ways-horizontal, upright-rested, rose-at altitudes by spans that seemed ghostly from infinitude. Without measure were the architraves, past number were the archways, beyond memory the gates.

Within were stairs that scaled the eternities below; above was below,―below was above, to the man stripped of gravitating body; depth was swallowed up in height insurmountable; height was swallowed up in depth unfathomable. Suddenly, as thus they rode from infinite to infinite; suddenly, as thus they tilted over abysmal worlds, a mighty cry arose that systems more mysterious, that worids more billowy, other heights and other depths, were coming-were nearingwere at hand.

Then the man sighed, and stopped, and shuddered, and wept. His overladen heart uttered itself in tears; and he said, "Angel, I will go no further; for the spirit of man acteth with this infirmity. Insufferable is the glory of God. Let me lie down in the grave, and hide me from the persecutions of the Infinite; for end, I see, there is none.”

And from all the listening stars that shone around, issued a choral cry, "The man speaks truly; end there is none that ever yet we heard of." "End is there none?" the angel solemnly demanded: “Is there indeed no end, and is this the sorrow that kills you?' But no voice answered that he might answer himself. Then the angel threw up his glorious hands toward the heaven of heavens, saying, "End is there none to the universe of God! Lo, also there is no beginning!” JEAN PAUL RICHTER.

WE'VE ALWAYS BEEN PROVIDED FOR.

“Good wife, what are you singing for? You know we've lost the hay,

And what we'll do with horse and kye is more than I can say; While like as not, with storm and rain, we'll lose both corn and wheat."

She looked up with a pleasant face, and answered low and sweet: "There is a Heart, there is a Hand, we feel, but cannot see; We've always been provided for, and we shall always be."

He turned round with a sudden gloom. She said: “Love, be at rest; You cut the grass, worked soon and late, you did your very best.

That was your work you'd naught at all to do with wind and rain, And no doubt but that you will reap rich fields of golden grain; For there's a Heart, and there's a Hand, we feel, but cannot see We've always been provided for, and we shall always be."

"That's like a woman's reasoning,-we must, because we must.”
She softly said; "I reason not, I only work and trust;
The harvest may redeem the day--keep heart, whate'er betide,
When one door shuts, I've always seen another open wide,
There is a Heart, there is a Hand, we feel, but cannot see;
We've always been provided for, and we shall always be."

He kissed the calm and trustful face, gone was his restless pain,
She heard him with a cheerful step go whistling down the lane,
And when about her household tasks, full of a glad content,
Singing, to time her busy hands, as to and fro she went―
'There is a Heart, there is a Hand, we feel, but cannot see;
We've always been provided for, and we shall always be."

Days come and go,-'twas Christmas tide, and the great fire burned clear.

The farmer said: "Dear wife, it's been a good and happy year:
The fruit was gain, the surplus corn has bought the hay, you know."
She lifted then a smiling face, and said: "I told you so!

For there's a Heart, and there's a Hand, we feel, but eannot see;

We've always been provided for, and we shall always be.”

PASSING AWAY.

Was it the chime of a tiny bell

That came so sweet to my dreaming ear,

Like the silvery tones of a fairy's shell,

That he winds on the beach so mellow and clear,
When the winds and the waves lie together asleep,
And the moon and the fairy are watching the deep,
She dispensing her silvery light,

And he his notes as silvery quite,

While the boatman listens and ships his oar,

To catch the music that comes from the shore?-
Hark! the notes on my ear that play,

Are set to words; as they float, they say,
Passing away! passing away!"

But, no; it was not a fairy's shell,

Blown on the beach, so mellow and clear;
Nor was it the tongue of a silver beli

Striking the hours that fell on my ear,
As I lay in my dream ; yet was it a chime
That told of the flow of the stream of Time;
For a beautiful clock from the ceiling hung,
And a plump little girl for a pendulum swung;

(As you've sometimes seen, in a little ring
That hangs in his cage, a canary bird swing;)
And she held to her bosom a budding bouquet
And as she enjoyed it, she seemed to say,
"Passing away! passing away!"

Oh, how bright were the wheels, that told

Of the lapse of time as they moved round slow! And the hands as they swept o'er the dial of gold, Seemed to point to the girl below.

And lo! she had changed ;-in a few short hours,
Her bouquet had become a garland of flowers,
That she held in her outstretched hands, and flung
This way and that, as she, dancing, swung
In the fullness of grace and womanly pride,
That told me she soon was to be a bride;

Yet then, when expecting her happiest day,
In the same sweet voice I heard her say,
Passing away! passing away!"

66

While I gazed on that fair one's cheek, a shade
Of thought, or care, stole softly over,
Like that by a cloud in a summer's day made,
Looking down on a field of blossoming clover.
The rose yet lay on her cheek, but its flush
Had something lost of its brilliant blush;

And the light in her eye, and the light on the wheels, That marched so calmly round above her,

Was a little dimmed-as when evening steals

Upon noon's hot face :-yet one couldn't but love her;
For she looked like a mother whose first babe lay
Rocked on her breast, as she swung all day;
And she seemed in the same silver tone to say,
"Passing away! passing away!"

When yet I looked, what a change there came!
Her eye was quenched, and her cheek was wan;
Stooping and staffed was her withered frame,

Yet just as busily swung she on.

The garland beneath her had fallen to dust;
The wheels above her were eaten with rust;

The hands, that over the dial swept,

Grew crook'd and tarnished, but on they kept;
And still there came that silver tone

From the shriveled lips of the toothless crone,
(Let me never forget, to my dying day,
The tone or the burden of that lay)-
"PASSING AWAY! PASSING AWAY!"

JOHN PIERPONT.

THE WHITE SQUALL.

On deck, beneath the awning,

I dozing lay and yawning;

It was the gray of dawning,

Ere yet the sun arose;

And above the funnel's roaring,
And the fitful wind's deploring,

I heard the captain snoring

With universal nose.

I could hear the passengers snorting,

I envied their disporting,

Vainly I was courting

The pleasure of a doze.

So I lay, and wondered why light
Came not, and watched the twilght,
And the glimmer of the skylight,
That shot across the deck:
And the binnacle pale and steady,
And the dull glimpse of the dead-eye,
And the sparks in the fiery eddy

That whirled from the chimney neck.
In our jovial floating prison

There was sleep from fore to mizzen,
And never a star had risen

The hazy sky to speck.
Strange company we harbored:
We'd a hundred Jews to larboard,
Unwashed, uncombed, unbarbered,—
Jews black and brown and gray.

With terror it would seize ye,

And make your soul uneasy,

To see those Rabbis greasy,

Who did naught but scratch and pray.

Their dirty children puking,—

Their dirty saucepans cooking,—

Their dirty fingers hooking

Their swarming fleas away.

To starboard Turks and Greeks were,--
Whiskered and brown their cheeks were,-

Enormous wide their breeks were,--
Their pipes did puff away;

Each on his mat allotted

In silence smoked and squatted,
Whilst round their children trotted

In pretty, pleasant play.

He can't but smile who traces
The smiles on those brown faces,
And the pretty, prattling graces
Of those small heathens gay.

And so the hours kept tolling;
And through the ocean rolling