IX.

Should not this gracious world, how fairly dressed
In shapes and hues of wonder, light mine eye
With joy as full, with awe as deeply blessed,
And wrap my soul in equal ecstasy?
Alike on earth, in characters of light,

Sublime as those revealed when Moses trod
The thundering mountain in a nation's sight,
Is stamped the mystic finger of their God.

X.

Oh, yes! I love the deepening firmament,-
Its living spheres of glory-every flower
Of hill, or brook, or dell-wild ocean, rent

By storm, or slumbering in the twilight hour:
But in the fuller majesty of mind,
Whose beams intenser glow as ages fly,
A holier sympathy my senses find,—

A firrner pledge of Immortality!

THE DESTRUCTION OF BABEL.

BY WILLIAM HOWITT.

FORTH walked the king upon the terraced height
Of Babel ;-forth he walked, and saw how fair
Shone all its palaces, its hanging groves,
Its massy sculptures, and its waters broad
Beating its walls, and glad with many a sail.
And as his eye now upward glanced, and viewed
The heaven-ascending tower-his wondrous work,--
And downwards whence the hum of myriads came-

Proudly his heart did question of itself,

As one long after on the self-same spot

"Is not this Babel, that my hand hath built

For the great house of my unbounded realm,
And for the honour of my majesty?"

Oh! 'twas a glorious scene!-Throughout the earth Lay one wide solitude. No people now Did till its flood-depopulated fields,— But here, the work of his imperial power,

Babel arose, sole city of the earth,

Sole home of man, the mother of all realms;

And through its wide fair streets, and on its roofs,
And up its marble flight of many steps
Streamed its gay population all abroad,
Gold-sandalled, silken-robed, the festival
Holding of great Nehushtan, serpent-god,

Whose vast form, wreathed upon his pillared height,

Gleamed o'er the city far.

And gladly did he smile, as

Glad was the king,

on he trod

Amid the city crowd; when, lo! his eye

Fell on a form at which his mien grew dark.

To and fro paced, with hoary, streaming beard,

And in his girdled robe of camelet,

That wild shape, with stern air, and downward eyes;

And ever as the light and laughing crowd

Drew near, they started wide, with sudden hush

-

And livid lips, that scarce could breath the name
Of Hud! the fearful Hud! Not so the king!
He saw him, and he forward sprang, and cried
"Oh prophet! hast thou left thy reedy bed,-
Thy ghastly cave beside the desert Frat,
Once more to look abroad with envious eyes;

Once more to tell us thy perpetual tale

Of a destruction that doth never come?

Seest thou that thousand-times-denounced tower?

How gloriously it stands, and soars aloft

Into heaven's shine, and soon shall reach its height!