The primrose-bells each morning ope In their cool, deep beds of grass; Violets make the airs that pass Tell-tales of their fragrant slope. I can see them where they spring Never brushed by fairy wing. All those corners I can spy In the island’s solitude, Where the dew is never dry, Nor the miser bees intrude. Cups of rarest hue are there, Full of perfumed wine undrained— Mushroom banquets, ne’er profaned, Canopied by maiden-hair. Pearls I see upon the sands, Never touched by other hands, And the rainbow bubbles shine On the ridged and frothy brine, Tenantless of voyager Till they burst in vacant air. O the songs that sung might be And the mazy dances woven, Had that witch ne’er crossed the sea And the Pine been never cloven! Many years my direst pain Has made the wave-rocked isle complain. Winds, that from the Cyclades Came, to ruffle with foul riot Round its shore’s enchanted quiet, Bore my waitings on the seas; Sorrowing birds in Autumn went Through the world with my lament. Still the bitter fate is mine, All delight unshared to see, Smarting in the cloven Pine, While I wait the tardy axe Which, perchance, shall set me free From the damned witch, Sycorax. * * * * * REMINISCENCES; OR AUNT ABBY’S PINCUSHION. BY EMMA C. EMBURY. Reader, do you love old houses, old books, old pieces of furniture, old chairs, in short, all the relics of antiquity which fashionable people usually discard and despise? If so, there is a bond of sympathy between us, and I shall not be afraid to rake among the cold ashes of the past for some unconsumed remnant of other days, even though I find only trifles to reward my search. The very table on which I write, black with age, and wearing a polish which nothing but years and years of manual labor could have given it, owes its peculiar favor in my eyes to the fact of its being more than a century old. What stories could it not tell of days gone by; what reminiscences of tea-drinkings, and christenings, and weddings, and funerals must be imbedded in every pore of the old mahogany!