BY MRS. K. C. KINNEY. He paused upon the river’s brink, a friendless fugitive, And in despair’s wild moment asked—“Why should I longer live? Deep are these waters, dark and cold, but deeper is my wo, And peace, methinks, lies underneath the river’s tranquil flow.” ’Twas but a flash of sulphurous light from the great Tempter’s mind, On sorrow’s cloud that sudden gleamed, the poet’s soul to blind! It passed like lightning, and he saw again a living world— The teeming land, the river free, the snowy sail unfurled. The glowing sunset, gilding spire, and mast, and forest-tree, Shed light on his enshrouded mind—he felt ’twas joy to be— To be _himself_—fair Nature’s child—ay, Truth’s and Freedom’s own, Born to a boundless heritage—heir to a laurel crown! “I will not die, but live,” he said, “while lives the truth divine— For Nature and for Art I’ll live—no common life be mine; This deathless spirit wounded now in struggling to be free, Shall in its conscious strength arise and claim its destiny! “Not that the sovereign, who pursues a rebel with his frown, May see my coronet all green, when fades his ducal crown; Not that the sire, whose wrath condemned his reckless son to shame, May hail that son brought back in the triumphal car of Fame— “But that I feel the living soul of Poesy within, Urging the liberated thought its mission to begin; A work eternal bids me on—I cannot, will not die, Till the vast deep of human mind shall onto deep reply!” The traveler to a foreign clime now reverent stands beside The noble statue of a bard, a nation’s love and pride; Unto whose living works both worlds in admiration turn, Philosophy, through beauty’s form and music’s tone, to learn. In calm, colossal grandeur towers that statue on the spot Where once a youthful poet stood to mourn his hapless lot— From whence he fled a fugitive, stamped with the rebel’s name, There Schiller dead, yet living, speaks his own immortal fame. * * * * * THE SABBATH OF THE SOUL. BY CHARLES H. STEWART. The vesper bells are softly peeling A call to prayer; Like angel’s songs the sounds are stealing Far up the azure aisles of air. A wish, truth’s offspring, now is winging To realms untold— Through the high heaven of thought upspringing To the _true_ temple of the soul. Hope, like a weary pilgrim, kneeling, Stoops at the shrine And worships with a holy feeling, Half human seeming, half divine. Now thoughts flit through fond mem’ry’s temple To times of old, When worship at the heart’s high altar— Pure as the stars—but ne’er so cold.