THE WELL.

BY JOHN PIERPONT.

WHEN the summer noon is glowing,
When the men are out a-mowing,
And so blithe

Swing the sithe,

Into swaths the clover throwing,
With the herdsgrass, tall and spiry,
And the red-top, light and wiry,
And when close behind them treading,
All the morning I've been tedding,
Till, as now,

On my brow

Stand the sweat-drops, bright and pearly,

Just as,

in the morning early,

Stood the dews that night had shed

On the opening rose's head;

Then it is that from the hay,

To this WELL I "come away,"

And, beneath the trees that shade it,

Thank the good old man that made it.
And, as from its resting place,

On the water's dimpled face,

Where no warming ray hath struck it,
Up I draw the dripping bucket,

And my parching lips I

press

To its brim-O, then I bless

The Good Being who hath given
To his creatures "rain from heaven,"
And, through earth's mysterious cells,
Leads it down to fill our WELLS.

When, in sultry harvest weather,
Not a zephyr moves a feather
Of its wing for hours together,
And one sees

On the trees

Limbs and leaves together sleeping,
All a breathless sabbath keeping,—
When the very brook is creeping
Lazily along its path,

And the sky,

Hot and dry,

Seems to scorch the world in wrath -
When the men are out a-reaping,
And when, in my wheat-field travels,
I've been gathering up the gavels
That the reapers leave behind them,
Into golden sheaves to bind them; –
Or, with neither shoes nor socks,
(When the stubble

Was a trouble)

I've been bringing into shocks

All the sheaves of bearded grain,

Or, upon the laddered wain,

Have been loading; — while the team,

Lolling in the fiery beam,

Have confessed its melting heat—

O, 't is grateful to retreat

From the flash of Phoebus' car,

To a farm-house, where there are
Shady trees,

Such as these,

Reaching out their arms afar,

With their shield of leaves above me,

As they would do, did they love me;
Grateful to roll up my sleeves,
That the cool breath of the leaves
Over my warm arms may pass ;
And to drop upon the grass
Hat and jacket, and repair

To the good old well that's there,
With my panting Tray and Fido, —
For they know, as well as I do,
What the bucket is to bring up;

Grateful, when we see it swing up,
Yes, most grateful to our lips

Is the water, as it drips —

Rather, as it pours and dashes

From the bucket's brim, and splashes

Equally the bath enjoy;
Equally, in harvest weather,
Man and beast rejoice together,
In the boon their Maker brings,
In our water-brooks and springs,
That he pours from "rifted rocks,"
For the shepherd and his flocks,
That he showers on every plain
In the earth-refreshing rain,

Round the wine-cup and the bowl

Wit may come, with song and laughter; —

But there come, forever after,

Pains that pierce and rack the soul.
These twain,

Sin and Pain,

Have, for aye, one chain around them,
For, together God hath bound them;
While these friends of Age and Youth,
Health, and Cheerfulness, and Truth,
Still dwell

In the WELL,

Where the ancient sages found them.

THOUGHTS ON MUSIC.

BY H. T. TUCKERMAN.

THERE is a poetry of sound, susceptibility to which is wholly independent of science. Taste for this exquisite pleasure may be cultivated to the highest degree, by those who have no musical skill, and are ignorant even of the vocabulary of the art. Perhaps, indeed, music is felt by none so much as those to whom it is a sweet mystery, a luxury never analyzed, an unexplored avenue, leading at once, and by a process too enchanting to examine, into the happy precincts of the ideal world. To such minds the vagueness of music is one of its greatest charms. To them it occasions no surprise to remember that musicians were anciently deemed seers; and that even christians followed an idolatrous example, and canonized Cecilia when the muses were no more. They can sympathize with the monk of Catania, whose dying request it was, to be buried beneath the organ whose harmonies had so long blessed him. Like the opium-eater, they love to "construct out of the raw material of organic sound, an elaborate intellectual pleasure." They delight to lose, or rather quicken their consciousness in the inspiring atmosphere of song. "Succession," says Burke, "gives the idea of continuing on to infinity." Perhaps this accounts for the spell which music exerts over imaginative spirits. It is a magic river, down which they float to the verge of