Like these the soul, for sunshine made, Grows wan and gracile in the shade, Her faculties, which God decreed Various as Summer’s dædal breed, With one sad color are imbued, Shut from the sun that tints their blood; The shadow of the poet’s roof Deadens the dyes of warp and woof; Whate’er of ancient song remains Has fresh air flowing in its veins, For Greece and eldest Ind knew well That out of doors, with world-wide swell Arches the student’s lawful cell. Away, unfruitful lore of books, For whose vain idiom we reject The spirit’s mother-dialect, Aliens among the birds and brooks, Dull to interpret or believe What gospels lost the woods retrieve, Or what the eaves-dropping violet Reports from God, who walketh yet His garden in the hush of eve! Away, ye pedants city-bred, Unwise of heart, too wise of head, Who handcuff Art with _thus and so_, And in each other’s foot-prints tread, Like those who walk through drifted snow; Who, from deep study of brick walls Conjecture of the water-falls, By six feet square of smoke-stained sky Compute those deeps that overlie The still tarn’s heaven-anointed eye, And, in your earthen crucible, With chemic tests essay to spell How nature works in field and dell! Seek we where Shakspeare buried gold? Such hands no charmed witch-hazel hold; To beach and rock repeats the sea The mystic _Open Sesame_; Old Greylock’s voices not in vain Comment on Milton’s mountain strain, And cunningly the various wind Spenser’s locked music can unbind. * * * * * FANNY. A NARRATIVE TAKEN FROM THE LIPS OF A MANIAC. BY MRS. CAROLINE H. BUTLER. I am bound Upon a wheel of fire, that mine own tears Do scald like molten lead. KING LEAR. THEY tell me I am mad—_mad_! No, I am not mad! In this den of horror I at least am sane. Reason bursting from the heavy shackles which would press her down to death, now asserts her right—yes—I am sane—though they tell me I am mad—_mad—ha! ha!_ Around me I hear the incoherent ravings of insanity—the wild screech and terrific yells of demoniac rage as the unhappy wretch dashes against the iron bars and tears his very flesh in torture. Bursts of laughter echo around my prison walls, and eye-balls red and wild glare at me through yonder grating—but _I_ am not mad! Fanny! Fanny! where are you, my life, my love! Ah-h! now the past comes up before me. Distinct as the clouds mirrored in some placid lake do the events of my life float by. Stay—stay—fleeting images of pleasure and of wo—let me trace distinctly as your wavelets sweep over my soul the causes which have brought me here!