Oh, Maud and Madge, dream on together,
  With never a pang of jealous fear! 
  For, ere the bitter St. Agnes weather
  Shall whiten another year,

  Robed for the bridal, and robed for the tomb,
  Braided brown hair, and golden tress,
  There’ll be only one of you left for the bloom
  Of the bearded lips to press,—­

  Only one for the bridal pearls,
  The robe of satin and Brussels lace,—­
  Only one to blush through her curls
  At the sight of a lover’s face.

  Oh, beautiful Madge, in your bridal white,
  For you the revel has just begun;
  But for her who sleeps in your arms to-night
  The revel of Life is done!

  But robed and crowned with your saintly bliss,
  Queen of heaven and bride of the sun,
  Oh, beautiful Maud, you’ll never miss
  The kisses another hath won!

ROCK, TREE, AND MAN.

It is an interesting thought, that will occur to a contemplative mind, that the world contained, from the time when it was a nebulous mass, all the materials of the future individuals of the animate and inanimate creation,—­that the elaborate creatures of the vegetable and animal kingdoms, as well as every mineral, were floating in amorphous masses through space.  Human beings, like genius that was condensed from vapor at the rubbing of Aladdin’s lamp, were diffused in gases, waiting the touch of the Great Magician’s wand to bring them into form and infuse them with life.  In all the distinct creations of God, from the time when the waters first subsided and the dry land appeared, in everything organized and inorganized, earth, air, sea, and their inhabitants, there is no element which was not in existence when the earth was without form and void.

Philosophers tell us that three hundred and fifty millions of years elapsed after the globe began to solidify, before it was fitted for the lowest plants.  And more than one million years more were necessary, after the first plants began to grow upon its young surface, to bring it forward to the condition which the Divine Father deemed suitable for the reception of man.  If the days of Cain and Abel were the infancy of the world,—­as we have sometimes heard,—­when will it come to maturity?  Its divisions of life cannot follow the plan of animated beings; for, with an embryonic condition of an indefinite period, and an infancy of three hundred and fifty millions of years, more or less, we can hardly expect that it will really have begun to enjoy the freedom of adult life, before the human race will have attained to its earthly limit of perfectibility, or have so overstocked the surface of the globe as to make it necessary to remove to some larger sphere.