KINDRED HEARTS.

OH! ask not, hope thou not too much
Of sympathy below;

Few are the hearts whence one same touch
Bids the sweet fountains flow:
Few and by still conflicting powers

Forbidden here to meet

Such ties would make this life of ours
Too fair for aught so fleet.

It may be, that thy brother's eye
Sees not as thine, which turns
In such deep reverence to the sky,
Where the rich sunset burns:
It may be, that the breath of spring,
Born amidst violets lone,

A rapture o'er thy soul can bring-
A dream, to his unknown.

The tune that speaks of other times

A sorrowful delight!

The melody of distant chimes,

The sound of waves by night,

The wind that, with so many a tone,
Some chord within can thrill,—
These may have language all thine own,
To him a mystery still.

Yet scorn thou not, for this, the true

The kindly, that from childhood grew,
The faithful to thy tears!

If there be one that o'er the dead
Hath in thy grief borne part,

And watch'd through sickness by thy bed,-
Call his a kindred heart!

But for those bonds all perfect made,
Wherein bright spirits blend,
Like sister flowers of one sweet shade,
With the same breeze that bend,
For that full bliss of thought allied,
Never to mortals given,—
Oh! lay thy lovely dreams aside,
Or lift them unto Heaven.

THE TRAVELLER AT THE SOURCE OF THE NILE.

IN sunset's light, o'er Afric thrown,
A wanderer proudly stood
Beside the well-spring, deep and lone,
Of Egypt's awful flood;

The cradle of that mighty birth,

So long a hidden thing to earth!

He heard its life's first murmuring sound,

A low mysterious tone;

A music sought, but never found

By kings and warriors gone;

He listen'd—and his heart beat high—
That was the song of victory!

The rapture of a conqueror's mood

Rush'd burning through his frame,— The depths of that green solitude

Its torrents could not tame;

Though stillness lay, with eve's last smile—
Round those far fountains of the Nile.

Night came with stars :-across his soul
There swept a sudden change;
E'en at the pilgrim's glorious goal
A shadow dark and strange

Breathed from the thought, so swift to fall
O'er triumph's hour-and is this all?*

No more than this!—what seem'd it now
First by that spring to stand?

• A remarkable description of feelings thus fluctuating from triumph to despondency, is given in Bruce's Abyssinian Travels. The buoyant exultation of his spirits on arriving at the source of the Nile, was almost immediately succeeded by a gloom, which he thus portrays :-" I was, at that very moment, in possession of what had for many years been the principal object of my ambition and wishes; indifference, which, from the usual infirmity of human nature, follows, at least for a time, complete enjoyment, had taken place of it. The marsh and the fountains of the Nile, upon comparison with the rise of many of our rivers, became now a trifling object in my sight. I remembered that magnificent scene in my own native country, where the Tweed, Clyde, and Annan, rise in one hill. I began, in my sorrow, to treat the enquiry about the source of the Nile as a violent effort of a distempered fancy."

A thousand streams of lovelier flow

Bathed his own mountain land! Whence, far o'er waste and ocean track, Their wild, sweet voices call'd him back.

They call'd him back to many a glade,
His childhood's haunt of play,

Where brightly through the beechen shade
Their waters glanced away;

They call'd him, with their sounding waves, Back to his father's hills and graves.

But, darkly mingling with the thought

Of each familiar scene,

Rose up a fearful vision, fraught
With all that lay between;

The Arab's lance, the desert's gloom,
The whirling sands, the red simoom!

Where was the glow of power and pride?
The spirit born to roam?

His alter'd heart within him died
With yearnings for his home!
All vainly struggling to repress
That gush of painful tenderness.

He wept the stars of Afric's heaven
Behold his bursting tears,

E'en on that spot where fate had given

The meed of toiling years!—

Oh, happiness! how far we flee

Thine own sweet paths in search of thee!

CASABIANCA.*

THE boy stood on the burning deck
Whence all but he had fled;

The flame that lit the battle's wreck,
Shone round him o'er the dead.

Yet beautiful and bright he stood,
As born to rule the storm;
A creature of heroic blood,

A proud, though child-like form.

The flames roll'd on-he would not go
Without his Father's word;
That Father, faint in death below,

His voice no longer heard.

He call'd aloud :- 66

Say, Father, say

If yet my task is done ?"

He knew not that the chieftain lay

Unconscious of his son.

Speak, Father!" once again he cried,

"If I may yet be gone!"

And but the booming shots replied,

And fast the flames roll'd on.

Young Casabianca, a boy about thirteen years old, son to the Admiral of the Orient, remained at his post (in the Battle of the Nile) after the ship had taken fire, and all the guns had been abandoned; and perished in the explosion of the vessel, when the flames had reached the powder.