My prayer has speeded to the fount of power— The veil has lifted—and I’ve entered in! I feel like one whose visage has been bar’d In presence of the Father of all earth— Like one transported to another sphere, Of the far company that walks the sky, Who, in the stern confronting of a God Has scann’d his own dimensions, and fall’n back From an archangel’s reaching, to a man— I feel like one on whom eternity Has graven its large language, in the lines Which mem’ry may not pass—nor can send back! I am as one admitted to the door That bars me from the future—the black port Where clust’ring worlds come round, of spirits dim Beckon’d to mysteries of another land. Tell not of other portals—tell me not Of other power or awfulness. If you’ve stood Within that curtain of Charybdis—if You’ve seen and heard the far-voiced flood above, Clapping its thousand hands, and heralding Seas to a new abyss—you have seen all The earth has of magnificent, like this— You’ve stood within a gate that leads to God; Where the strong beings of his mercy bend And do his will with power—while they uphold Our steps that grope the footstool. O! go in Say not that to your gaze has been unbar’d The mightiness of majesty, until You’ve stood within the shadow of that sea And heard it call unto you—until eye And ear have stood the terrible rebuke That rolls from those great caverns—till your blood Flies to its citadel, and you grow white Within the whirlpool presence of a flood That leapt thus when on soaring Ararat Rested the broad bark of a world! say not The front of glory has been yet reveal’d Until you’ve _felt_ the tempest in that cloud And heard, ’mid rock and roar, that harmony That finds no echo like it in the sea! O! go in All ye who view not earth as monuments And men as things but built to—to decay; Pass ye within—ye will take lesson there. How passing is the littleness of Earth— How broad the empyrean reach of Heaven— How fading is the brilliance of a world— How beautiful the majesty of God! * * * * * THE VAGRANT. BY LOUIS FITZGERALD TASISTRO. A man was lying at the further end of a dismal cell, in the prison of Versailles, when one of the jailors, thrusting a huge key into the lock of a small but massive door, roused him with the unwelcome salutation, “come, get up—the time is come, and the gentlemen are waiting for you.” “What, already!” replied the unhappy wretch to whom these words were addressed, and stretching his muscular limbs, he added, “what a pity, I was so sound asleep!” He rose, shook the bits of straw from his hair and beard, and putting on the remains of an old hat, which had once been white, calmly said, “well, I am ready—the sooner it is over the better.”