To him they are globules, and lost in his glare:
He's a sultan, and they are the pearls in his hair.
First Mercury travels, so near the sun's beam,
As would turn our earth's metals and mountains to
steam,
Yet he well likes his orbit, and round it he plays,
A few hours deducted, in eighty-eight days.
Then Venus, bright lamp of the evening and morn,
Lengthens twilight on earth by her dazzling horn.
How lucid her substance! how clear are her skies!
She sparkles a diamond as onward she hies!
The third place is held by this ocean-girt Earth,
The cloud-cover'd, wind-shaken place of our birth:
With its valleys of verdure, its corn-fields, and
downs,
Its cities of uproar, its hamlets and towns,
Its volcanos flinging forth fiery flakes,
Its snow-crested mountains, and glassy smooth lakes.
![[graphic]](https://books.google.cl/books/content?id=c4ubK21PVw4C&output=html_text&pg=PA297&img=1&zoom=3&hl=en&q=editions:ISBN033293179X&cds=1&sig=ACfU3U05w65q-AzVE6HwNN-EXq8VQkKZlw&edge=0&edge=stretch&ci=120,321,687,915)
This earth, our abode, spins about on its poles;
And all would be dizzy to see how it rolls.
The moon, too, her circuit keeps constant with ours,
And, in heaving our ocean, exhibits her powers.
A globe less than earth, and of murky red face,
Mars revolves further off, and holds the fourth place;
Like earth, he has atmosphere, land too, and seas,
And there's snow at his poles when the wintry winds
freeze.
All near the ecliptic, and hard to be traced,
Twenty-six little planets we then find are placed;
Some large one, it may be, in ages gone by,
May have burst into fragments, that roll through the
sky
Far remote from the sun, and yet greater than all,
Moves Jupiter vast, with his cloud-banded ball.
Eighty-seven thousand miles he measures across,
And he whirls on his poles with incredible force;
For in less than ten hours he sees night and day,-
The stars of his sky, how they hurry away!
Yet his orbit employs him a nearly twelve years,
And satellites four hold the course that he steers.
Next Saturn, more distant, revolves with his ring--
Or crown, shall we call it, and he a grave king?
And beside this broad belt of silvery light,
Eight moons with pale lustre illumine his night:
Thirty years little less-of our times are expended,
Before a course round his wide orbit is ended.
Uranus comes next, and 'twas fancied that he
Was the last, with his moons, perhaps six,-perhaps
three;
For his orbit employs him, so vast is its span,
All the years that are granted, at longest, to man.
But since-O the wonders that science has done!-
We have found a new planet, so far from the sun,
That but for our glasses and long calculation,
We surely should not have discover'd his station :
His name we call Neptune, and distant so far,
The sun can appear little more than a star.
But what shall we say of the comet that shows
Its ominous tail that with pallid light glows?
Whisp of vapour! that stretches from orbit to orbit,
And whirls round the sun, till the sun shall absorb it.
But solid or cloudy, these comets they move all
In orbits elliptic, or very long oval.
And millions on millions of these errant masses
Flit about in the sky, though unseen by our glasses.
Such, then, is the system in which we revolve,
But who to pass onward through space shall resolve?
Or what wing of fancy can soar to the height
Where stars keep their stations-a phalanx of light?
Nor reason, nor fancy, that field can explore;
We pause in mute wonder, and GOD we adore.
-JANE and ANN TAYLOR.
COME, think of the wonderful things there must be
Conceal'd in the caverns and cells of the sea;
For there must be jewels and diamonds bright,
Lost ages ago, hidden out of our sight.
And ships too, entire, that have founder'd in storms,
Now bristle the bottom with skeleton forms;
Deep tides murmur through them, and weeds as
they pass'd
Were caught and hang clotted in wreaths on the mast.
And then the rich cargoes-wealth not to be told,
The silks and the spices, the silver and gold,
And guns that dealt death at the warrior's command,
Are silently tombing themselves in the sand.
But unburied whiten the bones of the crew:
Ah! would that the widow and orphan but knew
The place where their dirge by deep billows is sigh'd,
The place where unheeded, unholpen, they died.
There, millions on millions of glittering shells,
The nautilus there, with its pearl-coated cells,
And the scale-cover'd monsters that sleep or that
roam,
The lords without rival of that boundless home.
The microscope mason his toil there pursues,
Coral insect! unseen are his beautiful hues;
Yet in process of time, though so puny and frail,
O'er the might of the ocean his structures prevail:
On the surface at last a flat islet is spied,
And shingle and sand are heap'd up by the tide;
Seeds brought by the breezes take root, and erewhile
Man makes him a home on the insect-built pile!
The deep then, what is it? A wonderful hoard, Where all precious things are in multitudes stored; The workshop of nature, where islands are made, And in silence foundations of continents laid! -JANE and ANN TAYLOR.
ONE ugly trick has often spoil'd
The sweetest and the best;
Matilda, though a pleasant child,
One ugly trick possess'd,
Which, like a cloud before the skies, Hid all her better qualities.
Sometimes she'd lift the tea-pot lid,
To peep at what was in it;
Or tilt the kettle, if you did
But turn your back a minute.
In vain you told her not to touch, Her trick of meddling grew so much.
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