And on his face he lay and groaned aloud— And in her chamber sat his wife in tears, And his sweet babes grew sad with whispered fears. And so I turn'd sick-hearted From the bright cup away, and, in my sadness, Searched mine own bosom for some spring of gladness; And lo! a fountain started Whose waters ev'n in death flow calm and fast, And my wild fever-thirst was slaked at last. And then I met thee, Mary, And felt how love may into fulness pour, Like light into a fountain running o'er: And I did hope to vary My life but with surprises sweet as this- Yet now I feel my spirit Bitterly stirred, and-nay, lift up thy brow! It is thine own voice echoing to thee now, And thou didst pray to hear it— I must unto my work and my stern hours! Take from my room thy harp, and books and flowers! And in his room again he sat alone. A year His frame had lost its fulness in that time; Unconsciously the time of a sad tune. Thoughts of the past preyed on him bitterly. Steadily upward in the eye of Fame, And kept his truth unsullied-but his home Had been invaded by envenomed tongues; His wife-his spotless wife-had been assailed He could not speak beside his own hearth freely. Familiar with him. He'd small time to sleep, His wife lay trembling on his very breast I THE SCHOLAR OF THEBET BEN KHORAT.* "Influentia cœli morbum hune movet, interdum omnibus aliis amotis." MELANCTHON DE ANIMA, CAP. DE HUMORIBUS. NIGHT in Arabia. An hour ago, Pale Dian had descended from the sky, And at their watches now the solemn stars * A famous Arabian astrologer, who is said to have spent forty years in discovering the motion of the eighth sphere. He had a scholar, a young Bedouin Arab, who, with a singular passion for knowledge, abandoned his wandering tribe, and, applying himself too closely to astrology, lost his reason, and died. THE SCHOLAR OF THEBET BEN KHORAT. 115 With not a shadow moving on its breast, Ben Khorat's tower stands shadowy and tall In Mecca's loneliest street; and ever there, From his looped window stretch the brazen tubes, Of that dim nebula just lifting now Is of a clearer blackness than is wont, "Even to the naked eye, the stars appear of palpably different colours; but when viewed with a prismatic glass, they may be very accurately classed into the red, the yellow, the brilliant white, the dull white, and the anomalous. This is true also of the planets, which shine by reflected light, and of course the difference of colour must be supposed to arise from their different powers to absorb and reflect the rays of the |