“How strange none mark our sympathy, And yet how like I am to thee. My voice to thee a passage finds In music of the tuneful winds, While soft thy murm’ring waves reply With a sound more faint than joy’s sigh. “I gaze at thee with eyes of light, With loving look, from orbs as bright, Thou answer’st me. My beams I send, As messengers to thee. They lend A golden chariot to thy waves, In which they leave their dark blue caves And joyously to me they come; Though grieved to leave their native home, In purple mansions here they dwell, But mark thy bosom’s sorrowing swell, And weary of their absence long, Again they seek their home of song. “Within thy bosom hidden lie, Fair pearls unseen to mortal eye— I, too, have jewels e’n more bright— My dew-drop gems, which deck the night. “In their blue home thy gold-fish rove— I, too, have children whom to love, My fairy birds who sport along, Here in their happy world of song.” The voice was still. The ocean sighed, In harp-like tones its waves replied— “Our converse, unperceived by men, Still lasts, though sound is hushed, e’en then, Though winds are still, nor waves rejoice, I speak to thee in silence’s voice. What gives to us our hue of love, This azure tint, below, above? It is our _depth_, unseen, profound, _In shallow-hearted man ne’er found_.” The voice of the sea was hushed. A fairy cloud the heavens brushed, And tears of joy the sky was weeping, Aroused the wavelets lightly sleeping, They sprang to meet so playfully, A union ’twas of sea and sky. * * * * * [Illustration: THE BULLFINCH. Engraved expressly for Graham’s Magazine by F. Humphrys from an original drawing] * * * * * COLORED BIRDS.—THE BULLFINCH. FROM BECHSTEIN. [SEE ENGRAVING.] This is one of the indigenous tame birds which is a favorite with the rich and noble. Its body is thick and short. Its whole length is six inches and three-quarters, of which the tail measures two and three-quarters; the beak is only six lines in length, short, thick, and black; the iris is chestnut-colored; the shanks eight lines high, and black; the top of the head, the circle of the beak, the chin, and beginning of the throat, are of a beautiful velvet black; the upper part of the neck, the back and shoulders, deep gray; the rump white; the under part of the neck, the wide breast, and to the centre of the belly, are of a fine vermilion, less bright, however, in the young than old; the blackish pen-feathers become darker toward the body; the secondaries have the outer edge of an iron blue, which in the hinder ones is reddish. The tail is rather forked, and of a brilliant black, tinged with iron-blue.