168

THE SKELETON OF THE MAMMOTH CAVE.

On earthly joy that reed so frail,

Too oft, alas, it dares to lean,

'Till sickness comes, and lifts the veil,
From things unseen!

Shows the vain aim of human cares,

Clears a new course and points the goal-
For life or death alike prepares,

The tutored soul.

Che Skeleton of the Mammoth Cave.

"In this small subterranean chamber sat, in solemn silence, one of the human species. The arms were folded, and the hands laid across the breast. There it had been, perhaps, for centuries."-Rambles in the Mammoth Cave. PALE spectre of the mighty Past! Sole relic of an ancient race! Unshroud the gloom around thee cast, Let fall the veil that hides thy face.

Speak! when the world to being sprang,
When Nature moved to Order's law;
When morning stars together sang,

As young creation's dawn they saw.
Was thy gigantic race the first

To hail the new and glorious morn,
When Light upon the vision burst,
And Time was yet unborn?

Wast thou a god? or didst thou lie,
A dust speck on thy mother earth,
Till angel tongues proclaimed on high,
A human soul had birth?

STANZAS.

As well some stunted shrub compare,
With forest oak or mountain pine,
As our pale puny race may dare,
Comparison with thine.

And woman-matchless, peerless, bright,
A being of angelic mould,

Beamed like a ray of living light,
Upon a world else drear and cold.

Ah! vain the speculative thought,
That fain would trace thy natal day;
Thy tomb with mystery is fraught,
And none may roll the stone away.

Death's raven-wing hath shadowed thee:
Death's cold hand on thy heart doth lie:

And in thy pulseless form we see,

The type of all mortality.

169

HANNAH LLOYD.

Stanzas.

TRY, and perchance thou mayst not err,
To sound the depth of ocean caves,
Where late and long the mariner,

Impels his barque o'er unknown waves.
But think not with thine utmost art,
To fathom all thy brother's heart!

There is an evil and a good

In every heart unknown to thee, A darker or a brighter mood,

Than aught thine eye can ever see: Words, actions, faintly mark the whole, That lies within a human soul !

Perhaps thy sterner mind condemns,
Some brother mind, that, reasoning less,
The tide of error slowly stems,

In pain, in love, in weariness:

Thou callest him weak, he may be so-
What made him weak, thou canst not know.

Perhaps thy spirit's calm repose,

No evil dream hath come to spoil:
A firm resistless front it shows,
Amid the battle's fiercest broil :
"Tis well-enjoy and bless thy lot;
Still pitying him who shares it not!

The pure, the holy, they perchance,
Around thy path have still been seen;
Nor could thy foot a step advance,

But there their pious aid hath been:
Ah! happy in that better state,
Yet pray for those more desolate !

E. TAYLOR.

It is good to seal the infant forehead with the mark of hope. It is good to form the infant mind: to take the infant reason patiently and gently by the hand, and guide it in its little excursions. Oh! it is good, beyond all names of goodness, to spread out the wings of sheltering love over an infant soul, and ut it on that ath which leads to its eternal home. This is that ladder which the Patriarch saw in vision. To mount at first is but a single step: for it is planted in the nursery-at the cradle-side-and thence leads upward, and upward, and onward, and onward; with holy angels ascending and descending -high over time and sense and earth, through the clouds of distance and the shades of death, to the highest heaven and the throne of God! EVERETT.

Mantell's Museum.

COLUMBUS of the subterranean mine!

Star of Geology! whose rays enlighten
What nature in her darkest depths had hurled-
Mantell! we gladly welcome thee to Brighton.

No more shall we confine our thoughts and hopes,
To rounds of dull unintellectual pleasure,
For thy unparagoned Museum, opes

Exhaustless stores of scientific treasure.

Primeval nature here uplifts her veil

Here spreads her mystic volume, in whose pages Her votaries read, and reverently hail

The wondrous records of uncounted ages.

Wrecks of an olden time are here combined—
With forms more strange than fabulous chimeras:
Medals that nature to her caves consigned,

As stamped memorials of her changful eras.

Oh how bewildering is the thought, that erst,
Hundreds of centuries ere man's formation,
Through Sussex weald some Mississippi burst,
In all the pomp of tropical creation.

Ferns arborescent on its flowery shore,

With giant palms and Southern fruits were blended, While birds uncouth, whose races are no more,

Poised on the torrid air with wings extended.

172

MANTELL'S MUSEUM.

Unto these sunny banks-this thermal tide,
Strange and stupendous animals resorted:
And here a monster monarch, undefied,
The marvellous Iguanodon disported:

In length a whale-but of the lizard race—
This horned leviathan with teeth tremendous,
Found 'mong the prostrate Palms a resting-place :
For trees were rushes to his bulk stupendous.

Doubt ye these startling facts? look round- -a proof
Some fossil will afford of each averment:
From cliff or weald exhumed-and 'neath this roof,
Our Mantell lives, who caused their dis-internt.

Yes, where the huntsman winds his matin horn,

And the couched hare amid the covert trembles, Where shepherds tend their flocks, or grows the corn, Where fashion on our gay Parade assembles;

Wild horses, deer, and elephants, have strayed,
Trampling on early ocean's buried races;
Beneath us their successive bones are laid,
A chronologic scale of burial places.

The heaven-exploring Newton brought to light,
New spheres, new laws, new wonders of creation:
Mantell hath rivalled him in realms of night,
New worlds discovering by excavation.

Both have confirmed the Psalmist " If I fly
Beyond the seas, upon the wings of morning,
Dive into earth, Oh Lord, or seek the sky,

Still of thine omnipresence have I warning."