I drift afar by sun and star; I care not where I be So long as throbs the giant flood Of ocean under me. The ancient sea my brother is And well I know his moods; For everywhere with him I fare Throughout his solitudes. I lay my heart unto his heart, I soothe him with my wing; I kiss the tide as I were bride, And to him low I sing. He speaks to me of mystery, Of days when he was young, Of sorrows old, of tales untold By any other tongue. I listen, yearn, and much I learn Of nations now no more, Of wrecks that sleep down in the deep Or strew the rocky shore; Of how grim Time makes him to mar Whatever coast he laves. Of how the sea he makes to be So full of nameless graves. Since goaded long by lashing winds, He rushes forth in ire, And welds as one the ships of Clyde With those of crumbled Tyre; And swallows down the king and clown With equal appetite, And hides them all, both great and small, In his wide tombs of night. Then screaming I above him fly And hasten where he roars, Within my breast the same unrest As his proud bosom gores. A thousand leagues I go with him And glory in his power, A thousand leagues I herald him Through many a sleepless hour. Then, calmer grown, we dream again, And in some distant zone A little season are as one, Untroubled and alone. For I am brother to the sea And where he goes go I, And when at last my days are past, Within his breast I lie. And I shall ever haunt his paths About this aging earth, And he to me, and I to him, Shall sing of woe and mirth Until gray Time shall be no more, And every wave that weeps Has learned to laugh and laughing, thrills The bosom of the deeps. —_C. G. B. in “The Chicago Record.”_ [Illustration: MIRIKI SPIDER MONKEY. (Ateles hypoxanthus.)] THE SPIDER MONKEY. (_Ateles hypoxanthus._) With his native guides a gentleman was traveling one day through one of the wonderfully luxuriant tropical forests of eastern Brazil. They had left the Amazon river and had come southeast to the province of Maranhao, where the roots, grasses and plants sometimes weave themselves into vegetable bridges so solid that a man may go some distance without discovering that he has left the firm earth. They had just passed over one of these natural bridges and had evidently reached the edge of the hidden pool, as they came to a dense growth of rosewood trees, and there they saw a most unique and peculiar sight. The gentleman, being a stranger in Brazil, exclaimed with astonishment, for hanging from the branches by their tails only, were a whole troop of monkeys. They were of slender build, with long, thin, sprawling limbs and small heads, and they were indeed a most laughable and comical sight.