KEPLER'S VISION.

"How grand the spectacle of a mind thus restless-thirsting with unquenchable appetite after beauty and harmony! Never was there a finer example of a spirit too vast to be satiated with the few truths around it, or one that more emphatically foreboded a necessary immortality." - Prof. R. P. Nichol.

UPON the clear, bright, northern sky,
Aurora's rainbow arches gleamed,
While, from their radiant source on high,
The countless host of evening beamed;

Each moving in its path of light—
Those paths by Science then untrod
The silent guardians of the night,

The watchers by the throne of God.

Far up above the gloomy wood,

The wavy, murmuring wood of pine,-
Upon the mountain side, there stood
A worshipper at Nature's shrine.

His spirit, like a breathing lyre,
At each celestial touch awoke,
And burning with a sacred fire,

His voice the solemn silence broke.

"O, glittering host! O, golden line!
I would I had an angel's ken,
Your deepest secrets to divine,
And read your mysteries to men.
The glorious truth is in my soul,
The solemn witness in my heart-
Although ye move as one great whole,
Each bears his own appointed part."

He slept.

No! in a blissful trance

The feebler powers of Nature lay, While upward, o'er the vast expanse,

His eager spirit swept away,Away into those fields of light,

By human footsteps unexplored; Order and beauty met his sight –

He saw, he wondered, and adored!

And o'er the vast area of space,

And through the height and depth profound, Each starless void and shining place

Was filled with harmony of sound.

Now, swelling like the voice of seas,
With the full, rushing tide of years,
Then, sighing like an evening breeze,
It died among the distant spheres.

Rich goblets filled with "Samian wine,"
Or "Life's elixir, sparkling high,"

Could not impart such joy divine

As that full chorus of the sky.

He might have heard the Orphean lute,
Or caught the sound of Memnon's lyre,
And yet his lips could still be mute,

Nor feel one spark of kindred fire.

But now, o'er ravished soul and sense,
Such floods of living music broke,
That, filled with rapture too intense,
His disenchanted spirit woke.

Awoke! but not to lose the sound,

The echo of that holy song;

He breathed it to the world around,
And others bore the strain along.

O, unto few the power is given

To pass beyond the bounds of Time, And lift the radiant veil of Heaven, To view her mysteries sublime.

Yet Thou, in whose majestic light

The Source of Knowledge lies concealed, Prepare us to receive aright

The truths that yet shall be revealed.

2*

LOVE AND LATIN.

Amo-amare-amavi-amatum.*

DEAR girls, never marry for knowledge,

(Though that should of course form a part,)

For often the head, in a college,

Gets wise at the cost of the heart.

--

Let me tell you a fact that is real-
I once had a beau in my youth,
My brightest and best "beau ideal"
Of manliness, goodness, and truth.

O, he talked of the Greeks and the Romans,
Of Normans, and Saxons, and Celts,
And he quoted from Virgil, and Homer,

And Plato, and

somebody else.

And he told me his deathless affection,

By means of a thousand strange herbs,

* Principal parts of the Latin verb amo- I love.