Ring out, ye crystal spheres,

Once bless our human ears,

If ye have power to touch our senses so; And let your silver chime

Move in melodious time;

And let the bass of Heaven's deep organ blow; And, with your ninefold harmony,

Make up full concert to the angelic symphony.

For if such holy song

Enwrap our fancy long,

Time will run back and fetch the age of gold; And speckled vanity

Will sicken soon and die,

And leprous sin will melt from earthly mould; And hell itself will pass away,

And leave her dolorous mansions to the peering day.

Yea, truth and justice then

Will down return to men,

Orb'd in a rainbow; and, like glories wearing,

Mercy will sit between,

Throned in celestial sheen,

With radiant feet the tissued clouds down steering; And heaven, as at some festival,

Will open wide the gates of her high palace hall.

But wisest Fate says No,

This must not yet be so,

The babe yet lies in smiling infancy, That on the bitter cross

Must redeem our loss;

So both himself and us to glorify;

Yet first to those enchain'd in sleep,

The wakeful trump of doom must thunder through the deep;

With such a horrid clang

As on Mount Sinai rang,

While the red fire and smouldering clouds outbrake :

The aged earth aghast

With terror of that blast,

Shall from the surface to the centre shake;

When at the world's last session,

The dreadful Judge in middle air shall spread his throne.

And then at last our bliss

Full and perfect is,

But now begins; for, from this happy day, The old Dragon, under ground

In straiter limits bound,

Not half so far casts his usurped sway; And, wroth to see his kingdom fail,

Swindges the scaly horror of his folded tail.

The oracles are dumb,

No voice or hideous hum

Runs through the arched roof in words deceiving. Apollo from his shrine

Can no more divine,

With hollow shriek the steep of Delphos leaving. No nightly trance, or breathed spell,

Inspires the pale-eyed priest from the prophetic cell.

The lonely mountains o'er,

And the resounding shore,

A voice of weeping heard and loud lament; From haunted spring and dale,

Edged with poplar pale,

The parting genius is with sighing sent;

With flower-inwoven tresses torn,

The nymphs in twilight shade of tangled thickets mourn.

In consecrated earth,

And on the holy hearth,

The Lars and Lemures moan with midnight plaint;

In urns, and altars round,

A drear and dying sound

Affrights the Flamens at their service quaint;

And the chill marble seems to sweat,

While each peculiar power foregoes his wonted seat.

Peor and Bäalim

Forsake their temples dim,

With that twice-batter'd god of Palestine;

And mooned Ashtaroth,

Heaven's queen and mother both,

Now sits not girt with tapers' holy shine;

The Libyc Hammon shrinks his horn;

In vain the Tyrian maids their wounded Thammuz mourn.

And sullen Moloch, fled,

Hath left in shadows dread

His burning idol all of blackest hue; In vain with cymbals' ring,

They call the grisly king,

In dismal dance about the furnace blue; The brutish gods of Nile as fast,

Isis and Orus, and the dog Anubis, haste.

Nor is Osiris seen

In Memphian grove or green,

Trampling the unshower'd grass with lowings loud: Nor can he be at rest

Within his sacred chest ;

Nought but profoundest hell can be his shroud; In vain with timbrel'd anthems dark

The sable-stoled sorcerers bear his worshipp'd ark.

He feels from Judah's land

The dreaded Infant's hand;

The rays of Bethlehem blind his dusky eyn; Nor all the gods beside

Longer dare abide,

Nor Typhon huge ending in snaky twine:

Our Babe, to show his Godhead true,

Can in his swaddling bands control the damned crew.

So, when the sun in bed,

Curtain'd with cloudy red,

Pillows his chin upon an orient wave,

The flocking shadows pale

Troop to the infernal jail ;

Each fetter'd ghost slips to his several grave;

And the yellow-skirted fayes

Fly after the night-steeds, leaving their moon-loved maze.

But see, the Virgin blest

Hath laid her Babe to rest;

Time is, our tedious song should here have ending : Heaven's youngest-teemed star

Hath fix'd her polish'd car,

Her sleeping Lord, with handmaid lamp, attending;

And all about the courtly stable

Bright harness'd angels sit in order serviceable.

HUMAN LIFE.

A passage from ROGERS.

THE lark has sung his carol in the sky,
The bees have humm'd their noontide lullaby;
Still in the vale the village bells ring round,
Still in Llewellyn-hall the jests resound.
For now the caudle-cup is circling there,

Now, glad at heart, the gossips breathe their prayer,
And, crowding, stop the cradle to admire
The babe, the sleeping image of his sire.

A few short years-and then these sounds shall hail
The day again, and gladness fill the vale;
So soon the child a youth, the youth a man,
Eager to run the race his fathers ran.

Then the huge ox shall yield the broad sirloin ;
The ale, now brew'd, in floods of amber shine:
And, basking in the chimney's ample blaze,
Mid many a tale told of his boyish days,
The nurse shall cry, of all her ills beguiled,
"'Twas on these knees he sat so oft and smiled."

And soon again shall music swell the breeze;
Soon, issuing forth, shall glitter through the trees
Vestures of nuptial white; and hymns be sung,
And violets scatter'd round; and old and young,
In every cottage-porch with garlands green,
Stand still to gaze, and gazing, bless the scene;
While, her dark eyes declining, by his side,
Moves in her virgin-veil the gentle bride.

And once, alas! nor in a distant hour,
Another voice shall come from yonder tower;
When in dim chambers long black weeds are seen,
And weeping 's heard where only joy has been;
When by his children borne, and from his door
Slowly departing to return no more,

He rests in holy earth with them that went before.

And such is human Life; so gliding on,
It glimmers like a meteor and is gone!
Yet is the tale, brief though it be, as strange,
As full methinks of wild and wondrous change,
As any that the wandering tribes require,
Stretch'd in the desert round their evening fire;
As any sung of old in hall or bower

To minstrel-harps at midnight's witching hour!

THE TWO ANGELS.

The following, by Professor LONGFELLOW, appeared in Bentley's Miscellany.

Two angels, one of Life and one of Death,

Pass'd o'er the village as the morning broke;

The dawn was on their faces, and beneath,

The sombre houses hearsed with plumes of smoke.

Their attitude and aspect were the same,

Alike their features and their robes of white;
But one was crown'd with amaranth, as with flame,
And one with asphodels, like flakes of light.

I saw them pause on their celestial way;
Then said I, with deep fear and doubt oppress'd:
"Beat not so loud, my heart, lest thou betray
The place where thy beloved are at rest !”

And he, who wore the crown of asphodels,
Descending, at my door began to knock,
And my soul sank within me, as in wells
The waters sink before an earthquake's shock.

I recognised the nameless agony,

The terror, and the tremor, and the pain, That oft before had fill'd and haunted me,

And now return'd with threefold strength again.

The door I open'd to my heavenly guest,

And listen'd, for I thought I heard God's voice;
And, knowing whatsoe'er He sent was best,
Dared neither to lament nor to rejoice.