That earth confessed such beauty-to abide
With these were life-vain shadows all beside.
O cold the hearts that from such 'witching sway
Could turn unmoved and passionless away.

But tho' less genial prove our western clime,
To Art's bright reign, than when in olden time,
Thy noblest influence filled Athena's halls,
While thundering plaudits shook her marble walls—
Yet have thy temples rose, thine altars smiled,
Where late the savage tracked the pathless wild,
And far around thy festive notes are borne,
Ere fade the echoes of the huntsman's horn.

Once more we bid thee welcome to our shores,
Confess thy empire and assert thy cause,

Again we haunt thy courts, throng round thy shrine,
And pour soft incense to the breathing Nine.

Oft when the wint'ry storms shall hurtle round,
Or silent snow-flakes print the frozen ground,
When the cold rain comes pattering on the blast,
And mantling clouds night's blazing host o'ercast,
Here shall we sit in this enchanted hall,

While "breathing thoughts and burning words" enthral,Regardless of the cold world's sordid strife,

And all the hollow mimicries of life

Where vainer actors idler pageants play,

And wear their masks in the broad eye of day.

Oft shall young beauty to this shrine repair,
And manhood here cast off life's coiling care,
Entranced and spell-bound by her potent sway,
Who" calls each slumbering passion into play"-
Exulting, trembling, as her accents flow

In varying strains of triumph or of woe

Now decked in smiles, and now her brow o'er fraught With the pale cast of melancholy thought.

Far thro' the twilight vistas of the past,

Where gathering years their cloudy mantles cast,
Oft turns her eagle eye, and at its glance,
The shadows vanish from that drear expanse—
Lo, at her gaze night melteth into day,
And the dark mist of ages rolls away!

Each old romantic region hath she traced,
And gathered many a floweret from the waste,
Which fancy nurtured with her softest dews,
While wit and wisdom lent their golden hues.
She hath "called spirits from the vasty deep,"
Roused kings and heroes from their dreamless sleep,
Restored the scenes of a chivalrous age,
Where knightly forms heroic conflicts wage,
The victor's triumph on th' ensanguined field,
The plume, the penon, and the blazon'd shield-
Bade the dead lover's clay-cold bosom glow,
And the slain warrior meet once more his foe,

And caused them for a night on earth to roam,
Then pass like spectres to their silent home.

And now she comes with all her shadowy train
To hold her court within this gorgeous fane—
Here her bright banner fearlessly unfurls,
Nor heeds the pointless shaft the bigot hurls.
Boundless her influence, her intent sublime,
To cherish virtue and to shield from crime,
With loftiest theme to rouse the languid heart,
And stern reproof with subtle grace impart;
To wake the noble love of well earned fame,
And teach the glory of a deathless name.
She shows how heroes lived and martyrs died
And fills the exulting breast with god-like pride,
That such high energies to man are given,
Το conquer earth and ope the gates of heaven.

Such themes new vigor to the heart supply,
Flush every cheek and light up every eye.

Whether in gorgeous drapery she is seen,
Moving before us like an empire's queen-
Or clothed in all the majesty of woe,

Bids beauty's tears like molten diamonds glow-
Or wreathed in smiles, with soft seducing glance,
Makes the warm life blood through the pulses dance,
Still ever beautiful she meets the sight,

Taking all shapes to furnish new delight,

Forever changing, yet forever true

To one fond aim-approving smiles from you.
Long may those smiles our virgin temple grace,
And SHAKSPEARE's spirit hallow all the place.

IMPOSSIBILITY OF ATHEISM.

BY THE REV. CHARLES T. BROOKS.

MEN have, in all ages and regions of the world, felt the great truth that

"The awful shadow of some unseen power

Floats though unseen among us."

"

And one who will study with a penetrating eye the heathen mythology and mysteries, will find clear traces of a belief in one God of gods running through all,-will find reason to say of heathen antiquity in general, what was so beautifully said in regard to the idolatry of Greece

"And yet triumphant o'er this pompous show
Of art, this palpable array of sense

On every side encountered a Spirit hang
Beautiful Region! o'er thy towns and farms,
Statues and temples and memorial tombs."

The ancient heathen, though he knew not what he worshipped, did in reality dimly adore one Divinity

He adored, indeed, in name and form, gods of the winds, the woods, and the waters, but it was the one, eternal, almighty, and all pervading spirit or power, which gave life and motion to the wind, the forest and the river, that he felt and reverenced. And we may discern amidst the strange and monstrous creations of the ancient heathen mythology— amidst the strong workings of the heathen mind, a tendency and an effort to make intelligible to the understanding that truth of the being of one supreme power, which has always dwelt and will always dwell in the heart and conscience of man. They bowed down, indeed, to the images of many gods, but there was a Father of gods, as well as of men, as certain of their own poets said. And more than this, there were the mysterious and inexorable Fates to whose eternal decrees gods as well as men were subject. The self-styled or self-fancied Atheist, though in his zeal against certain ideas of God that have darkened and degraded the human soul, he may sometimes be hurried so far as to seem to himself, as well as others, to deny Divine Providence itself, cannot in the wildest wanderings of his spirit, fly from himself and therefore cannot escape from the presence of the Being who made him, who dwells within his body as in a temple, and num