A beauty ripe as harvest, Whose skin is whiter than a swan all over, Nor has she A soft lip, Would tempt you to eternity of kissing, But we may cease to wonder at their union, when we reflect on the couples we see every day-so totally dissimilar in taste and external appearance, that we may almost believe with St. Pierre, that we love only those who form a contrast to ourselves. "Love," he says, "results only from contrasts, and the greater they are, the more powerful is its energy. I could easily demonstrate this by the evidence of a thousand historical facts. It is well known, for example, to what mad excess of passion that tall and clumsy soldier, Mark Antony, loved and was beloved by Cleopatra; not the person whom our sculptors represent of a tall, portly, Sabine figure, but the Cleopatra whom historians paint as little, lively and sprightly, carried in disguise about the streets of Alexandria, in the night time, packed up in a parcel of goods on the shoulders of Apollodorus, to keep an assignation with Julius Cæsar." TO NIAGARA. I've stood, Niagara! on thy Table Rock, And gazed upon thy falls, in speechless wonder; I've heard the deep reverberating shock Where plunge thy waters with the voice of thunder; Nor time, nor distance, can thy scenes efface- And watch thy billows in their madd'ning race Thou com'st upon me ever,-day and night;- In their strong eddies, ev'ry thing devouring, They lift me, mentally, to heaven upsoaring, Type of our world! thus rush we on forever But o'er the dark gulf the Lord hath spann'd his bow. My footsteps track again, that lovely spot, What were those ills o'er which he loved to brood? What disapointments turn'd his heart to stone? Or what the cries of conscience, thou alone couldst drown? I ramble yet on that romantic path Trod by a countless multitude before; From dizzying height, look down upon thy wrath, Then wand'ring on along thy rock-bound shore, I see, far off, that solitary land, That speck of earth, round which you madly roar, Whereon the foot of man shall never stand, Stayed by the terrors of thy dread command. There 'mid the breakers, lies the old Detroit! While the wild waves were howling round her frame I'll fated ship! once dyed with human blood, To view thy horseshoe, in the sun's soft light ; For then, like "one entire chrysolite" One half thy torrent seem'd-the rest pure white Like piles of fleecy clouds at close of day, But rushing down from that stupendous height With rainbows, gilding the rebounding sprayOh words!-ye are two weak-away-away. LINES WRITTEN AT THE GRAVE OF MISS A. F. B. I come lost Anne! from thy father's hall, When Anne would spring at the sprightly call She was not there and her playful air I clasped her not to my beating heart- Oh God! have they left thee here, sweet child! Deep laid in the silent tomb, Where willows that weep and hawthorns wild But add to the reigning gloom? What! thou left here in the dark, dark night What Anne! whose bed a mother once made Sweet Anne! on a father's breast oft laid She whose eye was the azure heaven Her skin the snow in its whiteness driven Transition abhorr'd!-oh fearful thought?- Sweet babes! and have ye no parent now Oh! yes, the book of the holy one The body sleeps till the trumpet calls- CASTLES IN THE AIR. A pleasing land of drowsyhead it was Of dreams that wave before the half-shut eye, And of gay castles in the clouds that pass, Forever flushing round a summer sky.-Thomson. In yonder clouds by sunset gilt, I, mimic castles see; How like the castles that were built In air-by me, by me. For soon they fade and pass away, On bank reclin'd, with half shut eyes, And by my magic wand would rise, What wanted I with those bright domes? A kg I reign'd in fairy land, Who struck the sceptre from my hand She broke the magic wand I own'd; And ever since, there sits enthron'd Rich sunsets! now, it wakes a pang- Your gorgeousness but serves to hang |