--Sat prates biberunt,--he said. A sick man that gets talking about himself, a woman that gets talking about her baby, and an author that begins reading out of his own book, never know when to stop. You'll think of some of these things you've been getting half asleep over by and by. I don't want you to believe anything I say; I only want you to try to see what makes me believe it. My young friend, the Astronomer, has, I suspect, been making some addition to his manuscript. At any rate some of the lines he read us in the afternoon of this same day had never enjoyed the benefit of my revision, and I think they had but just been written. I noticed that his manner was somewhat more excited than usual, and his voice just towards the close a little tremulous. Perhaps I may attribute his improvement to the effect of my criticisms, but whatever the reason, I think these lines are very nearly as correct as they would have been if I had looked them over. WIND-CLOUDS AND STAR-DRIFTS. VII What if a soul redeemed, a spirit that loved While yet on earth and was beloved in turn, And still remembered every look and tone Of that dear earthly sister who was left Among the unwise virgins at the gate, Itself admitted with the bridegroom's train, What if this spirit redeemed, amid the host Of chanting angels, in some transient lull Of the eternal anthem, heard the cry Of its lost darling, whom in evil hour Some wilder pulse of nature led astray And left an outcast in a world of fire, Condemned to be the sport of cruel fiends, Sleepless, unpitying, masters of the skill To wring the maddest ecstasies of pain From worn-out souls that only ask to die, Would it not long to leave the bliss of Heaven, Bearing a little water in its hand To moisten those poor lips that plead in vain With Him we call our Father? Or is all So changed in such as taste celestial joy They hear unmoved the endless wail of woe, The daughter in the same dear tones that hushed Her cradled slumbers; she who once had held A babe upon her bosom from its voice Hoarse with its cry of anguish, yet the same?