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Of the clouds about him rolled,
Scattering every where
The showery rain,

As the farmer scatters his grain.

He can behold

Things manifold,

That have not yet been wholly told;
Have not been wholly sung nor said;
For his thought, which never stops,
Follows the water drops

Down to the graves of the dead,

Down through chasms and gulfs profound,
To the dreary fountain-head

Of lakes and rivers under ground,

And sees them, when the rain is done,
On the bridge of colors seven,

Climbing up once more to heaven,
Opposite the setting sun.

Thus the seer

With vision clear,

Sees forms appear and disappear,

In the perpetual round of strange

Mysterious change

From birth to death, from death to birth;

From earth to heaven, from heaven to earth;

Till glimpses more sublime

Of things unseen before,

Unto his wondering eyes reveal

The universe, as an immeasurable wheel

Turning for evermore,

In the rapid and rushing river of Time.

H. W. LONGFELLOW

LESSON CCV.

AUTUMN NOON.

ALL was so still that I could almost count
The tinklings of the falling leaves. At times,
Perchance, a nut was heard to drop, and then-
As if it had slipped from him as he struck
The meat-a squirrel's short and fretful bark.

Anon, a troop of noisy, roving jays,

Whisking their gaudy topknots, would surprise
And seize upon the top of some tall tree,
Shrieking, as if on purpose to enjoy

The consternation of the noontide stillness.
Roused by the din, the squirrel from his hole,
Like some grave justice bent to keep the peace,
Thrust his gray pate, much wondering what it meant.
And squatted near me on a stone, there basked
A fly of larger breed and o'ergrown bulk,
In the warm sunshine, vain of his green coat
Of variable velvet, laced with gold,
That, ever and anon, would whisk about,
Vexing the stillness with his buzzing din,
As human fopling will do with his talk:
And o'er the mossy post of an old fence,
Lured from its crannies by the warmth, was spied
A swarm of gay motes waltzing to a tune
Of their own humming: quiet sounds, that serve
More deeply to impress us with a sense
Of silent loneliness and trackless ways.

GEO. HILL.

LESSON CCVI.

A WINTER SCENE.

PERHAPS there is nothing so peculiar in American meteorology, as the phenomenon which I alone, probably, of all the imprisoned inhabitants of Skaneateles, attributed to a kind and "special Providence." Summer had come back, like Napoleon from Elba, and astonished usurping Winter in the plenitude of apparent possession and security. No cloud foreboded the change, as no alarm preceded the apparition of the "child of destiny." We awoke on a February morning, with the snow lying chin-deep on the earth, and it was June! The air was soft and warm: the sky was clear and of the milky-cerulean of chrysoprase: the south wind stole back suddenly from the tropics, and found his flowery mistress asleep, and insensible to his kisses, beneath her snowy mantle. The sunset warmed back from its wintry purple to the golden tints of heat; the stars burnt with a less vitreous sparkle; the meteors

slid once more lambently down the sky; and the house-dove sat on the eaves, washing her breast in the snow water, and thinking, like a neglected wife at a capricious return of her truant's tenderness, that the sunshine would last forever.

The air was now full of music. The water trickled under the snow; and, as you looked around and saw no change or motion in the white carpet of the earth, it seemed as if a myriad of small bells were ringing under ground: fairies, perhaps, started in mid-revel with the false alarm of summer, and hurrying about with their silver anklets, to wake up the slumbering flowers. The mountain torrents were loosed, and rushed down upon the valleys like the children of the mist; and the hoarse war-cry, swelling and falling upon the wind, maintained its perpetual undertone like an accompaniment of bassoons; and, occasionally, in a sudden lull of the breeze, you would hear the click of the undermined snow-drifts dropping upon the earth, as if the choristers of Spring were beating time to the reviving anthem of nature.

