The laws which govern matter are mysterious. The entire of this process is so wonderful, that to descant upon it would be unnecessary; and, after all, it is but another step taken upon the path of science, each advance upon which, whilst disclosing new scenes and greater wonders, is only the needful preliminary to another which will display yet more! N. THE FIELD OF KUNNERSDORF. (FROM THE GERMAN OF TIEDGE.) Day is exiled from the bowers of Twilight; Leaf and flower are drooping in the wood; And the stars, as on a dark-stained skylight, Glass their ancient glory in the flood. Let me here, where nightwinds through the yew sing, Where the moon is chary of her beams, Consecrate an hour to mournful musing Over Man and Man’s delirious dreams. Pines and yews! envelope me in deeper, Dunner shadow, sombre as the grave, While with moans, as of a troubled sleeper, Gloomily above my head ye wave! Let mine eye look down from hence on yonder Battle-plain, which Night in pity dulls-- Let my sad imagination ponder Over Kunnersdorf,[1] that Place of Skulls! Dost thou re-illume these wastes, O Summer? Hast thou raised anew thy trampled bowers? Will the wild bee come again a hummer Here, within the houses of thy flowers? Can thy sunbeams light, thy mild rains water This Aceldema, this _human_ soil, Since that dark day of redundant slaughter When the blood of men flowed here like oil? Ah, yes! Nature, and Thou, God of Nature, Ye are ever bounteous!--Man alone, Man it is whose frenzies desolate your World, and make it in sad truth his own! Here saw Frederick fall his bravest warriors-- Master of _thy_ World, thou wert too great! Heaven had need to stablish curbing-barriers ’Gainst thine inroads on the World of Fate! O, could all thy coronals of splendour Dupe thy memory of that ghastly day? Could the Muses, could the Graces[2] render Smooth and bright a corse-o’ercovered way? No! the accusing blood-gouts ever trickle Down each red leaf of thy chaplet-crown! Men fell here, as corn before the sickle, Fell, to aggrandise thy false renown! Here the veteran drooped beside the springald. Here sank Strength and Symmetry in line-- Here crushed Hope and gasping Valour mingled, And, Destroyer, the wild work was thine! What and wherefore is this doom funereal? Whence this Tide of Being’s flow and ebb? Why rends Destiny the fine material Of Existence’s divinest web? Vainly ask we!--Dim age calls to dim age-- Answer, save an echo, cometh none-- _Here_ stands Man, of Life in Death an image, _There_, invisibly, The Living One!