like the strings of a lyre. I feel the very ground tremble underneath my feet, as I stand near the post. The wire vibrates with great power, as if it would strain and rend the wood. What an awful and fateful music it must be to the worms in the wood. No better vermifuge were needed. As the wood of an old cremona,

its every fibre, perchance, harmoniously transposed and educated to resound melody, has brought a great price, so methinks these telegraph posts should bear a great price with musical-instrument makers. It is prepared to be the material of harps for ages to come; as it were, put asoak in and seasoning in music.

SHARED.

LUCY LARCOM.

I SAID it in the meadow-path,
I said it on the mountain-stairs;
The best things any mortal hath

Are those which every mortal shares.

The air we breathe, the sky, the breeze,
The light without us and within,
Life, with its unlocked treasuries,
God's riches, are for all to win.

The grass is softer to my tread

For rest it yields unnumbered feet;

Sweeter to me the wild rose red,

Because she makes the whole world sweet.

Into your heavenly loneliness

Ye welcomed me, O solemn peaks!

And me in every guest you bless

Who reverently your mystery seeks.

And up the radiant peopled way

That opens into worlds unknown,

It will be life's delight to say,

Heaven is not heaven for me alone."