Sunbeam-proof, I hang like a roof,

The mountains its columns be.

The triumphal arch, through which I march,
With hurricane, fire, and snow,

When the powers of the air are chained to my chair
Is the million-colored bow;

The sphere-fire above its soft colors wove,
While the moist earth was laughing below.

I am the daughter of earth and water,

And the nursling of the sky;

I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores; I change, but I cannot die.

For after the rain, when, with never a stain,

The pavilion of heaven is bare,

And the winds and sunbeams, with their convex gleams,

Build up the blue dome of air,

I silently laugh at my own cenotaph,
And out of the caverns of rain,
I rise and unbuild it again.

ge'ni i, spirits; supernatural beings.
san'guine, blood-red, ardent, hopeful.
rack, thin or broken clouds, drifting

across the sky.

ar'dors, deep feelings.

the woof, the cross threads in a web. The threads that extend lengthwise are called the warp.

pall, a cloak.

cen o taph', a memorial built to one who is buried elsewhere. The poet fancifully calls the blue dome of heaven the cloud's cenotaph, because the clear sky is a sign that the cloud is buried out of sight. The cloud is said to "unbuild" her cenotaph when she reappears, and conceals the sky.

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY (1792-1822) was an English poet famous for the melody and lyrical beauty of his verse.

FROZEN WORDS

JOSEPH ADDISON

THERE are no books which I more delight in than in travels, especially those that describe remote countries, and give the writer an opportunity of showing his parts without incurring any danger of being examined or contradicted. Among all the authors of this kind, our renowned countryman, Sir John Mandeville, has distinguished himself by the copiousness of his invention and the greatness of his genius. The second to Sir John I take to have been Ferdinand Mendez Pinto, a person of infinite adventure and unbounded imagination. One reads the voyages of these two great wits with as much. astonishment as the travels of Ulysses in Homer, or of the Red-Cross Knight in Spenser. All is enchanted ground, and fairyland.

I have got into my hands, by great chance, several manuscripts of these two eminent authors, which are filled with greater wonders than any of those they have communicated to the public; and indeed, were they not so well attested, they would appear altogether improbable. I am apt to think the ingenious authors did not publish them with the rest of their works, lest they should pass for fictions and fables: a caution not unnecessary, when the reputation of their veracity was not yet estab

lished in the world.

But as this reason has now no farther weight, I shall make the public a present of these curious pieces.

The present paper I intend to fill with an extract from Sir John's Journal, in which that learned and worthy knight gives an account of the freezing and thawing of several short speeches, which he made in the territories of Nova Zembla. I need not inform my reader, that the author of "Hudibras" alludes to this strange quality in that cold climate, when, speaking of abstracted notions clothed in a visible shape, he adds that apt simile,

"Like words congeal'd in northern air."

Not to keep my reader any longer in suspense, the relation, put into modern language, is as follows:"We were separated by a storm in the latitude of seventy-three, insomuch, that only the ship which I was in, with a Dutch and French vessel, got safe into a creek of Nova Zembla. We landed in order to refit our vessels and store ourselves with provisions. The crew of each vessel made a cabin of turf and wood, at some distance from the others, to fence themselves against the inclemencies of the weather, which was severe beyond imagination.

"We soon observed that in talking to one another we lost several of our words, and could not hear one another at above two yards' distance, and that, too, when we sat very near the fire. After

much perplexity, I found that our words froze in the air, before they could reach the ears of the persons to whom they were spoken.

"I was soon confirmed in this conjecture, when, upon the increase of the cold, the whole company grew dumb, or rather deaf: for every man was sensible, as we afterward found, that he spoke as well as ever; but the sounds no sooner took air than they were condensed and lost. It was a miserable spectacle to see us nodding and gaping at one another, every man talking, and no man heard. One might observe a seaman that could hail a ship at a league's distance, beckoning with his hand, straining his lungs, and tearing his throat; but all in vain.

We continued here three weeks in this dismal plight. At length, upon a turn of wind, the air about us began to thaw. Our cabin was immediately filled with a dry clattering sound, which I afterward found to be the crackling of consonants that broke above our heads, and were often mixed with a gentle hissing, which I imputed to the letter s, that occurs so frequently in the English tongue.

"I soon after felt a breeze of whispers rushing by my ear; for those, being of a soft and gentle substance, immediately liquefied in the warm wind that blew across our cabin. These were soon followed by syllables and short words, and at length by entire sentences, that melted sooner or later, as they were more or less congealed; so that we now heard