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That it seems as if he said, "They are gone!"

The mossy marbles rest

On the lips that he has prest
In their bloom;

And the names he loved to hear
Have been carved for many a year
On the tomb.

My grandmamma has said

Poor old lady! she is dead
Long ago-

That he had a Roman nose,
And his cheek was like a rose
In the snow.

But now his nose is thin,
And it rests upon his chin
Like a staff;

And a crook is in his back,
And a melancholy crack
In his laugh.

I know it is a sin

For me to sit and grin

At him here;

But the old three-cornered hat, And the breeches, and all that,

Are so queer!

And if I should live to be The last leaf upon the tree In the spring,

Let them smile, as I do now, At the old forsaken bough Where I cling.

THE CHAMBERED NAUTILUS. NOTE. -Dr. Holmes has said of this poem, “If you will remember me by the Chambered Nautilus, your memory will be a monument I shall think more of than any bronze or marble." This is the ship of pearl, which, poets feign, Sails the unshadowed main.-The venturous bark that flings On the sweet summer wind its purpled wings In gulfs enchanted, where the siren sings, And coral reefs lie bare,

Where the cold sea-maids rise to sun their streaming hair.

Its webs of living gauze no more unfurl.-
Wrecked is the ship of pearl!

And every chambered cell,
Where its dim dreaming life was wont to dwell,
As the frail tenant shaped his growing shell,
Before thee lies revealed,—

Its irised ceiling rent, its sunless crypt unsealed!

Year after year beheld the silent toil

That spread his lustrous coil;

Stretched in his last-found home, and knew the old no more.

Thanks for the heavenly message brought by thee,

Child of the wandering sea,

Cast from her lap forlorn!

From thy dead lips a clearer note is born Than ever Triton blew from wreathed horn? While on mine ear it rings,

Through the deep caves of thought I hear a voice that sings:

Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul,
As the swift seasons roll!
Leave thy low-vaulted past!

Let each new temple, nobler than the last,
Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast,
Till thou at length art free,

Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea!

EXTRACTS.

The simple lessons which the nursery taught
Fell soft and stainless on the buds of thought,
And the full blossom owes its fairest hue
To those sweet tear-drops of affection's dew.

Where go the poet's lines?

Answer, ye evening tapers! Ye auburn locks, ye golden curls, Speak from your folded papers!

We count the broken lyres that rest

Where the sweet wailing singers slumber, But o'er their silent sister's breast

The wild flowers, who will stoop to number? A few can touch the magic string,

And noisy Fame is proud to win them; Alas for those that never sing,

But die with all their music in them!

Old Time, in whose bank we deposit our notes, Is a miser who always wants guineas for groats:

He keeps all his customers still in arrears By lending them minutes and charging them years.

You hear that boy laughing? You think he's all fun;

But the angels laugh, too, at the good he has done;

The children laugh loud as they troop at his

call,

And the poor man that knows him laughs loudest of all.

ALBERT CLYMER.

BORN: FAIRFIELD CO., O., DEC. 10, 1827.

IN 1890 Mr. Clymer removed from his farm in Morley to Olin, Iowa. He has issued a volume of poems entitled Echoes of the Woods, consisting of songs, ballads and lyrics which in a charming manner carry the author back to the days of boyhood and young manhood in

his Ohio home. The true spirit of the muse pervades the entire volume. He has had a strong partiality for poetry from his earliest recollection. Mr. Clymer has several volumes of verse ready for publication, and devotes his time mainly to writing and doing light farm work.

POETRY AS COMPARED TO PROSE. True poetry of thought, if it is well expressed, In prose, blank verse, or rhyme, as suits men best.

Dull nature wakes from lethargy and sleep;
To contemplation, laughter, chance to weep.
It-heaven-born - the soul of man inspires
With rapture, and his zeal it fires.

It thrills the soul with beauty's vital charm;
To noble deeds it nerves the palsied arm;
It cultivates the heart; incites to love,
And elevates the thoughts to things above.
Since prose is deemed sufficiently complete,
Devoid of rhythm, of rhyme, and of poetic
feet.---

In rhyming verse, we've measured time,
We've harmony, and rhythm, and rhyme;
The parts arranged in order all complete:-
Some lines have many, others have few feet.
Instructive poems we, besure have seen;
And some we ne'er could tell just what they
mean.

We here will not affirm, nor yet deny,
That such is poetry; though it seems dry;
Perchance the author gave us but the hull;
And kept the kernel:- chance our taste is
dull.

We hope from time to time, as shall appear
most meet,
[repeat.
To give you fruit; who taste it will the taste
Though it holds meat all ready to your hand,
It's taste who'd judge, should skill to taste
command.

This fruit may, then, be cracked, and tasted too, all round, [sound. And cracked again; remaining fresh and

EVOLUTION.

