FLOWERS.

Is there not a soul beyond utterance, half nymph, half child, in these delicate petals which glow and breathe about the centres of deep color?-GEORGE ELIOT.

Sweet letters of the angel tongue,

I've loved ye long and well,

And never have failed in your fragrance sweet To find some secret spell,

A charm that has bound me with witching power, For mine is the old belief,

That, midst your sweets and midst your bloom, There's a soul in every leaf!

Illumined words from God's own hand,
How fast my pulses beat,

As each quick sense in rapture comes,
Your varied sweets to greet!

Alone and in silence, I love you best,

For mine is the old belief,

That, midst your sweets and midst your bloom, There's a soul in every leaf!

Ye are prophets sent to this heedless world,
The sceptic's heart to teach-

And 'tis well to read your lore aright,

And mark the creed ye preach.

I never could pass ye careless by,
For mine is the old belief,

That, midst your sweets and midst your bloom,
There's a soul in every leaf!

William Cox Bennett.

Bennett is the son of a watch-maker, and was born at Greenwich, England, in 1820. About 1845 he began to contribute poems to the English periodicals; but it was not till the publication of his volume of 1861 that he won a place in literature. His themes are of domestic joys and sorrows, and the beauties of nature; in his treatment of which he shows true feeling and a cultivated taste. He belongs to the school of Hunt and Keats, and occasionally reminds us of Herrick and Wither. Among his works are: "War Songs" (1855); “Baby May, and other Poems on Infants" (1861); "Songs for Sailors" (1873).

A MAY-DAY SONG.

Out from cities haste away:
This is earth's great holiday;
Who can labor while the hours
In with songs are bringing May,
Through the gaze of buds and flowers,
Through the golden pomp of day!

Haste, oh, haste;

"Tis sin to waste

In dull work so sweet a time; Joy and song

Of right belong

To the hours of Spring's sweet prime;
Golden beams and shadows brown,
Where the roofs of knotted trees
Fling a pleasant coolness down,
Footing it, the young May sees;
In their dance, the breezes now
Dimple every pond you pass;
Shades of leaves from every bough
Leaping, beat the dappled grass;
Birds are noisy-bees are humming
All because the May's a-coming;
All the tongues of nature shout,
Out from towns-from cities out;
Out from every busy street;
Out from every darkened court;
Through the field-paths, let your feet
Lingering go, in pleasant thought;

Ont through dells, the violet's haunting;
Out where golden rivers run;
Where the wallflower's gayly flaunting
In the livery of the sun;

Trip it through the shadows hiding
Down in hollow winding lanes;

Where through leaves the sunshine gliding,

Deep with gold the woodland stains;
Where in all her pomp of weeds,
Nature, asking but the thanks

Of our pleasure, richly pranks
Painted heaths and wayside banks,
Smooth-mown lawns and green deep meads;
Leave the noisy bustling town

For still glade and breezy down;
Haste away

To meet the May;

This is earth's great holiday.

A THOUGHT.

"God wills but ill," the doubter said"Lo, time doth evil only bear; Give me a sign His love to proveHis vaunted goodness to declare."

The poet paused by where a flower,
A simple daisy, starred the sod,
And answered, "Proof of love and power-
Behold-behold a smile of God."

Henry Howard Brownell.

AMERICAN.

In 1864 a volume of verse appeared in New York, in which a higher and bolder strain than we had been accustomed to seemed to be struck. It was modestly entitled "Lyrics of a Day; or, Newspaper Poetry by a Volunteer in the United States Service," and was from the pen of Henry Howard Brownell (1820-1872). It was not his first venture in verse. He had published a volume some fifteen years before, giving ample promise of something better. He was a native of East Hartford, Conn., and a nephew of the well-known Bishop Brownell of that State. Henry graduated at Trinity College, taught school for awhile, and when the Civil War broke out entered the naval service as a volunteer, and took part in several of the great sea-fights in the Southern waters. These he has described in two spirited poems of some length, entitled severally "The River Fight" and "The Bay Fight;" the latter first published in Harper's Magazine for December, 1864. They were the outcome of his own experiences-of what he had been personally engaged in-and bear the marks of that earnest sincerity and graphic power, which could only come from the union of imaginative force with actual recollection. "Some of the descriptions," he says, "might seem exaggerated, but better authorities than I am say they are not." Thomas Bailey Aldrich writes of him:

"Little did he crave

Men's praises. Modestly, with kindly mirth,

Not sad nor bitter, he accepted fate,

Drank deep of life, knew books and hearts of men,
Cities and camps, and War's immortal woe;
Yet bore through all (such virtue in him sate-

His spirit is not whiter now than then!)
A simple, loyal nature, pure as snow."

