LOVE'S PHILOSOPHY.

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY, BORN AT FIELD PLACE, SUSSEX, AUGUST 4, 1792, DROWNED BY THE SINKING OF A BOAT IN THE BAY OF SPEZIA, JULY 8, 1822.

THE fountains mingle with the river,

And the river with the ocean;
The winds of heaven mix for ever

With a sweet emotion.

Nothing in the world is single;
All things, by a law divine,
In one another's being mingle,-
Why not I with thine

See the mountains kiss high heaven,
And the waves clasp one another;
No leaf or flower would be forgiven,
If it disdain'd to kiss its brother:
And the sunlight clasps the earth,
And the moonbeams kiss the sea,-
What are all these kissings worth

If thou kiss not me?

THE PAST AND THE FUTURE.

ROBERT SOUTHEY.

My days among the dead are past :
Around me I behold,

Where'er these casual eyes are cast,
The mighty minds of old:
My never-failing friends are they,
With whom I converse day by day.

With them I take delight in weal,
And seek relief in woe;
And while I understand and feel
How much to them I owe,

My cheeks have often been dedew'd
With tears of thoughtful gratitude.

My thoughts are with the dead; with them

I live in long-past years;

Their virtue love; their faults condemu,

Partake their hopes and fears;

And from their lessons seek and find

Instruction with a humble mind,

My hopes are with the dead; anon
My place with them will be;
And I with them shall travel on
Through all futurity;

Yet leaving here a name, I trust,

That will not perish with the dust.

"The above verses were communicated by the late Poet Laureate to Sir Egerton Brydges. They were intended to be interspersed, with others, in his Colloquies on the Progress and Prospects of Society; but this design was abandoned, and they remain a fragment.”—Scrap Book.

THE ALBATROSS.

GEORGE WILKINSON

OH! wild is the flight of the Albatross sailing

His range mid the skies, over mountain and wave,

Like a spirit immortal, his might never failing,

On wings of creation his God only gave:

Through the storm in its wildness,

The blackness of night,

Or the evening of mildness,

Unchanged is his flight;

He rendeth or rides on the clouds through the air,
Like the Lord of that untrodden wilderness there.

Where the red sun is blazing his eye never quails,

Nor shrinks from the lightnings the earth that hath

riven;

And he mingleth the cry of his wrath as he sails

With the thunders that roll through the arches of

heaven;

And the hope of the wayward

For ever hath fled,

When he wails o'er the ocean

His knell for the dead,

For the waves will not rest, or the wind soften down,
While there's fire in his eye, or fear in his frown.

Is there aught upon earth like the Albatross ?
With a soul as free and fetterless, --

With a spirit as wild and unstain'd by the dross
Of the world and its kindred wretchedness?

An eye never sleeping,

Or dim'd by a tear,

A heart never weeping,

A breast without fear,

That would range from its earth-bed the deep vault which lies

'Neath the glory eternal, whose light never dies?

Long life to his wide-spreading pinions be given !
No bound ever cross him mid ocean and sky;
Like the spirit of freedom descending from heaven,
The soul that is noble responds to his cry.

Will the blight of creation

Ere fall on his plume?

Will the wild breeze waft o'er him

The breath of the tomb?

Will he die? who shall not? be the ocean his bed!

Where the Albatross sleepeth in peace with the dead.

THE BATTLE OF NASEBY.

L. D. FROM "TAIT'S MAGAZINE."

HARD by the source of Avon,
When the great heart of June
Is full of blood, and beating

To Love's most loving tune.

A deafening shout of triumph
The atmosphere divides;

And lo there come with Cromwell
Seven hundred "Ironsides."

No more about to-morrow

Is heard, in doubt and fear;

The victory and the victor

Seem both already here.

That morrow with its sunshine

Upon two armies rose,