Who can tell what the baby thinks? Who can follow the gossamer links By which the manikin feels his way Out from the shores of the great unknown, Blind, and wailing, and alone, Into the light of day? Out from the shores of the unknown sea, Tossing in pitiful agony! Of the unknown sea that reels and rolls, Specked with the barks of little souls— Barks that were launched on the other side, And slipped from heaven on an ebbing tide! And what does he think of his mother’s eyes? What does he think of his mother’s hair? What of the cradle roof that flies Forward and backward through the air? What does he think of his mother’s breast— Bare and beautiful, smooth and white, Seeking it ever with fresh delight— Cup of his joy and couch of his rest? What does he think when her quick embrace Presses his hand and buries his face Deep where the heart-throbs sink and swell With a tenderness she can never tell, Though she murmur the words Of all the birds— Words she has learned to murmur well? Now he thinks he’ll go to sleep! I can see the shadow creep Over his eyes, in soft eclipse, Over his brow, and over his lips, Out to his little finger tips, Softly sinking, down he goes! Down he goes! down he goes! [_Rising and carefully retreating to her seat._] See! he is hushed in sweet repose! A SERIO-COMIC ELEGY. WHATELY ON BUCKLAND. In his “Common-Place Book,” the late Archbishop Whately records the following Elegy on the late geologist, Dr. Buckland: Where shall we our great professor inter, That in peace may rest his bones? If we hew him a rocky sepulchre He’ll rise and break the stones, And examine each stratum which lies around, For he’s quite in his element underground. If with mattock and spade his body we lay In the common alluvial soil, He’ll start up and snatch these tools away Of his own geological toil; In a stratum so young the professor disdains That embedded should lie his organic remains. Then exposed to the drip of some case-hardening spring, His carcase let stalactite cover, And to Oxford the petrified sage let us bring, When he is encrusted all over; There, ’mid mammoths and crocodiles, high on a shelf, Let him stand as a monument raised to himself. A REMINISCENCE OF TROY. FROM THE SCHOLIAST.