Old Songs

From the painting by R. Potzelberger

A cross, and oblivion, silence, and death!

Hark! the wind's softest sob; hark! the ocean's deep breath;
Hark! the fisher-boy singing his way o'er the plains:

Of thy glory, thy hope, thy young beauty's bright wreath,
Not a trace, not a sigh, not an echo remains.

ON A SLAB OF ROSE MARBLE.

There should have come forth of thee
Some new-born divinity.

When the marble-cutters hewed
Through thy noble block their way,
They broke in with footsteps rude
Where a Venus sleeping lay,
And the Goddess' wounded veins
Colored thee with roseate stains.
Alas! and must we hold it truth

That every rare and precious thing,
Flung forth at random without ruth,
Trodden under foot may lie?
The crag where, in sublime repose,
The eagle stoops to rest his wing,
No less than any wayside rose

Dropped in the common dust to die?
Can the mother of us all

Leave her work, to fullness brought,
Lost in the gulf of chance to fall,
As oblivion swallows thought?
Does the briny tempest whirl

To the workman's feet the pearl?
Shall the vulgar, idle crowd
For all ages be allowed

To degrade earth's choicest treasure
At the arbitrary pleasure

Of a mason or a churl?

Το ΡΕΡΑ.

(Translated by Toru Dutt.)
PEPA! when the night has come,
And Mamma has bid Good Night,
By thy light, half clad and dumb,

As thou kneelest out of sight, —

Laid by cap and sweeping vest
Ere thou sinkest to repose,

VOL. XXIII. — §

(From "Portraits of Men": translated by Forsyth Edeveain.)

[CHARLES AUGUSTIN SAINTE-BEUVE, one of the greatest literary critics of modern times, was born at Boulogne-sur-Mer, December 23, 1804. Having completed his studies in Paris at the colleges Charlemagne and Bourbon, he entered upon his literary career as a book reviewer, and became a contributor to the Globe, the Revue de Paris, the Revue des Deux Mondes, the National, and the Constitutionnel, in which last appeared, in 1849, the first series of his famous Causeries du Lundi " ("Monday Talks"). They mark an epoch in the intellectual history of Europe, and revolutionized criticism. Sainte-Beuve was elected to the Academy in 1845, and was nominated senator in 1865. He died at Paris, October 13, 1869. Besides the "Causeries" he wrote: "6 History of Port-Royal," " Contemporary Portraits," "Châteaubriand," etc.]

66

AS WITH an army so with a nation: it is the bounden duty of every generation to bury their dead, and to confer the last honors on the departed. It were not right that the charming