A higher hand must make her mild,
If ail be not in vain; and guide
Her footsteps, moving side by side
With Wisdom, like the younger child :

For she is earthly of the mind,
But Wisdom heavenly of the soul :
O friend, who camest to thy goal
So early, leaving me behind,

I would the great world grew like thee,
Who grewest not alone in power
And knowledge, but by year and hour
In reverence and in charity.

Now fades the last long streak of snow, Now bourgeons every maze of quick About the flowering squares, and thick By ashen roots the violets blow.

Now rings the woodland loud and long, The distance takes a lovelier hue, And drowned in yonder living blue The lark becomes a sightless song.

Now dance the lights on lawn and lea,
The flocks are whiter down the vale,
And milkier every milky sail
On winding stream or distant sea;

Where now the seamew pipes, or dives
In yonder gleaming green, and fly
The happy birds, that change their sky
To build and brood; that live their lives

From land to land; and in my breast
Spring wakens too; and my regret
Becomes an April violet,

And buds and blossoms like the rest.

Contemplate all this work of Time,
The giant, laboring in his youth;
Nor dream of human love and truth
As dying Nature's earth and lime;

But trust that those we call the dead
Are breathers of an ampler day
For ever nobler ends. They say
The solid earth whereon we tread

In tracts of fluent heat began,

And grew to seeming random forms, The seeming prey of cyclic storms, Till at the last arose the man—

Who throve and branched from clime to clime, The herald of a higher race,

And of himself in higher place,

If so he types this work of time

Within himself, from more to more;

And crowned with attributes of woe

Like glories, move his course, and show That life is not an idle ore,

But iron dug from central gloom,

And heated hot with burning fears, And dipped in baths of hissing tears, And battered with the shocks of doom

To shape and use. Arise and fly

The reeling Faun, the sensual feast!
Move upward, working out the beast,
And let the ape and tiger die!

ALFRED TENNYSON.

WITH

The Gray Forest Eagle.

7ITH storm-daring pinion and sun-gazing eye,
The Gray Forest Eagle is king of the sky!

Oh, little he loves the green valley of flowers,

Where sunshine and song cheer the bright summer hours:
For he hears in those haunts only music, and sees
But rippling of waters and waving of trees;
There the red-robin warbles, the honey-bee hums,
The timid quail whistles, the shy partridge drums;
And if those proud pinions, perchance, sweep along,
There's a shrouding of plumage, a hushing of song ;
The sunlight falls stilly on leaf and on moss,

And there's nought but his shadow black gliding across;
But the dark, gloomy gorge, where down plunges the

Of the fierce, rocky torrent, he claims as his home :
There he blends his keen shriek with the roar of the flood,
And the many-voiced sounds of the blast-smitten wood;
From the fir's lofty summit, where morn hangs its wreath,
He views the mad waters white writhing beneath.
On a limb of that moss-bearded hemlock, far down,
With bright azure mantle, and gay mottled crown,
The kingfisher watches, while o'er him his foe,
The hawk saileth circling, each moment more low;
Now poised are those pinions and pointed that beak,
His dread swoop is ready, when-hark! with a shriek,
His eyeballs red-blazing, high bristling his crest,

His snake-like neck arched, talons drawn to his breast,—

With the rush of the wind-gust, the glancing of light,
The Gray Forest Eagle shoots down in his flight!
One blow of those talons, one plunge of that neck,
The hawk hangs all lifeless, a blood-dripping wreck;
And as dives the free kingfisher, dart-like on high,
With his prey soars the Eagle, and melts in the sky.
A fitful red glaring, a low rumbling jar,

Proclaim the storm Demon yet raging afar.

The black cloud strides upward, the lightning more red,
And the roll of the thunder more deep and more dread ;
A thick pall of darkness is cast o'er the air,
And on bounds the blast with a howl from its lair.

The lightning darts zigzag and forked through the gloom,
And the bolt launches o'er with crash, rattle, and boom;
The Gray Forest Eagle, where, where has he sped ?
Does he shrink to his eyrie, and shiver with dread ?
Does the glare blind his eye? Has the terrible blast
On the wing of the Sky-King a fear-fetter cast?
No, no, the brave Eagle! he thinks not of fright;
The wrath of the tempest but rouses delight;
To the flash of the lightning his eye casts a gleam,
To the shriek of the wild blast he echoes his scream,
And with front like a warrior that speeds to the fray,
And a clapping of pinions, he's up and away!
Away, O away, soars the fearless and free!
What recks he the sky's strife?—its monarch is he !
The lightning darts round him—undaunted his sight;
The blast sweeps against him—unwavered his flight:
High upward, still upward, he wheels, till his form
Is lost in the black, scowling gloom of the storm.
The tempest sweeps o'er with its terrible train,
And the splendor of sunshine is glowing again ;
Again smiles the soft, tender blue of the sky,
Waked bird-voices warble, fanned leaf-voices sigh;
On the green grass dance shadows, streams sparkle and run,
The breeze bears the odor its flower-kiss has won,

And full on the form of the Demon in flight
The rainbow's magnificence gladdens the sight!

The Gray Forest Eagle! oh, where is he now,

While the sky wears the smile of its God on its brow?
There's a dark, floating spot by yon cloud's pearly wreath,
With the speed of the arrow 'tis shooting beneath;
Down, nearer and nearer it draws to the gaze,
Now over the rainbow, now blent with its blaze:
To a shape it expands, still it plunges through air,
A proud crest, a fierce eye, a broad pinion are there!
'Tis the Eagle-the Gray Forest Eagle-once more
He sweeps to his eyrie; his journey is o'er!

Time whirls round his circle, his years roll away,
But the Gray Forest Eagle minds little his sway;
The child spurns its buds for Youth's thorn-hidden bloom,
Seeks Manhood's bright phantoms, finds Age and a tomb;
But the Eagle's eye dims not, his wing is unbowed,
Still drinks he the sunshine, still scales he the cloud!

The green tiny pine-shrub points up from the moss,
The wren's foot would cover it, tripping across;

The beech-nut down dropping, would crush it beneath,
But 'tis warmed with heaven's sunshine, and fanned by its
breath;

The seasons fly past it, its head is on high,

Its thick branches challenge each mood of the sky;
On its rough bark the moss a green mantle creates,
And the deer from his antlers the velvet-down grates.
Time withers its roots, it lifts sadly in air

A trunk dry and wasted, a top jagged and bare,
Till it rocks in the breeze and then crashes to earth,

Its brown fragments strewing the place of its birth.

The Eagle has seen it up-struggling to sight,

He has seen it defying the storm in its might,

Then prostrate, soil-blended, with plants sprouting o'er ;—But the Gray Forest Eagle is still as of yore.

His flaming eye dims not, his wing is unbowed,

Still drinks he the sunshine, still scales he the cloud!