Breathed from the ocean of eternity !
-And oh! without them, who could bear the storms
That fall in roaring blackness o'er the waters
Of agitated life: then hopes arise
All round our sinking souls, like those fair birds
O'er whose soft plumes the tempest bath no power,
Waving their snow-white wings amid the darkness,
And wiling us, with gentle motion, on
To some calm island ! on whose silvery strand
Dropping at once, they fold their silent pinions -
And, as we touch the shores of paradise,
In love and beauty walk around our feet !

Professor Wilson.

THE BIBLE.

What were the world without this holy book,
A dreary waste of misery and pain ;
Where helpless man, for bliss in vain might look,
But sunk in hell's abyss should still remain.

W.C.R.

THE SAILOR'S DEATHBED.

Written on hearing of the Death of H. N. DALLAS, Esq. on board

of the Lady Melville, East Indiaman, in Sangor Bay.

At evening when the sun went down,

And the wooded shores grew dark,
And the stars were mustering one by one

In the heavens, and the anchored bark
Lay like an Albatross asleep
In the cloudless wilds of the twilight deep ;

While yet the gleam of the shrinking day

Through our cabin lattice shone,
We gathered the curtain's folds away

To gaze on the dying one.
And the faint light fell on his faded brow
With a smile that I love to remember now.

The landward breezes had cooled the air,

And he lifted his languid head,
And wistfully gazed through the lattice, where

That light on the sea was shed ;
It seemed, as he thought, that the sun had gone
To beam on that land he had called his own.

Oh! recollection was busy then

In his young and faithful heart,
As it sadly brooded on moments, when

He turned from his home to part.
His home-and the voices he loved to hear;;
And his father's smile and his mother's tear.

And a troubled joy seemed yet to flow

From the thought of his youth's glad hours ; And a smile passed over his wasted brow

Like the sun o'er withered flowers. And his burning hands o'er his eyelids passed, To crush the tears that had sprung at last.

With feeble aim he raised his hand,

And pointed towards the west, Where the blue hills of his native land,

And the objects loved the best, Seemed still to rise on memory, And feed the light of his dying eye.

That mute request too well we knew,

And our plighted words we passed, That his loved of home should learn how true

His heart was till the last,

That his mother might ponder with grateful joy
O'er the last requests of her sailor boy.

We spoke--as the sound of the evening gun

Came onward from the shore ;
But the boy still gazed on the west--like one

Who could hear that sound no more.
And death, like a sleep on his young heart fell,
'Mid the thoughts of the home he had loved so well.

A. B. P.

THE HOME FEVER.

[From the Manuseript of a Volume of Original Poems which will

shortly be published.]

We sat in a green verandah's shade

Where the verdant 'tye tye' twined
Its fairy network around us, and made

A harp for the cool sea wind,
That came there with its low wild tones at night
Like a sigh that is telling of past delight.

And that wind, with its tale of flowers, bad come

From the island groves away,
And the waves, like wanderers returning home,

To the beach came wearily,
And the conch's far homecall, the parrot's cry,
Had told that the sabbath of night was nigh.

We sat alone in the trelliced bower,

And gazed o'er the darkening deep, And the holy calm of that twilight hour

Came over our hearts like sleep, And we dreamt of the banks and bonny braes’ That had gladdened our childhood's careless days.

And he—the friend at my side that sate,

Was a boy whose path had gone 'Mid the fields and the flowers of joy—that Fate,

Like a mother had smiled upon; But alas ! for the time when our hopes have wings, And when memory to grief, like a Syren sings.

His home had been on the stormy shore

Of Albyn's mountain land,
His ear was tuned to the breaker's roar,

And he loved the bleak sea sand,
And the torrent’s din, and the bowling breeze
Had all his soul's wild sympathies.