You take no interest in these remarks, perhaps; but treasure them. If ever, Cousin Mary, you drive a dray, they will serve you.
[To be continued.]
* * * * *
THY PSYCHE.
Like a strain of wondrous music rising
up in cloister dim,
Through my life’s unwritten measures
thou dost steal, a glorious
hymn!
All the joys of earth and heaven in the
singing meet, and flow
Richer, sweeter, for the wailing of an
undertone of woe.
How I linger, how I listen for each mellow
note that falls,
Clear as chime of angels floating downward
o’er the jasper walls!
Every night, when winds are moaning round
my chamber by the sea,
Thine’s the face that through the
darkness latest looks with love at
me;
And I dream, ere thou departest, thou
dost press thy lips to mine;—
Then I sleep as slept the Immortals after
draughts of Hebe’s wine!
And I clasp thee, out of slumber when
the rosy day is born,
As the soul, with rapture waking, clasps
the resurrection morn.
’Twas thy soul-wife, ’twas
thy Psyche, one uplifted, radiant day,
Thou didst call me;—how divinely
on thy brow Love’s glory lay!
Thou my Cupid,—not the boy-god
whom the Thespians did adore,
But the man, so large, so noble, truer
god than Venus bore.
I thy Psyche;—yet what blackness
in this thread of gold is wove!
Thou canst never, never lead me, proud,
before the throne of Jove!
All the gods might toil to help thee through
the longest summer
day;—
Still would watch the fatal Sisters, spinning
in the twilight gray;
And their calm and silent faces, changeless
looking through the
gloom,
From eternity, would answer, “Thou
canst ne’er escape thy doom!”
Couldst thou clasp me, couldst thou claim
me, ’neath the soft
Elysian
skies,
Then what music and what odor through
their azure depths would rise!
Roses all the Hours would scatter, every
god would bring us joy,
So, in perfect loving blended, bliss would
never know alloy!
O my heart! the vision changes; fades
the soft celestial blue;
Dies away the rapturous music, thrilling
all my pulses through!
Lone I sit within my chamber; storms are
beating ’gainst the pane,
And my tears are falling faster than the
chill December rain;—
Yet, though I am doomed to linger, joyless,
on this earthly shore,
Thou art Cupid!—I am Psyche!—we
are wedded evermore!
DR. WICHERN AND HIS PUPILS.
“Would you like to spend a day at Horn and visit the Rauhe Haus?” inquired my friend, Herr X., of me, one evening, as we sat on the bank of the Inner Alster, in the city of Hamburg. I had already visited most of the “lions” in and about Hamburg, and had found in Herr X. a most intelligent and obliging cicerone. So I said, “Yes,” without hesitation, though knowing little more of the Rauhe Haus than that it was a reform school of some kind.