Wonderfully long, indeed, Haeckel's chain, Which gave the moneron two legs and a

brain,

From the depth of the sea the moneron

came:

Haeckel the scientist gave it a name;--As small as a pin's head, a globular cell; After ages to crawl, snail-like, from a shell. An infusory, neither male nor female, Acquires a back-bone, and fins, and a tail. A thing without nerve, or muscle, or wish, Is changed to a polyp, a mollusk, a fish. Hatched by the sun from the spawn of the [wog.

frog, Reigns queen in a mud-puddle, Miss PolliA tortoise, a monkey, four legs recollect; A man with two hands and a mind walks erect.

Some millions of years requiring to span The chasm between the monkey and man. The billions betwixt his first and last state And the number of times he did transmi

grate

No man from such data can calculate.

The existance of man, how brought about, They ne'er can explain if God is left out. So scientists fail, with all their great skill, To solve the great problem; aye fail thus they will.

God says he made man;-of the ground 'tis confessed

As good, when first formed, as is Haeckel's best.

Those naturalists sure have been to great pains,

To prove that they sprang from a race minus brains.

Such teachers as they should exit the hive; By nature's great law the fittest survive." Since they from the spawn of the rena were hatched,

And by them the bull-frogs as croakers are matched,

From the form of the arm, and the length of the thigh,"

They sprang from the species the gentry would fry.

They judge of the class, order and strain,
By range of vision and compass of brain.
From grinders, and molars, and curve of

the jaw,

And spinal column, they inference draw. The texture of muscle, the form of the bone, The order of teeth, and the organs of tone; The size of the skull, the brain caliber, The pedigree and habits infer. Whence a class sprang, thro' which line they descend,

When they went crawling, or stood upon end. The reptile, the grub, the molecule source; They draw their conclusions from data of

course;

If valves or bivalves; we're told that those

seers

Calculate back for a billion of years;

To prove evolution must have produced

man,

Without a creative intelligent plan. Infidels madly the Bible have spurned: 'Tis only the present in which they're con

cerned:

Trusting their reason they're going astray, As others will do who take the same way. "Tis clear, quite clear, very clear to my mind, Those men, as the frogs, to leap are inclined; Equally good at the game of leap-frog, They jump at conclusions and croak in a bog.

WE HAVE HAD ENOUGH.
We've had enough!

Of poison drugs and watering;
Of feeing men for slaughtering;
Of interested flattering;
Of learned legal smattering;
Politic jugglers cattering:-
The public sore while mattering,
The owls of Bacchus chattering,
The liquor drivel pattering,
The sacred shrine bespattering,
The badge of Justice tattering,
The social fabric battering,
The legal cog-wheels clattering;
Till Liberty is tottering:

Of shilly shally pottering,
We've had enough!

The above jingle may be read from top to bottom, an vice versa.

HENRY H. BROWNELL.

BORN: PROVIDENCE, R. I., FEB. 6, 1820. AFTER receiving a collegiate education he became a school teacher, began the study of law and admitted to the bar in 1844. In 1849 he gave up the practice of law and thenceforth devoted himself to authorship; he has published several volumes of verse besides many works of prose.

CHARITY.

Hast thou no angel-charity, no kindness to fulfill

For those on whom this winter storm beats down more naked still?

THE EAGLE OF CORINTH.

'Tis many a stormy day,

Since, out of the cold, bleak North,
Our great War-Eagle sailed forth

To swoop o'er battle and fray.
Many and many a day

O'er charge and storm hath he wheeled,
Foray and foughten field,

Tramp, and volley, and rattle! -
Over crimson trench and turf,
Over climbing clouds of surf,
Through tempest and cannon-rack,
Have his terrible pinions whirled -
(A thousand field of battle?
A million leagues of foam!
But our Bird shall yet come back,

He shall soar to his Eyrie-Home-
And his thundrous wings be furled,
In the gaze of a gladdened world,
On the Nation's loftiest Dome.

JOHN JACOB DICKSON.

BORN: SCOTT Co., IND., SEPT. 8, 1826. WORKING on the farm when young at six dollars per month, Mr. Dickson afterward learned the cooper trade. In 1850 he removed to West Grove, Iowa, where he now resides, buying his farm from the government. In 1864

JOHN J. DICKSON.

he was with Sherman's army on its famous march to the sea. Judge W. M. Dickson, of Cincinnati, is the only brother of the subject of this sketch. John J. Dickson has been a member of the Presbyterian church for the past thirty years, but now favors the Friends

YOUTH AND AGE.

In memory I recall my hopeful days
(There was a buoyant spirit once within,
And brood o'er youth's contented, cheerful
ways,

So full of joy and innocent of sin;
For then the world, with its eternal din

Of creeds, oppression, strife for pelf,and war,
Had not made me lose faith in all but Him-
Had not impelled a course my peace to mar;
And now I sigh for days in memory afar.
And yet there is a recompense for Age.
The purpose of a wise Creator's plan
Is found recorded in the Sacred Page,
And happiness is for the aged man

Who yields a willing soul, whose mind can

scan

Where Freedom feels no license or restraint,
Who fears a wrong more than the public ban,
Yet feels unworthy to be called a saint,
Though on the highest mount, serene, above
complaint.

