The light has died out of those eyes of blue:
Her hand is so thin the sun shines through.
What is this love, this power of might
That thus can the young and the old unite?

"How does it chance that line by line,
Her being is changed to the like of mine,
Or I grow younger as she matures?
How comes it that as our love endures,
We near and near, 'till when all is done
My age and her youth will seem as one?"

Sun-ripen'd roses clustering made.
Round the window an odorous shade;
She beneath it wasted to naught,
He beside her, buried in thought,
"I have aged in a year," sighed she:
"She is older than I," thought he.

“I did not dream that one little year
Would bring her youth and my age so near;
I could but hope that time would show
How pure was the love my heart could know,
Love wherein passion played no part:
Born of the reason, not of the heart.

"Then I had said to her, 'Wife of mine,
Youth to youth will ever incline:
For youth is foolish and judges by
The credulous heart and seeking eye;
But age is wiser.”” A sigh, a moan,
She had dropped to his feet a stone!
She a stone at his feet was laid,
Over her face the rose-shadows play'd,
In her eyes no fire, on her lips no red,
"God! I have killed her! She is dead!"
Dead? Yes: gone was her latest breath-
There was no end for such love but death.

(By permission of the Author. From "Ten Miles from Town.")

WEALTH versus ENJOYMENT.

JEREMY TAYLOR.

[Jeremy Taylor was a learned and pious divine, born in 1613, at Cambridge. He attracted the notice of Archbishop Laud, who made him his chaplain, and presented him with the rectorship of Uppingham. In 1642 he was created D.D., having already become chaplain in ordinary to Charles I. During the Commonwealth he retired into Wales, where he was kindly received by the Earl of Carbery, under whose protection he continued to exercise his ministry, and keep a school. In this retirement he wrote those fervent and thoughtful discourses which have rendered him one of the first writers in the English language. He was twice imprisoned by the Republican Government; but at the restoration he was made Bishop of Down and Connor, and Vice-Chancellor of Trinity College, Dublin. He died in 1667.]

SUPPOSE a man gets all the world, what is it that he gets? It is a bubble and a phantasm, and hath no reality beyond a present transient use; a thing that is impossible to be enjoyed, because its fruits and usages are transmitted to us by parts and by succession. He that hath all the world (if we can suppose such a man) cannot have a dish of fresh summer fruits in the midst of winter, not so much as a green fig; and very much of its possessions is so hid, so fugacious, and of so uncertain purchase, that it is like the riches of the sea to the lord of the shore; all the fish and wealth within all its hollownesses are his, but he is never the better for what he cannot get; all the shell-fishes that produce pearls, produce them not for him; and the bowels of the earth hide their treasures in undiscovered retirements; so that it will signify as much to this great proprietor, to be entitled to an inheritance in the upper region of the air: he is so far from possessing all its riches, that he does not so much as know of them, nor understand the philosophy of its minerals.

I consider that he who is the greatest possessor in the world, enjoys its best and most noble parts, and those which are of most excellent perfection, but in

common with the inferior persons, and the most despicable of his kingdom. Can the greatest prince enclose the sun, and set one little star in his cabinet for his own use, or secure to himself the gentle and benign influence of any one constellation? Are not his subjects' fields bedewed with the same showers that water his gardens of pleasure?

:

Nay, those things which he esteems his ornament and the singularity of his possessions, are they not of more use to others than to himself? For suppose his garments splendid and shining, like the robe of a cherub, or the clothing of the fields-all that he that wears them enjoys, is that they keep him warm, and clean, and modest and all this is done by clean and less pompous vestments; and the beauty of them, which distinguishes him from others, is made to please the eyes of the beholders: the fairest face or the sparkling eye cannot perceive or enjoy its own beauties, but by reflection. It is I that am pleased with beholding his gaiety; and the gay man, in his greatest bravery, is only pleased because I am pleased with the sight: so borrowing his little and imaginary complacency from the delight that I have, not from any inherency in his own possession.

The poorest artisan of Rome, walking in Cæsar's gardens, had the same pleasures which they ministered to their lord; and although, it may be, he was put to gather fruits to eat from another place, yet his other senses were delighted equally with Cæsar's: the birds made him as good music, the flowers gave him as sweet smells; he there sucked as good air, and delighted in the beauty and order of the place, for the same reason and upon the same perception as the prince himself; save only that Cæsar paid, for all that pleasure, vast sums of money, the blood and treasure of a province, which the poor man had for nothing.

And so it is if the whole world should be given to any man. He knows not what to do with it; he can use no more but according to the capacities of a man;

in a

he can use nothing but meat, and drink, and clothes. He to whom the world can be given to any purpose greater than a private estate can minister must have new capacities created in him; he needs the understanding of an angel to take the accounts of his estate; he had need have a stomach like fire or the grave, for else he can eat no more than one of his healthful subjects; and unless he hath an eye like the sun, and a motion like that of a thought, and a bulk as big as one of the orbs of heaven, the pleasures of his eye can be no greater than to behold the beauty of a little prospect from a hill, or to look upon a heap of gold packed up little room, or to dote upon a cabinet of jewels, better than which, there is no man that sees at all, but sees every day. For, not to name the beauties and sparkling diamonds of heaven, a man's, or a woman's, or a hawk's eye, is more beauteous and excellent than all the jewels of his crown. Understanding and knowledge are the greatest instruments of pleasure; and he that is most knowing hath a capacity to become happy, which a less knowing prince, or a rich person, hath not; and in this only a man's capacity is capable of enlargement. But then, although they only have power to relish any pleasure rightly who rightly understand the nature, and degrees, and essences, and ends of things; yet they that do so, understand also the vanity and unsatisfyingness of the things of this world: so that the relish, which could not be great but in a great understanding, appears contemptible, because its vanity appears at the same time: the understanding sees all, and sees through it.

THE PAUPER'S DRIVE.

THOMAS NOEL.

THERE'S a grim one-horse hearse in a jolly round trot, To the churchyard a pauper is going, I wot;

The road it is rough, and the hearse has no springs; And hark to the dirge which the sad driver sings: Rattle his bones over the stones!

He's only a pauper, whom nobody owns!

O, where are the mourners?

Alas! there are none

He has left not a gap in the world now he's gone-
Not a tear in the eye of child, woman, or man;
To the grave with his carcass as fast as you can :
Rattle his bones over the stones!

He's only a pauper, whom nobody owns!

What a jolting and creaking, and splashing and din! The whip how it cracks, and the wheels how they spin! How the dirt, right and left, o'er the hedges is hurled! The pauper at length makes a noise in the world! Rattle his bones over the stones!

He's only a pauper, whom nobody owns!

Poor pauper defunct! he has made some approach
To gentility, now that he's stretched in a coach !
He's taking a drive in his carriage at last;
But it will not be long, if he goes on so fast!
Rattle his bones over the stones!

He's only a pauper, whom nobody owns!

You bumpkins! who stare at your brother conveyedBehold what respect to a cloddy is paid!

And be joyful to think, when by death you're laid low, You've a chance to the grave like a gemman to go! Rattle his bones over the stones!

He's only a pauper, whom nobody owns !

But a truce to this strain; for my soul it is sad,
To think that a heart in humanity clad

Should make, like the brutes, such a desolate end,
And depart from the light without leaving a friend!
Bear soft his bones over the stones!

Though a pauper, he's one whom his Maker yet owns.