The birds, the sybiline birds of the grove, Entempled in shadowy bloom, Or clothed in a luminous vesture above Of sunshine and azure and music and love, Are the types of thy soul, that in brightness or gloom Is clothed in a luminous vesture of love. All things are thy symbols—thou sheddest on all The lustre and sweetness of Song, Like the angels whose star-loving pinions let fall A glory that holdeth true poets in thrall:— To thee all things lovely as symbols belong. And thou art the beautiful symbol of all. * * * * * SONNET. TO SHIRLEY. BY WM. P. BRANNAN. LIKE a delicious dream that fades away When morning zephyr breathes into the room, Bearing from unknown blossoms their perfume— Though thou art gone, still round my spirit play The radiant memories of thy maiden bloom; Delightful fancies riot in my brain, A painful gladness thrills my throbbing heart, And I would live forever thus apart, Deeming such bliss may never come again. Enchanting vision! hast thou fled for aye? Thy seeming presence haunts me with a spell, That musing on thy image thus alway, The world would smile again an Eden-dell Where all things lovely should delight to dwell. * * * * * THE FIRST LOVE OF ADA SOMERS. BY A NEW CONTRIBUTOR. Poca favilla gran Fiamma seconda. DANTE. WHEN Ada Somers was a romp of twelve years, she chanced one day, in too bold a search for some water-lilies, to fall headlong into the stream from whose blue depths they lifted their pretty heads. Truth alone compels us to relate this mishap of Ada’s: for although the _quasi_ drowning of heroines has been a popular tableau of romance ever since streams and heroines were; still, this is the era of investigation; and we who on our railroads outstrip the speed of the bronze horse—we for whom the delicate and trembling wires of the telegraph do the office of a thousand Ariels—we who have called upon the sun to be our portrait-painter, and upon the moon to yield up her secrets that our lecture-rooms may be crowed; surely we have some right to think for ourselves! and we boldly proclaim that nothing can be less sublime and more ridiculous than the loss of one’s equilibrium—a plunge head-foremost—and the spectacle of two inverted feet without any apparent body.