Remember, never to the hill or plain, Valley and wood, without her cuckoo-strain, Comes the fresh Spring, in all her green com pleted. Beloved, I, amid the darkness greeted By a doubtful spirit-voice, in that doubt's pain Cry, "Speak once more, can fear "" thou lovest! Who Too many stars, though each in heaven shall roll? Too many flowers, though each shall crown the year? Say thou dost love me, love me, love me! Toll The silver iterance; only minding, dear, To love me still in silence, with thy soul. Mrs. Browning. IN AN EXHORTATION TO HUSBANDS. you, the words of St. Paul, I exhort who are a husband, to "love your wife even as you love yourself." Give honor to her, as the more delicate vessel; respect the delicacy of her frame and the delicacy of her mind. Continue through life the same attention, the same manly tenderness, which in youth gained her affections. Reflect, that though her bodily charms are decayed as she is advanced in age, yet that her mental charms are increased; and that, though novelty is worn off, yet that habit and a thousand acts of kindness have strengthened your mutual friendship. Devote yourself to her; and, after the hours of business, let the pleasures which you most highly prize be found in her society. Dr. Freeman. IT MAN ALONE. is not good that the man should be alone." Loaded with the gifts of God, he still wants something, of which he is himself ignorant, or of which he knows nothing except by a vague presentiment, a helper "like to himself," without which life is to him but a solitude, and Eden a desert. Endowed by a nature too communicative to be self-sufficient, he demands a partnership, a support, a complement; and only half lives while he lives alone. Made to think, to talk, to love, his thought is in search of another thought to stimulate it, and to reveal it unto itself: his word dies away in sad ness on the air, or awakens a mere echo which does violence to it, rather than responds to it; and his love knows not where to fasten itself, and, falling back upon himself, threatens to become a devouring self-love. His whole being, in fine, aspires to another self; but that other self does not exist: "for Adam there was not found a helpmeet." The visible creatures that surround him are too far below him, the invis-` ible Being who has given him life too far above him, to unite their condition to his. Then God formed woman, and the great problem was solved. Behold here what Adam demanded, that other self which is himself, and at the same time not himself. Adolph Monod. LOVE DISCLOSED. HE violet loves a sunny bank, THE The cowslip loves the lea, The scarlet-creeper loves the elm ; The sunshine kisses mount and vale, The west winds kiss the clover-bloom; The oriole weds his mottled mate, Heaven's marriage-ring is round the earth : Bayard Taylor. BEGINNINGS. MAN and wife are equally concerned to avoid all offences of each other in the beginning of their conversation. Every little thing can blast an infant blossom, and the breath of the south can shake the little rings of the vine when first they begin to curl like the locks of a new-weaned boy; but when, by age and consolidation, they stiffen into the hardness of a stem, and have, by the warm embraces of the sun and the kisses of heaven, brought forth their clusters, they can endure the storms of the north and the loud noises of a tempest, and yet never be broken. So are the early unions of an unfixed marriage; watchful and observant, jealous and busy, inquisitive and careful, and apt to take alarm at every unkind word. After the hearts of the man and the wife are endeared and hardened by a mutual confidence and experience, longer than artifice and` pretence can last, there are a great many remembrances, and some things present, that dash all little unkindnesses in pieces. Jeremy Taylor. I EPITHALAMIUM. SAW two clouds at morning, And in the dawn they floated on, And mingled into one : I thought that morning cloud was blest, I saw two summer currents Flow smoothly to their meeting, And join their course, with silent force, In peace each other greeting: Calm was their course through banks of green, While dimpling eddies played between. |