The snow sunk, perhaps, a foot in a day; but it was only perceptible to the eye where you could measure its wet mark against a tree from which it had fallen away, or by the rock from which the dissolving bank shrunk and separated, as if rocks and snow were as heartless as ourselves, and threw off their friends, too, in their extremity. The low-lying lake, meantime, surrounded by melting mountains, received the abandoned waters upon its frozen bosom, and spreading them into a placid and shallow lagoon, separated by a crystal plane from its own lower depths, gave them the repose denied in the more elevated sphere in which lay their birthright. And thus (oh, how full is nature of these gentle moralities!) and thus, sometimes do the lowly, whose bosom, like the frozen lake, is at first cold and unsympathetic to the rich and noble, still receive them in adversity; and, when neighborhood and de pendence have convinced them that they are made of the same common element, as the lake melts its dividing and icy plane, and mingles the strange waters with its own, do they dissolve the unnatural barrier of prejudice, and take the humbled wanderer to their bosom !

It was a night of extraordinary beauty. The full moon was high in the heavens at midnight; and there had been a slight

shower soon after sunset, which, with the clearing up wind, had frozen thinly into a most fragile rime, and glazed with transparent crystal every thing open to the sky. The distant forest looked serried with metallic trees, dazzling, and unspeakably gorgeous; and, as the night wind stirred through them, and shook their crystal points in the moonlight, the aggregated stars of heaven springing from their Maker's hand to the spheres of their destiny, or the march of the host of the archangel Michael with their irradiate spear-points glittering in the air, or the diamond beds of central earth thrust up to the sun in some throe of the universe, would, each and all, have been well bodied forth by such similitude. N. P. WILLIS.

LESSON CCVII.

WINTER.

I DEEM thee not unlovely; though thou comest
With a stern visage. To the tuneless bird,
The tender floweret, the rejoicing stream,
But unto man,

Thy discipline is harsh.

Methinks thou hast a kindlier ministry;
Thy lengthened eve is full of fireside joys,
And deathless linking of warm heart to heart;
So that the hoarse stream passes by unheard.
Earth, robed in white, a peaceful Sabbath holds,
And keepeth silence at her Maker's feet.

Man should rest

Thus from his feverish passions, and exhale
The unbreathed carbon of his festering thought,
And drink in holy health. As the tossed bark
Doth seek the shelter of some quiet bay,
To trim its shattered cordage, and repair
Its riven sails; so should the toil-worn mind
Refit for time's rough voyage. Man, perchance,
Soured by the world's rough commerce, or impaired
By the wild wanderings of his summer's way,

Turns like a truant scholar to his home,
And yields his nature to sweet influences
That purify and save.

The ruddy boy

Comes with his shouting school-mates from their sport,
And throwing off his skates, with boisterous glee,
Hastes to his mother's side. Her tender hand
Doth shake the snow-flakes from his glossy curls,
And draw him nearer, and, with gentle voice,
Asks of his lessons, while her lifted heart
Solicits silently the Sire of Heaven

To bless the lad.

The timid infant learns

Better to love its father, longer sits

Upon his knee, and, with a velvet lip,

Prints on his brow such language, as the tongue
Hath never spoken.

Come thou to life's feast,
With dove-eyed meekness and bland charity,
And thou shalt find even winter's rugged blast
The minstrel teacher of the well-tuned soul,
And, when the last drop of its cup is drained,
Arising with a song of praise, go up
To the eternal banquet.

MRS. SIGOURNEY.

LESSON CCVIII.

IT SNOWS.

"IT snows!" cries the School-boy, “Hurrah!" and his shout

Is ringing through parlor and hall,

While swift as the wing of a swallow, he's out,
And his play-mates have answered his call;
It makes the heart leap but to witness their joy;
Proud wealth has no pleasure, I trow,

Like the rapture that throbs in the pulse of the boy,
As he gathers his treasures of snow;

Then lay not the trappings of gold on thine heirs,
While health, and the riches of nature, are theirs.

"It snows!" sighs the Imbecile, "Ah!" and his breath
Comes heavy, as clogged with a weight;

While, from the pale aspect of nature in death
He turns to the blaze of his grate;

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