THE GLOVE AND THE LIONS.-L. HUNT.

KING Francis was a hearty king, and lov'd a royal sport,
And one day, as his lions fought, sat looking on the court;
The nobles fill'd the benches round, the ladies by their side,
And 'mongst them sat the Count de Lorge, with one for whom
he sigh'd:

And truly 'twas a gallant thing to see that crowning show, Valor and love, and a king above, and the royal hearts below.

Ramp'd and roar'd the lions, with horrid laughing jaws; They bit, they glared, gave blows like beams, a wind went with their paws:

With wallowing might and stifled roar, they roll'd on one another, Till all the pit, with sand and mane, was in a thund'rous smother; The bloody foam above the bars came whizzing thro' the air; Said Francis then, "Faith! gentlemen, we're better here than there!"

De Lorge's love o'er-heard the king, a beauteous lively dame, With smiling lips and sharp bright eyes, which always seem'd the same;

She thought,—The Count my lover is brave as brave can be—
He surely would do wondrous things to show his love of me:
King, ladies, lovers, all look on; the occasion is divine!
I'll drop my glove, to prove his love; great glory will be mine!

She dropp'd her glove, to prove his love, then look'd at him and smil'd;

He bow'd, and in a moment leap'd among the lions wild.

The leap was quick, return was quick-he has regain'd the place,

Then threw the glove-but not with love-right in the lady's face. "By heaven!" cried Francis, "rightly done!" and he rose from where he sat:

"No love," quoth he, "but vanity, sets love a task like that!"

PATIENCE AND HOPE.-BULWER.

UPON a barren steep,
Above a stormy deep,

I saw an angel watching the wild sea;
Earth was that barren steep,
Time was that stormy deep,
And the opposing shore-Eternity!

66 Why dost thou watch the wave?
Thy feet the waters lave,

The tide engulphs thee, if thou do remain.”
"Unscath'd I watch the wave ;—
Time not the Angel's grave,—
I wait until the waters ebb again."

Hush'd on the Angel's breast
I saw an infant rest

Smiling on the gloomy hell below.

"What is the infant prest,
O angel, to thy breast?"

"The child God gave me in the long ago!

"Mine all upon the earth

-The angel's angel birth,

Smiling all terror from the howling wild !"—

Never may I forget

The dream that haunts me yet

Of PATIENCE nursing HOPE-the Angel and the Child!

ABOU BEN ADHEM AND THE ANGEL.-LEIGH HUNT.

ABOU BEN ADHEM (may his tribe increase!)
Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace,
And saw, within the moonlight in his room,
Making it rich, and like a lily bloom,

An angel writing in a book of gold.
Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold;
And to the presence in the room he said-
"What writest thou?"-The vision rais'd its head,
And with a look made of all sweet accord,
Answer'd, "The names of those who love the Lord!”
"And is mine one ?" said Abou. 66
Nay, not so ;"
Replied the angel. Abou spoke more low,
But cheerly still; and said, "I pray thee then
Write me as one that loves my fellow men."
-The angel wrote and vanish'd. The next night
It came again, with a great wakening light,
And show'd the names whom love of God had bless'd;
And lo! Ben Adhem's name led all the rest.

دد.

COXCOMBRY IN CONVERSATION.-COWPER.

THE emphatic speaker dearly loves to oppose,
In contact inconvenient, nose to nose,—
As if the gnomon on his neighbor's phiz,
Touch'd with a magnet, had attracted his.
His whisper'd theme, dilated and at large,
Proves, after all, a wind-gun's airy charge,—
An extract of his diary,- —no more,—

A tasteless journal of the day before.
He walk'd abroad, o'ertaken in the rain,
Call'd on a friend, drank tea, stepp'd home agali,
Resumed his purpose, had a world of talk
With one he stumbled on, and lost his walk.
I interrupt him with a sudden bow,—
"Adieu, dear sir! lest you should lose it now.

I cannot talk with civet in the room,A fine puss gentleman, that's all perfume : His odoriferous attempts to please,

Perhaps might prosper with a swarm of bees;
But we that make no honey, though we sting,-
Poets, are sometimes apt to maul the thing.
A graver coxcomb we may sometimes see,
Quite as absurd, though not so light as he;
A shallow brain behind a serious mask,
An oracle within an empty cask,

The solemn fop;-significant and budge,
A fool with judges, amongst fools a judge;
He says but little, and that little said
Owes all its weight, like loaded dice, to lead.
His wit invites you, by his looks, to come,
But, when you knock, it never is at home:
'Tis like a parcel sent you by the stage,—
Some handsome present, as your hopes presage;
'Tis heavy, bulky, and bids fair to prove
An absent friend's fidelity and love,—

But, when unpack'd, your disappointment groans,
To find it stuff'd with brickbats, earth and stones.

YESTERDAY.-TUPPER.

SPEAK, poor almsman, of to-day, whom none can assure of a to-morrow,

Tell out, with honest heart, the price thou settest upon yesterday.

Is it then a writing in the dust, traced by the finger of Idleness
Which Industry, clean housewife, can wipe away for ever?
Is it as a furrow on the sand, fashioned by the toying waves,
Quickly to be trampled then again by the feet of the returning
tide?

Is it as the pale blue smoke, rising from a peasant's hovel,
That melted into limpid air, before it topp'd the larches ?

Is it but a vision, unstable and unreal, which wise men soon

forget?

Is it as the stranger of the night,-gone, we heed not whither?
Alas! thou foolish heart, whose thoughts are but as these,
Alas! deluded soul, that hopeth thus of yesterday!

For behold-those temples of Ellora, the Brahmin's rock-built shrine,

Behold-yon granite cliff, which the North Sea buffeteth in vain,
That stout old forest fir-these waking verities of life,
This guest abiding ever, not strange, nor a servant, but a son,—
Such, O man, are vanity and dreams, transient as a rainbow
on the cloud,

Weigh'd against that solid fact, thine ill-remember'd yesterday.

Come, let me show thee an ensample, where Nature shall in

struct us.

Luxuriantly the arguments for Truth spring native in her gardens;

Seek we yonder woodman of the plain; he is measuring his axe to the elm,

And anon the sturdy strokes ring upon the wintry air;

Eagerly the village school-boys cluster on the tighten❜d rope, Shouting, and bending to the pull, or lifted from the ground elastic,

The huge tree boweth like Sisera boweth to its foes with faintness,

Its sinews crack,-deep groans declare the reeling anguish of
Goliath ;

The wedge is driven home,—and the saw is at its heart, and
lo! with solemn slowness,

The shuddering monarch riseth from his throne,―toppled with a crash, and is fallen!

Now, shall the mangled stump teach proud man a lesson;
Now, can we from that elm-tree's sap distil the wine of Truth.
Heed ye those hundred rings, concentric from the core,
Eddying in various waves to the red bark's shore-like rim?
These be the gatherings of yesterdays, present all to-day,

L