Echoes of Life Or, Beautiful Gems of Poetry and Song: A Choice Collection of ...

Not a Mistake.

UR neighbor over the way passes for a woman who has failed in her career, because she is an old maid. People wag solemn heads of pity, and say that she made so great a mistake in not marrying the brilliant and famous man who was for long years her suitor. It is clear that no orange flower will ever bloom for her. The young people think of her solitary hours of bitter regret, and please their imaginations with fancying her hard struggle with the conviction that she has lost all that makes life beautiful. But this old maid who is thus pitied for a secret sorrow, is a woman whose nature is a tropic, in which the sun shines, the birds sing, the flowers bloom forever. There are no regrets, no doubts and half wishes, but -G. W. Curtis.

a calm sweetness, a transparent peace.

Niagara.

The morning stars,
When first they sang o'er young creation's birth;
Heard thy deep anthem-and those wrecking fires
That wait the archangel's signal to dissolve
The solid earth, shall find Jehovah's name
Graven, as with a thousand diamond spears,
On thine unfathomed page.-Each leafy bough
That lifts itself within thy proud domain,
Doth gather greenness from thy living spray,
And tremble at the baptism.-Lo! yon birds
Do venture boldly near, bathing their wings

Amid thy foam and mist,-'Tis meet for them
To touch thy garment's hem-or lightly stir
The snowy leafiets of thy vapor wreath -
Who sport unharmed upon the fleecy cloud,
And listen at the echoing gate of heaven,
Without reproof.--But as for us--it seems
Scarce lawful with our broken tones to speak
Familiarly of thee.-Methinks, to tint
Thy glorious features with our pencil's point,
Or woothee to a tablet of a song,
Were profanation.

Thou dost make the soul

A wondering witness of thy majesty;
And while it rushes with delirious joy
To tread thy vestibule, dost chain its step,
And check its rapture with the humbling view
Of its own nothingness, bidding it stand
In the dread presence of the Invisible,
As if to answer to its God through thee.

-Lady H. Sigourney.

'M SITTING alone by the fire,
Dress'd just as I came from the dance

In a robe even you would admire-
It cost a cool thousand in France;

Her Letter.

I'm be-diamonded out of all reason,
My hair is done up in a cue :
In short, sir, "the belle of the season"
Is wasting an hour on you.

A dozen engagements I've broken; I left in the midst of a set;

Likewise a proposal, half spoken,

That waits-on the stairs-for me yet. They say he'll be rich-when he grows upAnd then he adores me indeed; And you, sir, are turning your nose up, Three thousand miles off, as you read.

"And how do I like my position?"

"And what do I think of New York?" "And now, in my higher ambition,

With whom do I waltz, flirt, or talk?" "And isn't it nice to have riches,

And diamonds and silks, and all that?" "And isn't it a change to the ditches

And tunnels of Poverty Flat?"

Well yes-if you saw us out driving

Each day in the park, four-in-hand—
If you saw poor dear mamma contriving
To look supernaturally grand-

If you saw papa's picture, as taken
By Brady, and tinted at that,-
You'd never suspect he sold bacon
And flour at Poverty Flat.

And yet just this moment, when sitting
In the glare of the grand chandelier-
In the bustle and glitter befitting

The finest soiree of the year," In the midst of a gaze de Chambery, And the hum of the smallest of talkSomehow Joe, I thought of the "Ferry," And the dance we had on "The Fork ;"

Of Harrison's barn, with its muster

Of flags festoon'd over the wall;

Of the candles that shed their soft luster And tallow on head-dress and shawl;

Of the steps that we took to one fiddle;
Of the dress of my queer vis-a-vis,
And how I once went down the middle
With the man that shot Sandy McGee;

Of the moon that was quietly sleeping

On the hill, when the time came to go;
Of the few baby peaks that were peeping
From under their bedclothes of snow;
Of that ride-that to me was the rarest ;
Of the something you said at the gate;
Ah, Joe, then I wasn't an heiress

To "the best paying lead in the State."
Well, well, it's all past; yet it's funny
To think, as I stood in the glare
Of fashion and beauty and money,

That I should be thinking right there,
Of some one who breasted high water,

And swam the North Fork and all that, Just to dance with old Follansbee's daughter, The Lily of Poverty Flat.

But goodness! what nonsense I'm writing! (Mamma says my taste still is low), Instead of my triumphs reciting,

I'm spooning on Joseph-heigh-ho!
And I'm to be finished by travel—

Whatever's the meaning of that-
Oh, why did papa strike pay gravel
In drifting on Poverty Flat?
Good-night-here's the end of my paper;
Good-night-if the longitude please-
For maybe, while wasting my taper,

Your sun's climbing over the trees.
But know, if you haven't got riches,

And are poor, dearest Joe, and all that, That my heart's somewhere there in the ditches, And you've struck it-on Poverty Flat.

-Bret Harte.

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