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Bring another cup, and straightway to the noble Persian give:

"Balder! brother! the divine has vanishedThe eternal splendors all have fled;

For the tears of the imperial mother,

For a universe that weeps and prays, Rides Hermoder forth to seek his brotherRides for love of that distressful mother, Through lead-colored glens and cross-blue ways.

With the howling wind and raving torrent,

Nine days rode he, deep and deeper downReached the vast death-kingdom, rough and horrent,

Reached the lonely bridge that spans the torrent
Of the moaning river by Hell-town.

There he found the ancient portress standing-
Vexer of the mind and of the heart:
"Balder came this way," to his demanding,
Cried aloud that ancient portress, standing-
Balder came, but Balder did depart;

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The heroic and divine have vanished; Nature has no god, and earth lies dead.

"Come thou back, my Balder-king and brother!

Teach the hearts of men to love the gods! Come thou back, and comfort our great moth

er

Come with truth and bravery, Balder, brotherBring the godlike back to men's abodes!"

But the Nornas let him pray unheeded
Balder never was to come again.
Vainly, vainly young Hermoder pleaded-
Balder never was to come. Unheeded,

Young Hermoder wept and prayed in vain.
Oh, the trueness of this ancient story!
Even now it is, as it was then.
Earth hath lost a portion of her glory;
| And like Balder, in the ancient story,
Never comes the beautiful again.

Still the young Hermoder journeys bravely,
Through lead-colored glens and cross-blue ways;
Still he calls his brother, pleading gravely —
Still to the death-kingdom ventures bravely —
Calmly to the eternal terror prays.

But the fates relent not; strong endeavor,
Courage, noble feeling, are in vain;
For the beautiful has gone for ever.
Vain are courage, genius, strong endeavor
Never comes the beautiful again.

Do you think I counsel weak despairing!
No! like young Hermoder I would ride;
With an humble, yet a gallant daring,
I would leap unquailing, undespairing,
Over the huge precipice's side.

Dead and gone is the old world's ideal,
The old arts and old religion fled;
But I gladly live amid the real,
And I seek a worthier ideal.

Courage, brothers, God is overhead!

ANONYMOUS.

Soul and Body.

BEFORE the beginning of years

There came to the making of man Time, with a gift of tears;

Grief, with a glass that ran; Pleasure, with sin for leaven;

Summer, with flowers that fell; Remembrance, fallen from heaven; And madness, risen from hell; Strength, without hands to smite; Love, that endures for a breath; Night, the shadow of light;

And life, the shadow of death.

And the high gods took in hand
Fire and the falling of tears,
And a measure of sliding sand

From under the feet of the years,

And froth and drift of the sea,

And dust of the laboring earth,

And bodies of things to be

In the houses of death and of birth,
And wrought with weeping and laughter,
And fashioned with loathing and love,
With life before and after,

And death beneath and above,
For a day and a night and a morrow,

That his strength might endure for a span, With travail and heavy sorrow,

The holy spirit of man.

From the winds of the North and the South

They gathered as unto strife;
They breathed up in his mouth,

They filled his body with life;
Eyesight and speech they wrought
For the veils of the soul therein;
A time for labor and thought,
A time to serve and to sin;
They gave him light in his ways,

And love, and a space for delight,
And beauty and length of days,

And night, and sleep in the night. His speech is a burning fire;

With his lips he travaileth; In his heart is a blind desire,

In his eyes foreknowledge of death.

He weaves, and is clothed with derision;
Sows, and he shall not reap;

His life is a watch or a vision
Between a sleep and a sleep.

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ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE.

Address to the Mummy at Belzoni's Exhibition.

AND thou hast walked about (how strange a story!)

In Thebes's streets three thousand years ago,
When the Memnonium was in all its glory,
And time had not begun to overthrow
Those temples, palaces, and piles stupendous,
Of which the very ruins are tremendous.

Speak! for thou long enough hast acted dummy; Thou hast a tongue-come-let us hear its tune;

Thou'rt standing on thy legs, above ground, mummy!

Revisiting the glimpses of the moon

Not like thin ghosts or disembodied creatures, But with thy bones, and flesh, and limbs, and features.

Tell us for doubtless thou canst recollect —
To whom should we assign the Sphinx's fame?
Was Cheops or Cephrenes architect

Of either pyramid that bears his name?

Is Pompey's Pillar really a misnomer?

Had Thebes a hundred gates, as sung by Homer?

Perhaps thou wert a Mason, and forbidden

By oath to tell the secrets of thy trade; Then say what secret melody was hidden

In Memnon's statue, which at sunrise played? Perhaps thou wert a priest; if so, my struggles Are vain, for priestcraft never owns its juggles.

Perhaps that very hand, now pinioned flat,
Has hob-a-nobbed with Pharaoh, glass to glass;

Or dropped a half-penny in Homer's hat;

Or doffed thine own to let Queen Dido pass;
Or held, by Solomon's own invitation,
A torch at the great temple's dedication.

The Fisher's Cottage.

WE sat by the fisher's cottage,

And looked at the stormy tide; The evening mist came rising, And floating far and wide.

One by one in the light-house

The lamps shone out on high; And far on the dim horizon

A ship went sailing by.

We spoke of storm and shipwreck-
Of sailors, and how they live;
Of journeys 'twixt sky and water,
And the sorrows and joys they give.

We spoke of distant countries,

In regions strange and fair; And of the wondrous beings And curious customs there;

Of perfumed lamps on the Ganges,

Which are launched in the twilight hour; And the dark and silent Brahmins,

Who worship the lotus-flower;

Of the wretched dwarfs of Lapland -
Broad-headed, wide-mouthed, and small-
Who crouch round their oil-fires, cooking,
And chatter and scream and bawl.

And the maidens earnestly listened,
Till at last we spoke no more;
The ship like a shadow had vanished,
And darkness fell deep on the shore.
HEINRICH HEINE. (German.)

Translation of CHARLES G. Leland.

The Two Oceans.

Two seas, amid the night,

In the moonshine roll and sparkleNow spread in the silver light,

Now sadden, and wail, and darkle.

The one has a billowy motion,

And from land to land it gleams;

The other is sleep's wide ocean,

And its glimmering waves are dreams.