can number the clouds in wisdom? or who can stay the bottles of heaven, when the dust groweth into hardness, and the clods cleave fast together? Wilt thou hunt the prey for the lion, or fill the appetite of the young lions, when they couch in their dens, and abide in the covert to lie in wait? Who provided for the raven his food ? when his young ones cry unto God, they wander for lack of meat. THE LAST MAN-CAMPBELL. All worldly shapes shall melt in gloom, The sun himself must die, Its immortality! Adown the gulf of time! As Adam saw her prime! The sun's eye had a sickly glare, The earth with age was wan, Around that lonely man! In plague and famine some! To shores where all were dumb ! Yet, prophet-like, that lone one stood, With dauntless words and high, As if a storm passed by, 'T is mercy bids thee go; That shall no longer flow What though beneath thee man put forth His pomp, his pride, his skill; The vassals of his will;- For all those trophied arts Entailed on human hearts. Go-let oblivion's curtain fall Upon the stage of men, Life's tragedy again. Of pain anew to writhe ; Like grass beneath the scythe. Ev'n I am weary in skies To watch thy fading fire ; Test of all sunless agonies, Behold not me expire. My lips that speak thy dirge of deathTheir rounded gasp and gurgling breath To see thou shalt not boast. The eclipse of nature spreads my pall, The majesty of darkness shall Receive my parting ghost ! This spirit shall return to Him That gave its heavenly spark; When thou thyself art dark ! By Him recalled to breath, And took the sting from death! Go, sun, while mercy holds me up On nature's awful waste, Of grief that man shall taste- On earth's sepulchral clod, Or shake his trust in God ! THE PLANETS.-TAYLOR. The glass brings, for example, the disk of Jupiter before us ; so that we may fix the eye on this side, or on the other, of his cloud-belted surface : :-we clearly distinguish the forms of these wreaths of lurid vapor; or we catch the transit of one of his moons-follow the speck of shadow in its hasty course along the equator of the stupendous planet, very much in the same way in which we watch the shadow of a cloud, as it moves across the bosom of a distant sunny hill. Although the road thither baffles us in the attempt to mete it out into portions, we can just imagine ourselves to have achieved the passage, and to set foot upon that vast rotund; and can faintly conceive of the scene that would there present itself, where, athwart prodigious valleys (each capacious enough to receive an Atlantic, or through which the waves of all our oceans might quietly flow, as the Ganges glides in its bed,) the deep shadows of the overhanging mountains are flitting with giddy haste, from side to side ; while the sun rushes through the ample skies to accomplish his five hours of day. Or we remain at our post of observation through the brief moments of night; and are dizzy while we gaze upon the shining multitude of moons and stars, that, bursting up from the horizon, chase each other with visible celerity, from east to west, like a routed host, hotly followed by the foe. Thus, and with these aids which the telescope affords us, or which the imagination (authentically informed by facts) supplies, may we make a stage outward through the skies : nor are such efforts of the mind to be accounted vain and fantastic, like those waking dreams wherein we combine extravagant images of things nowhere existing, and in themselves preposterous : for we are now endeavoring to fix the faculty of conception upon objects that are palpable, and real, and which (remote as they may be) are as truly cognizable by the sight as are the cliffs of an adjacent continent. There is no extrava. gance in this attempt ; but a real utility, inasmuch as an important lesson is obtained from the vivid impression of the extent of God's visible dominion. The same force of conception which has carried the mind to the orbit of Jupiter, will transport it to that of Saturn, where is seen a sombre splendor, suffused on all sides, less, apparently, from the distant and diminished sun, than from the broad surfaces of the adjacent rings, which almost blend night and day, by overshadowing the one, and illuminating the other. Or taking once again an adventurous flight, further than before, we reach the outermost limit of our system, and stand upon that vast and solitary planet which, as if guardian of the whole, slowly walks the rounds of the solar skies, while it fulfils its term of fourscore years and more. The sun has now shrunk almost to a comparison with the stars; or looks only like the chiefest and most resplendent of them: so that the mild twilight of that noon does not quite exclude their rival radiance. HYMN BEFORE SUN-RISE IN THE VALE OF CHAMOUNY. COLERIDGE. Yet, like some sweet beguiling melody, So sweet, we know not we are listening to it, 'Thou, the meanwhile, wast blending with my thought, with iny life and life's own secret joy: Yea, Awake, my soul! not only passive praise Thou first and chief, sole sovereign of the vale ! O struggling with the darkness all the night, And visited all night by troops of stars, Or when they climb the sky or when they sink : Companion of the morning-star at dawn, Thyself earth's rosy star, and of the dawn Co-herald : wake, Ő wake, and utier praise ! Who sank thy sunless pillars deep in earth? Who filled thy countenance with rosy light ? Who made thee parent of perpetual streams ? And you, ye five wild torrents fiercely glad ! Who called you forth from night and utter death, From dark and icy caverns called you forth, Down those precipitous, black, jagged rocks, For ever shattered and the same for ever? Who gave you your invulnerable life, Your strength, your speed, your fury, and your joy, Unceasing thunder and eternal foam ? And who commanded (and the silence came) Here let the billows stiffen, and have rest? Ye ice-falls ! ye that from the mountain's brow Adown enormous ravines slope amainTorrents, methinks, that heard a mighty voice, And stopped at once amid their maddest plunge! Motionless torrents! silent cataracts ! Who made you glorious as the gates of heaven Beneath the keen full moon ? Who bade the sun |