What time the gods kept carnival,
  Tricked out in star and flower,
  And in cramp elf and saurian forms
  They swathed their too much power.

  Time and Thought were my surveyors,
  They laid their courses well,
  They boiled the sea, and baked the layers
  Of granite, marl, and shell.

  But him—­the man-child glorious,
  Where tarries he the while? 
  The rainbow shines his harbinger,
  The sunset gleams his smile.

  My boreal lights leap upward,
  Forthright my planets roll,
  And still the man-child is not born,
  The summit of the whole.

  Must time and tide forever run? 
  Will never my winds go sleep in the West? 
  Will never my wheels, which whirl the sun
  And satellites, have rest?

  Too much of donning and doffing,
  Too slow the rainbow fades;
  I weary of my robe of snow,
  My leaves, and my cascades.

  I tire of globes and races,
  Too long the game is played;
  What, without him, is summer’s pomp,
  Or winter’s frozen shade?

  I travail in pain for him,
  My creatures travail and wait;
  His couriers come by squadrons,
  He comes not to the gate.

  Twice I have moulded an image,
  And thrice outstretched my hand,
  Made one of day, and one of night,
  And one of the salt-sea-sand.

  I moulded kings and saviours,
  And bards o’er kings to rule;
  But fell the starry influence short,
  The cup was never full.

  Yet whirl the glowing wheels once more,
  And mix the bowl again,
  Seethe, Fate! the ancient elements,
  Heat, cold, dry, wet, and peace and pain

  Let war and trade and creeds and song
  Blend, ripen race on race,—­
  The sunburnt world a man shall breed
  Of all the zones and countless days.

  No ray is dimmed, no atom worn,
  My oldest force is good as new,
  And the fresh rose on yonder thorn
  Gives back the bending heavens in dew.

NEMOPHILY

An earnest plea was once entered in Maga’s pages for the bodies of saints.  Yet it is to be hoped that others not included in that respectable class may have physical needs also, and it is to be feared that they may not be above the necessity of a little of the same invigorating tonic.  For there are not a few on this continent of ours, whom the Avvocata del Diavolo would certainly expect to enter a nolo contendere, who stand in much need of a healthy animalism.  That these sinners would be benefited by what Mr. Kingsley’s critics call “muscular Christianity” cannot be denied.  For they are not sinners beyond all hope of amendment, by any means; and their offences being rather against the laws and light of Nature than against any of the commands of the Decalogue, it is earnestly desired that they be brought within the pale of promise, even if they never reach the sacred fane of canonization.