s fall of States and Empires vast.

No sounding theme from lips of fire,
No marvel of the immortal quill,
Can teach a moral, sterner--higher,
Than thou, so helpless and so still.
Reft as thou art by blistering burn--
Blinded and shorn--poor stricken Fly!
The wise may stoop and lessons learn
From thy unmeasured agony.

It tells how maid, in guileless youth,
Flies tow'rds her Love with trusting wing,
Bruises her heart 'gainst broken truth,
And falls, like thee, a crippled thing.
How man in bacchanalian sphere
Soars to the heat of Pleasure's sun,
Then, by gradations dark and drear,
Sinks low as thee, poor wingless one:
How hearts from proud Ambition's height
Have drooped to darkest, lowest hell--
From blazing noon to pitchy night,
With pangs a demon-tongue may tell:
How aspirations glory-fraught
Have gained the goal in dark despair;
How golden hopes have come to nought
But wailings in the midnight air.

There! and the life I ne'er could give
In pitying tenderness I've ta'en;
Far better thus to die, than live
A life of helpless, hopeless pain.
Ambitious hearts--high-vaulting pow'rs--
That aim to grasp life's distant sky,
See through the spirit-blinding hours
What wrought the fall of yonder Fly.

TO A FRIEND.

I fear to name thee. If I were
To do so, I could never tell
What virtues crown thy nature rare;
'Twould pain thy heart--I know it well.

Thou dost not ask for thy reward
In words that all the world may hear,
For thoughtful acts and kind regard
By thee for others everywhere.

Thou seek'st alone for grateful thought
From those to whom thy worth is known;
So for much good thine heart hath wrought
Find gratitude within mine own.

RETRIBUTION.

A spider once wove a right marvellous net,
Whose equal no human hand ever wove yet,
So complete in design was each beautiful fret,
And finished in every particular.
And the wily old architect, proud of his craft,
Ensconced in a snug little sanctum abaft,
Laid wait for the flies; and he chuckled and laughed,
As he pricked up his organs auricular.

A week had elapsed, and the spider still wrought
Fell ruin on all the frail flies that he caught;
All right rules of decency set he at nought:
Each meal made him much more rapacious.
But his foot got entangled one horrible hour,