MENTAL BEAUTY. BY RICHARD H. VOSE. I LOVE the hour when day is spent, And stars are in the firmament:Sweet hour of night, thy shadows roll, A heavenly calmness o'er the soul. I love to gaze upon the deep, When furious storms are lulled to rest; How calmly sweet those billows sleep, And mildly smile on ocean's breast. Oh! who can gaze upon the ocean, And see the moonbeams sparkle there, Nor feel the flame of pure devotion, Nor offer up one fervent prayer. MENTAL BEAUTY. And who has marked the rainbow's smile, That emblem of our Maker's love, And did not burn with love the while But there's a beauty far more bright, The glorious sky shall pass away, This is our sentence, this our woe. Yet earth, with Heaven can boast alone, It is the beauty of the mind. 155 MUSIC AND MEMORY. BY NATHANIEL L. SAWYER. How oft some low and gentle strain, Rolling along the moon-lit plain, Which else to memory had been mute. When perished hopes and fortunes lower; MUSIC AND MEMORY. 157 I've stood upon a sea-girt isle, The heavens and earth were still, the while, Awoke my dreaming spirit there, The bugle hath a thrilling note, Of witching 'Auld Lang Syne ;’— There's music in the lone cascade, That having swept the upland glade, Now dashes down where years have made It minds us of life's opening spring, Joys early ripe thick-clustering- The steeple bell that fills the air, In Sabbath morning hour, 'Mid shadows of a greener year— The friends, whose lessening forms appear With undiminished power. The Switzer dreams of Father-land, By Babel's willowy stream Hang up their harps.-From palace dome, To cottage thatched, where-e'er we roam, Soft music turns the exile home Where passed his young life's dream. The stars of heaven that o'er us beam, Will open memory's cell And lead the wanderer back through years With youthful haunts and school-boy plays, |