"Alas for us! — for whom the columned houses,
We left afore-time, cheerless must abide;
Cheerless the hearth where now no guest carouses,
No minstrel raises song at eventide;
And O, more cheerless than all else beside.
The wisiful hearts with heavy longing full;
The wife that watched us on the waning tide.
The sire whose eyes with weariness are dull,
The mother whose slow tears fall on the woven wool!
"If swine we be, if we indeed be swine,
Daughter of Persè, make us swine indeed;
Well-pleased upon the litter's straw to lyne,
Well-pleased on acorn shales and mast to feed.
Moved by all instincts of the bestial breed;
But O Unmerciful, O Pitiless,
Leave us not thus with sick men's hearts to bleed!
To waste long days in yearning, dumb distress.
In memory of things gone, and utter hopelessness!
"Leave us at least, if not the things we were,
At least consentient to the things we be;
Not hapless doomed to loathe the acts we share.
And senseful roll in senseless savagery:
For surely cursed above all cursed are we.
And surely this the bitterest of ill;
To feel the old aspirings fair and free
Become blind movements of a powerless will.
Dispersed through swine-like frames, to swine-like issues still.
"But make us men again, for that thou mayst!
Yea, make us men, enchantress, and restore
These grovelling forms, degraded and debased,
To fair embodiments of men once more;
Yea, by all men that ever woman bore;
Yea, e'en by him, who yet, brought forth in pain.
Shall draw sustaining from thy bosom's core, —
O'er whose thy face yet kindly shall remain,
And find its like therein, — make thou us men again!
"Make thou us men again, if men but groping
That dark hereafter which th' Olympians keep;
Make thou us men again, if men but hoping
Behind death's door security of sleep:
For yet to laugh is somewhat, and to weep;
To feel delight of living, and to plough
The salt-blown acres of the shoreless deep;
Better, yea, better far, all these than bow
Foul faces to foul earth, and yearn — as we do now!"
So they, in speech unsyllabled. But she.
The bitter goddess, born to be their bane,
Uplifting straight her wand of ivory.
Compelled them groaning to the styes again;
Where they, once more, in misery, were fain
To rend the oaken woodwork as before,
And tear the troughs in impotence of pain.
Not knowing, they, that even at the door
Divine Odysseus stood, — as Hermes told of yore.
Good Words.
Bottled Light. — Countless accidents, as every one knows, arise from the use of matches. To obtain light without employing them, and so without the danger of setting things on fire, an ingenious contrivance is now used by the watchmen of Paris in all magazines where explosive or inflammable materials are kept. Any one may easily make trial of it. Take an oblong phial of the whitest and clearest glass, and put into it a piece of phosphorus about the size of a pea. Pour some olive oil, heated to the boiling point, upon the phosphorus: fill the phial about one-third full and then cork it tightly. To use this novel light, remove the cork, allow the air to enter the phial, and then recork it. The empty space in the phial will become luminous, and the light obtained will be equal to that of a lamp. When the light grows dim, its power can be increased by taking out the cork, and allowing a fresh supply of air to enter the phial. In winter it is sometimes necessary to heat the phial between the hands in order to increase the fluidity of the oil. The apparatus, thus prepared, may be used for six months.
An oriental museum has been lately opened at Vienna, which is very curious and complete. It consists of fourteen rooms assigned to China, Japan, Egypt, Persia, Turkey, Tunis, and Morocco. A well-known orientalist, Baron Hoffmann, is at the head of this new establishment.
