* * * * *

THE LAST BIRD.

      Little Bird that singest
  Far atop, this warm December day,
      Heaven bestead thee, that thou wingest,
  Ere the welcome song is done, thy way

      To more certain weather,
  Where, built high and solemnly, the skies,
      Shaken by no storm together,
  Fixed in vaults of steadfast sapphire rise!

      There, the smile that mocks us
  Answers with its warm serenity;
      There, the prison-ice that locks us
  Melts forgotten in a purple sea.

      There, thy tuneful brothers,
  In the palm’s green plumage waiting long,
      Mate them with the myriad others,
  Like a broken rainbow bound with song.

      Winter scarce is hidden,
  Veiled within this fair, deceitful sky;
      Fly, ere, from his ambush bidden,
  He descend in ruin swift and nigh!

      By the Summer stately,
  Truant, thou wast fondly reared and bred: 
      Dost thou linger here so lately,
  Knowing not thy beauteous friend is dead,—­

     Like to hearts that, clinging
  Fervent where their first delight was fed,
     Move us with untimely singing
  Of the hopes whose blossom-time is sped?

     Beauties have their hour,
  Safely perched on the Spring-budding tree;
     For the ripened soul is trust and power,
  And, beyond, the calm eternity.

* * * * *

THE UTAH EXPEDITION: 

ITS CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES.

[Concluded.]

On the 3d of July, the Commissioners started on their return to the States.  During their stay at Salt Lake City, the doubt which they had been led to entertain of the wisdom of the policy which they were the agents to carry out, had ripened into a firm conviction.

The people who were congregated on the eastern shore of Lake Utah did not begin to repair to their homes until the army had marched thirty or forty miles away from the city; and even then there was a secrecy about their movements which was as needless as it was mysterious.  They returned in divisions of from twenty to a hundred families each.  Their trains, approaching the city during the afternoon, would encamp on some creek in its vicinity until midnight, when, if intended for the northern settlements, they would pass rapidly through the streets, or else make a circuit around the city-wall.  August arrived before the return was completed.