gleam upon its open face- motionless in its: shallows watching for minnows all the long dull afternoon, while the dusky ousel flits from stone to stone in all the fearless play of its happy life. 13. Hurrying swiftly through the brown, heathy wastes that clothe the lower slopes, it lingers a while where the. trembling aspen and the twinkling birch and the rugged alder weave their leafy canopy over it, freckling its bustling waves with ever-varying scintillations of light and shade; pauses to water the crofter's meadow and cornfield, and to supply the wants of a cluster of rude moss-grown huts on its banks, which look as if they had grown naturally ou of the soil; and then, through a beach of snow-white pebbles, it mingles its fretting waters in the blue profound peace of the loch. 14. Such is the bright and varied course of the Alpine stream, with its floral fringe; and from its fountain to its fall it is one continuous, many-linked chain of beauty-an epic of Nature, full of the richest images and the most suggestive poetry. REV. HUGH MCMILLAN. S LXXVII. THE OLD CLOCK. I. OMEWHAT back from the village street Across its antique portico Tall poplar-trees their shadows throw; An ancient time-piece says to all: "Forever-never! Never-forever!" II. Halfway up the stairs it stands, And points and beckons with its hands From its case of massive oak, Like a monk, who, under his cloak, Crosses himself, and sighs, alas! With sorrowful voice to all who pass: "Forever-never! Never-forever!" III. By day its voice is low and light; And seems to say, at each chamber-door: Never-forever!" IV. Through days of sorrow and of mirth, Of changeful time, unchanged it has stood; Never-forever!" V. In that mansion used to be Free-hearted hospitality; His great fires up the chimney roared; But, like the skeleton at the feast, "Forever-never! Never-forever!" VI. There groups of merry children played; There youths and maidens, dreaming, strayed. O precious hours! O golden prime, And affluence of love and time! Even as a miser counts his gold, Those hours the ancient time-piece told: "Forever-never! Never-forever!" VII. From that chamber, clothed in white, The dead lay in his shroud of snow; Was heard the old clock on the stair: Never-forever!" VIII. All are scattered now and fled, Never-forever!" IX. Never here, forever there, Where all parting, pain, and care, Sayeth this incessantly: "Forever-never! Never-forever!" H. W. LONGFELLOW. LXXVIII. BEAUTIFUL SIGHTS AT SEA. TH HE most beautiful thing I have seen at sea-all the more so that I had never heard of it-is the trail of a shoal of fish through the phosphorescent water. It is like a flight of silver rockets, or the streaming of northern lights through that silent nether heaven. I thought nothing could go beyond that rustling star-foam which was churned up by our ship's bows, or those eddies and disks of dreamy flame that rose and wandered out of sight behind us. 'Twas fire our ship was plunging through, And wandering moons of idle flame 2. But there was something even more delicately rare in the apparition of the fish, as they turned up in gleaming furrows the latent moonshine which the ocean seemed to have hoarded against these vacant interlunar nights. In the Mediterranean one day, as we were lying becalmed, I observed the water freckled with dingy specks, which at last gathered to a pinkish scum on the surface. The sea had been so phosphorescent for some nights, that when the captain gave me my bath, by dowsing me with buckets from the house on deck, the spray flew off my head and shoulders in sparks. 3. It occurred to me that this dirty-looking scum might be the luminous matter, and I had a pailful dipped up to keep till after dark. When I went to look at it after nightfall, it seemed at first perfectly dead; but when I shook it, the whole broke out into what I can only liken to milky flames, whose lambent silence was strangely beautiful, and startled me almost as actual projection might an alchemist. I could not bear to be the death of so much beauty; so I poured it all overboard again. 4. Another sight worth taking a voyage for is that of the sails by moonlight. Our course was "south and by east, half south," so that we seemed bound for the full moon as she rolled up over our wavering horizon. Then I used to go forward to the bowsprit and look back. Qur ship was a clipper, with every rag set, stunsails, sky-scrapers, and all; nor was it easy to believe that such a wonder could be built of canvas as that white, many-storied pile of cloud that stooped over me, or drew back as we rose and fell with the waves. 5. Were you ever alone with the sun? You think it a very simple question; but I never was, in the full sense of |