A century was as a single day. What is a day to an immortal soul? A breath,--no more. And yet I hold one hour Beyond all price,--that hour when from the heavens I circled near and nearer to the earth, Nearer and nearer, till I brushed my wings Against the pointed chestnuts, where a stream That foamed and chattered over pebbly shoals Fled through the bryony, and with a shout Leaped headlong down a precipice: and there, Gathering wild-flowers in the cool ravine, Wandered a woman more divinely shaped Than any of the creatures of the air, Or river-goddesses, or restless shades Of noble matrons marvellous in their time For beauty and great suffering; and I sung, I charmed her thought, I gave her dreams; and then Down from the sunny atmosphere I stole And nestled in her bosom. There I slept From moon to moon, while in her eyes a thought Grew sweet and sweeter, deepening like the dawn, A mystical forewarning! When the stream, Breaking through leafless brambles and dead leaves, Piped shriller treble, and from chestnut-boughs The fruit dropped noiseless through the autumn night, I gave a quick, low cry, as infants do: We weep when we are born, not when we die! So was it destined; and thus came I here, To walk the earth and wear the form of man, To suffer bravely as becomes my state,-- One step, one grade, one cycle nearer God. And knowing these things, can I stoop to fret And lie and haggle in the market-place, Give dross for dross, or everything for nought? No! let me sit above the crowd, and sing, Waiting with hope for that miraculous change Which seems like sleep; and though I waiting starve, I cannot kiss the idols that are set By every gate, in every street and park,-- I cannot fawn, I cannot soil my soul: For I am of the mountains and the sea, The deserts, and the caverns in the earth, The catacombs and fragments of old worlds. * * * * * CLARIAN'S PICTURE. A LEGEND OF NASSAU HALL. "Turbine raptus ingenii."--SCALIGER. Mac and I dined together yesterday,--as we are used to do at least once or twice every year, for the sake of our ever-mellowing friendship, and those good old times in which it began. Like all who are ripe enough to have memories, we delight to recall the period of our vernal equinox, and to moralize, with gentle sadness and many wise wags of our frosty polls, upon the events in which that period was prolific; and so, when the cloth was removed yesterday, and we sat toying with our cigars and our Sherry, our talk insensibly drifted back to those merry college-days when we not infrequently "heard the chimes at midnight."