But I am under law e'er since my birth
So that I cannot soar on angel wings
From care and the discordant sounds of Earth
Far up away from these to fairer things
That Faith has pictured, where the dweller
sings;

For love has no opposing foe above

To mar its Eden joy from which there springs A peace that Earth's contending sects approve, Then take the sword and disobey the Lord of love.

TO A BUDDING POETICAL GENIUS.
The flower that crowns a rosary
Was once a bud unseen,
Your genius may, developed, be

The world's admiring theme.

In prosy lines devoid of art,
(If you will read my story,
I'll try to act the critic's part,
And help you on to glory.

If you have genius, rare and great,

No rule can be your bar,

Shakespeare made his own law of verse,

And Bonaparte of war.

None but the great dare step aside

From Custom's iron rule.

The common mind must follow her,

Or be esteemed a fool.

No genius now upon the stage,

Whose great inventions show To all the smallness of the age, In things it does not know. As Webster said, there's room above," Where lawyers great may go, And so it is in ev'ry thing;

There is a crowd below.

It is our wish you may succeed,

And laurels crown your brow, And when you do you will not need The lines we send you now.

Your feet" the measure" fit exact,

66

According to the rules,

The poets of the past have made
The text book of the schools.
Then mount Pegasus' back and soar
On Fancy's wings away

To old Parnassus' mountain shore,
Where all the muses play.

In language pure compose your verse,
Pathetic or sublime,

But at a sinner" hurl no curse,

Nor wink at public crime.

Write from your heart - you'll not cater

To kings or reigning wrongs-
Like Milton, Burns, or Whittier,
Breathe freedom in your songs.

The poet's sympathies are not
To party lines confined;
Nature does not dispense the gift
Upon a narrow mind.

When woeing for the muses' grace--
The favor of the nine,

Know this one line of sense is worth,
A thousand of mere rhyme.

THREE HUNDRED HEROES.
The sunset's glow shines o'er the trees,
The pine leaves rustle to the breeze,
The feathered warblers prattle;
But man is vile, the evening star
Looks on a crimson scene of war-
The carnage of a battle.

On come the legions of the Gray-
(The Union must be shot away"
All Howard's corps is broken.
The Babel noise proclaims the tale,
Which through the pines the evening

gale

The fearful news has spoken.

O, for ten minutes more of time

To get the cannon into line,

And stop by rapid shelling,

The onward charge of Jackson's corps,
Who, louder than the Babel roar
Of fugitives, are yelling.
The old Third corps's a mile away,
Fast pushing forward to the fray,
But Stonewall's corps is nearing.
To live with Fame's heroic dead
A forlorn hope must now be led,
To Death the Union cheering.
Up rode commander Pleasanton,
"Align those pieces, man each gun,”.
He said; be quick and steady.
Charge, Keenan, charge, upon the foe,
And hold them back until you know
Our batteries are ready."
Brave Keenan, smiling made reply,
"You had as well said I must die;
For yon pine woods are gory.
But you command: I will obey."
They charged, they died; they saved the

day;

They turned the tide of glory. The charging legions of the Gray, Were by three hundred held at bay Until the guns were sighted; Then on they came with louder yell, But they were stopped by shot and shell And Jackson's charge was blighted.

This praying, fighting, brightest star
The rebels had in all the war
Was shot the danger braving.
But treason's guilt his glory mars,
And Fame, above the fallen bars,
Halos the old flag waving.
Three hundred heroes rode away,
Their bodies in the pine woods lay.
Their deed of martial glory,
Though unsurpassed on bloody plains,
Is yet unsung in measured strains,
Nor read in hist'ry's story.
An exit that all men admire,
An exit that the brave desire

Is where the lead is flying.

It is the soldiers' hallowed ground"
To fight in battle and be found

Among the dead or dying.

*John Bright, (England's Quaker Statesman), resigned his place in Gladstone's min-. istry, because of his war in Africa, but held that our war for liberty and union was justiflable. The law is a terror to evil doers," and must have power to enforce it. Our war was a police force, to enforce the law, and prevent anarchy.

.. PUT UP THY SWORD." There is a field where just men work,

A high untrodden plain,

Above the jostling crowd below,
That strive for present gain.

Where men by love of truth inspired.
Go forth to work and die,
That God's eternal truth may have "
A dwelling 'neath the sky.

The doctors wrangle through the years
On issues past and gone.
A Providential man appears
And truth goes marching on.
O, who will work for God to-day
And let the dead past" go?
War stays the progress of His truth:
O who will meet this foe?
And blow the Trumpet of Reform"
So loud, so clear, so strong,
"Twill rouse the nations of the world
Against this giant wrong.

The party men have fed the flock
On dogmas' worthless food,
And they have drifted from His rock
Tossed by the passion's flood.