In the Preface to his Lyrics, Brownell says of them: "Penned, for the most part, on occasion, from day to day (and often literally currente calamo), they may well have admitted instances of diffuseness, contradiction, or repetition."

AT SEA: A FRAGMENT.

On a night like this, how many

Must sit by the hearth, like me,

Hearing the stormy weather,

And thinking of those at sea!

Of the hearts chilled through with watching,

The eyes that wearily blink,

Through the blinding gale and snow-drift,
For the Lights of Navesink!

Like a dream, 'tis all around me--
The gale with its steady boom,

And the crest of every roller

Torn into mist and spume;—

The shroud of snow and of spoon-drift Driving like mad a-lee

And the huge black hulk that wallows Deep in the trough of the sea!

The creak of cabin and bulk-headThe wail of rigging and mast,The roar of the shrouds, as she rises

From a deep lee-roll to the blast;The sullen throb of the engine, Whose iron heart never tires,-The swarthy faces that redden By the glare of his caverned fires!

The binnacle slowly swaying

And nursing the faithful steelAnd the grizzled old quartermaster, His horny hands on the wheel:I can see it-the little cabinPlainly as if I were thereThe chart on the old green table, The book, and the empty chair!

FROM "THE BAY FIGHT."

MOBILE BAY, AUGUST 5, 1864.

Three days through sapphire seas we sailed,
The steady Trade blew strong and free,
The Northern Light his banners paled,
The Ocean Stream our channels wet,

We rounded low Canaveral's lee,
And passed the isles of emerald set
In blue Babama's turquoise sea.

By reef and shoal obscurely mapped,
And hauntings of the gray sea-wolf,
The palmy Western Key lay lapped
In the warm washing of the Gulf.

But weary to the hearts of all

The burning glare, the barren reach

Of Santa Rosa's withered beach, And Pensacola's ruined wall.

And weary was the long patrol,

The thousand miles of shapeless strand,

From Brazos to San Blas that roll

Their drifting dunes of desert sand.

Yet, coastwise as we cruised or lay,
The land-breeze still at nightfall bore,
By beach and fortress-guarded bay,

Sweet odors from the enemy's shore,

Gen. Jackson, a native of Athens, Ga., was born in the year 1820. He was educated in Edgehill Seminary, Princeton, N. J., and at Yale College, where he graduated in 1839.

A lawyer by profession, he resides in Savannah. He distinguished himself in the Mexican War, and also in the war for Southern separation from the Union. He was United States Minister at Vienna from 1853 to 1858. He is the author of "Tallulah, and other Poems" (1858), full of evidences of genuine emotion, finding fit utterance in lyrical expression.

MY FATHER.

As die the embers on the hearth,

And o'er the floor the shadows fall, And creeps the chirping cricket forth, And ticks the death-watch in the wall,

I see a form in yonder chair,

That grows beneath the waning light; There are the wan, sad features-there

The pallid brow, and locks of white!

My father! when they laid thee down,
And heaped the clay upon thy breast,
And left thee sleeping all alone

Upon thy narrow couch of rest,
I know not why I could not weep,
The soothing drops refused to roll;

And oh that grief is wild and deep

Which settles tearless on the soul!

But when I saw thy vacant chair,
Thine idle hat upon the wall,
Thy book-the pencilled passage where
Thine eye had rested last of all—
The tree beneath whose friendly shade
Thy trembling feet had wandered forth-
The very prints those feet had made,
When last they feebly trod the earth;

And thought, while countless ages fled, Thy vacant seat would vacant stand; Unworn thy hat, thy book unread,

Effaced thy footsteps from the sand; And widowed in this cheerless world

The heart that gave its love to theeTorn, like the vine whose tendrils curled More closely round the falling tree!—

Then, father, then for her and thee

Gushed madly forth the scorching tears; And oft, and long, and bitterly,

Those tears have gushed in later years; For as the world grows cold around, And things their real hue take on, 'Tis sad to learn that love is found With thee, above the stars, alone!

THE LIVE-OAK.

With his gnarled old arms, and his iron form,
Majestic in the wood,

From age to age, in the sun and storm,
The live-oak long hath stood;
With his stately air, that grave old tree,
He stands like a hooded monk,
With the gray moss waving solemnly
From his shaggy limbs and trunk.

And the generations come and go,

And still he stands upright, And he sternly looks on the wood below, As conscious of his might.

But a mourner sad is the hoary tree,

A mourner sad and lone,
And is clothed in funeral drapery

For the long since dead and gone.

For the Indian hunter beneath his shade Has rested from the chase;